List of inventions and discoveries by women

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v t e

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (February 2015)

This page aims to list inventions and discoveries in which women played a major role.

Medicine

Diseases

Chemotherapy

Jane Cooke Wright (1919–2013) was an oncologist who pioneered the use of chemotherapy with the drug methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer (mycosis fungoids).

HIV

AIDS.^[1]

Aciclovir

Gertrude B. Elion contributed to the development of aciclovir, an antiviral drug used for the treatment of herpes simplex virus infections, chickenpox, and shingles.^[2]

Artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin

Chinese traditional medicine.^[3]

Azathioprine

Azathioprine is an

kidney transplants to prevent rejection first synthesized by George H. Hitchings and Gertrude B. Elion in 1957 .^[4][5][6]

Mercaptopurine

Mercaptopurine is a medication for

chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis. It was discovered by Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings.^[7]

Pyrimethamine

Pyrimethamine, sold under the trade name Daraprim, is an anti-parasitic medication used to treat a variety of conditions including

Gertrude Elion as a treatment for malaria.^[8][9]

AZT

antiretroviral medications used in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.^[10]

Vitamin E

Katharine Bishop and Herbert McLean Evans co-discovered Vitamin E while studying the reproductive cycle of rats.

Pediatrics

Apgar score

Invented in 1952 by Virginia Apgar.

Disposable diapers

The first disposable diaper was invented in 1946 by Marion Donovan, a professional-turned-housewife who wanted to ensure her children's cloth diapers remained dry while they slept.^[12] Donovan patented her design (called 'Boaters') in 1951. She also invented the first paper diapers, but executives did not invest in this idea and it was consequently scrapped for over ten years, until Procter & Gamble used Donovan's design ideas to create Pampers.

Another diaper design was created by Valerie Hunter Gordon (née de Ferranti), who patented it in 1948.^[13][14]

Child carriers

Snugli and Weego were invented by nurse and peacekeeper Ann Moore first in the 1960s.

Pertussis

A pioneering female American

pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine.^{[citation needed}

]

Harvard Stellar Classification Scheme

The first classification of stars based on their temperature, created by Annie Jump Cannon, used in publications up to 1924.

Pulsars

Rapidly rotating neutron stars discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell in 1967.

The

galaxy rotation problem

A major piece of evidence for the presence of

rotation curves

in the 1970s.

Stars luminosity

variable stars

at the beginning of 20th century.

variable stars as well as the first astronomer committed to install a large observatory at the heart of Antarctica towards an understanding of stellar evolution in the Universe by leading scientific polar explorations

.

Radio astronomy

radio astronomer^[15]

discovering Type I and Type III solar radio bursts.

Stars are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin found in her 1925 PhD thesis that stars are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium. Thus, her thesis established that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe.^[16]

When Payne's dissertation was reviewed, astronomer Henry Norris Russell dissuaded her from concluding that the composition of the Sun was predominantly hydrogen and thus very different from that of the Earth, as it contradicted the accepted wisdom at the time. She consequently described the result in her thesis as "spurious".^[16] Russell realized she was correct four years later after having derived the same result by different means and publishing it in 1929. He acknowledged Payne's work and discovery admiringly in his paper but he is often credited for the conclusions they both reached.^[17][18][19]

The new outer arm of the Milky Way

In 2004,

spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.^[20]

Physics

Radiation

scientific

areas.

materials both qualitatively and quantitatively.^[22]

Radon

In 1901, Harriet Brooks and Ernest Rutherford contributed to the discovery of the element radon by finding evidence that the "emanation" emitted by thorium compounds was likely to be a gas.^[23] This follows work in 1899 by Pierre and Marie Curie, who observed that the gas emitted by radium remained radioactive for a month.^[24]

Kinetic energy

Leibniz. She demonstrated that the kinetic energy of an object was proportional to its mass and the square of its velocity, and postulated a conservation law

for the total energy of a system.

Heavy elements in

cosmic radiation

As a graduate student,

cosmic radiation. Her work was published in Physical Review in 1948 with co-authors Edward J. Lofgren, Edward P. Ney, and Frank Oppenheimer.^[25]

Beta particles are electrons.

electrons.^[26]

Top quark

Melissa Franklin's team at Fermilab found some of the first evidence for the existence of the top quark.^[27]

Nuclear shell

nuclear shell of the atomic nucleus, for which she won the Nobel Prize

in 1963.

Slow light

Lene Hau led a Harvard University team who used a Bose–Einstein condensate to slow down a beam of light to about 17 metres per second, and, in 2001, was able to stop a beam completely.^[28]

Astatine

The Austrian physicist Berta Karlik discovered that the element 85 astatine is a product of the natural decay processes.^[29]

Bohr–van Leeuwen theorem

In her 1919 thesis,

Bohr–van Leeuwen theorem. (Niels Bohr

had arrived at the same conclusion a few years earlier.)

Francium

In 1939, Marguerite Perey, a student of Marie Curie, discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium. Perey first noticed that the actinium she purified was emitting unexpected radiation. After further study she was able to isolate this new element which she named "francium" for France.^[32]

Nuclear fission

Austrian–Swedish physicist Lise Meitner, together with Otto Hahn and Otto Robert Frisch, led the small group of scientists who first discovered nuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed an extra neutron. The results were published in early 1939.^[8][33] Meitner, Hahn and Frisch understood that the fission process, which splits the atomic nucleus of uranium into two smaller nuclei, must be accompanied by an enormous release of energy. Nuclear fission is the process exploited by nuclear reactors to generate heat and, subsequently, electricity.^[34] This process is also one of the basics of nuclear weapons that were developed in the U.S. during World War II and used against Japan in 1945.

Structure of the Milky Way

Heidi Jo Newberg's team found that Milky Way is cannibalizing stars from smaller galaxies^[35][36][37] and that the Milky Way is larger and has more ripples than was previously understood.^[38]

Chirped pulse amplification

Donna Strickland received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of chirped pulse amplification, a technique which "paved the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind."^[39]

Semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror

semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) invented and demonstrated by Ursula Keller in 1992

Conwell–Weisskopf theory

One of the first ionized impurity scattering mobility models proposed by

Esther Conwell

in 1950

Chemistry

Catalysis

The concept of catalysis invented by Scottish chemist Elizabeth Fulhame

Kevlar

A powerful

para-aramid synthetic fiber, developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont

in 1965

Polonium and radium

The discoveries of elements radium and polonium were made by Polish chemist Marie Curie through the deep study of their nature and their compounds.

Rhenium

Rhenium, a

d-block transition metal with Atomic number 75, was first isolated by Ida Noddack and her husband. The existence of this element was predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev

. Ida Noddack was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Seaborgium

Carol Alonso was a co-discoverer of seaborgium, a synthetic chemical element with symbol Sg and atomic number 106.^[40]

Scotchgard

This

Patsy Sherman and Samuel Smith while working for 3M

.

Langmuir–Blodgett film

The technique for making Langmuir–Blodgett film, which involves immersing a substrate into a solution to deposit a monolayer of molecules onto a substrate, was co-invented by Katharine Burr Blodgett and Irving Langmuir while working for General Electric. Earlier work by Agnes Pockels influenced the development of the trough.

Zeolite Y

Zeolite Y, a molecular sieve used to catalyse fractional distillation in petroleum refining, was invented by Edith M. Flanigen while working for Union Carbide. Flanigen also co-invented a synthetic emerald and was the first female recipient of the Perkin Medal in 1992.

Synthetic radiochemistry

Irene Joliot-Curie was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

for synthesis of new radioactive elements for application in medicine. The prize was shared jointly with her husband Jean Frederic Joliot.

Structure of benzene

The planar structure of benzene, an important cyclic

Fellow of The Royal Society

.

Structure of vitamin B12

The chemical structure was determined by Dorothy Hodgkin using crystallographic data. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on Vitamin B12 and other complex molecules.

Electron microscopy

The in-situ atomic-resolution environmental transmission electron microscope (ETEM) was created by Pratibha Gai in 2009. This microscope allows for visualisation of chemical reactions at the atomic scale. Dame Gai decided not to patent her device, the culmination of 20 years' work, in order to further the advancement of science.

Photocatalysis

In 2015, Deepika Kurup invented a photocatalytic composite material that removes 100% of faecal coliform bacteria from contaminated water. Deepika has won the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge award and The US Stockholm Junior Water Prize for her work.

Surface chemistry (surface science)

Lord Rayleigh and Irving Langmuir

.

Mass spectrometry

Sybil M. Rock

developed the mathematical techniques used in analysing the results from mass spectrometers and devised many of the procedures for mixture analysis.

Carbon dioxide

Eunice Newton Foote was the first scientist to make the connection between the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and climate change in 1856. She discovered the warming properties of carbon dioxide and the "greenhouse effect." She was able to submit her experiment and findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); however, because she was a woman and not able to be a member of the organization, Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution presented her findings.

Bioorthogonal chemistry

The term was coined by Carolyn Bertozzi in 2003. Since its introduction, the concept of the bioorthogonal reaction has enabled the study of biomolecules such as glycans, proteins, and lipids

Geology

Earth's inner core

Discovered in 1936 by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann. Through her work on seismology she was able to conclude that the Earth had a solid inner core and a molten outer core to explain inconsistencies in seismic wave data from earth quakes.

Documentation of all volcanos in planet Earth.

In February 2005, Rosaly Lopes – planetary scientist and volcanologist – wrote "Volcano Adventure Guide", in order to document every single volcano on planet Earth through a variety of aspects. This is the only book that addresses all volcanos on Earth; it provides information such as: volcano behavior, types of eruptions, dangers, maps, and even travel tips.

Household

Square-bottom paper bag

In 1868, Margaret Knight invented a machine that folded and glued flat-bottomed brown paper bags familiar to shoppers today. She obtained 87 US patents that include lid-removing pliers, a numbering machine, a window frame and sash, and variants on rotary engines.^[41]

Dishwasher

Josephine Cochrane developed in 1887 the first commercially successful dishwasher, together with mechanic George Butters.

Improved

ironing board

In 1892, Sarah Boone obtained a patent in the United States for improvements to the ironing board, allowing for better quality ironing for shirt sleeves.^[42]

Central heating

In 1919, Alice Parker invented a system of gas-powered central heating. While her particular design was never built, it was the first time an inventor had conceived of using natural gas to heat a personal home, which inspired the future central heating systems.

Automatic Rotimaker

In 2008, Pranoti Nagarkar-Israni invented a kitchen robot called

Internet of Things

to understand user requirements and improve itself after each use.

Correction fluid

Bette Nesmith Graham, the founder of the Liquid Paper company, invented one of the first forms of correction fluid in 1956.^[43]

solar heating

Hungarian-American MIT inventor Mária Telkes and American architect Eleanor Raymond created, in 1947, the Dover Sun House, the first house powered by solar energy.

Wrinkle-free fiber

Wrinkle-free fiber invented by Ruth R. Benerito The invention was said to have "saved the cotton industry".

Cosmetics

Hot comb

The hot comb was an invention developed in France as a way for women with coarse curly hair to achieve a fine straight look traditionally modeled by historical Egyptian women.^[44] However, it was Annie Malone who first patented this tool, while her protégé and former worker, Madam C. J. Walker, widened the teeth.^[45]

Vehicle appliances

Windscreen wiper

Mary Anderson is credited for inventing the first functional windscreen wiper in 1903. Two other inventors, Robert Douglass and John Apjohn, also patented windscreen cleaning devices in the same year.

Car heater

Margaret A. Wilcox invented an improved car heater, which directed air from over the engine to warm the chilly toes of aristocratic 19th-century motorists, in 1893. She also invented a combined clothes and dish washer.^{[46][unreliable source?]}

Airplane mufflers

electric iron

, travel size iron board, and airplane mufflers in 1919.

Underwater telescope

Patented by Sarah Mather in 1845, this permitted sea-going vessels to survey the depths of the ocean.^[47][48] It used a camphine lamp in a glass globe that was sunk in the water. The device allowed examination of the hull and other details from a person on the deck of a boat.^[49] In 1864 Sarah Mather improved her invention to detect Confederate underwater warships.^[50]

Computing

Written computer program

During a nine-month period in 1842–43,

Luigi Menabrea. The memoir covered the Analytical Engine. The translation contained Note G which completely detailed a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine. This note is recognized by some historians as the world's first written computer program.^[51]

Written compiler

An early compiler related tool was written by

A-0 programming language.^[52] She also helped to popularize the idea of machine-independent programming languages which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages

.

languages

Nine coding languages were invented by women:

Xerox PARC in 1980, BBC BASIC by Sophie Wilson in 1981, Coq by Christine Paulin-Mohring along with eight development team members of the Lab in 1991. More generally speaking, women have strongly impacted the data processing domain especially women in computing

.

Daubechies wavelet

Ingrid Daubechies introduced the Daubechies wavelet and contributed to the development of the CDF wavelet, important tools in image compression.

You can't hear the shape of a drum.

In 1966, Mark Kac asked whether the shape of a drum could be determined by the sound it makes (whether a Riemannian manifold is determined by the spectrum of its Laplace–Beltrami operator). John Milnor observed that a theorem due to Witt implied the existence of a pair of 16-dimensional tori that have the same spectrum but different shapes. However, the problem in two dimensions remained open until 1992, when Carolyn S. Gordon with coauthors Webb and Wolpert, constructed a pair of regions in the Euclidean plane that have different shapes but identical eigenvalues (see figure on right).^[53]

Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem

In mathematics, the Cauchy–Kowalevski theorem (also written as the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem) is the main local

Sophia Kovalevskaya (1875).^[54][55]

Kovalevskaya top

In

integrable problem. There are however three (or four) famous cases that are integrable, the Euler, the Lagrange, and the Kovalevskaya top.^[56][57] The Kovalevskaya top^[58][59]

is a special symmetric top with a unique ratio of the moments of inertia which satisfy the relation

QR algorithm

In

Vera N. Kublanovskaya, working independently.^[60][61][62] The basic idea is to perform a QR decomposition, writing the matrix as a product of an orthogonal matrix and an upper triangular matrix

, multiply the factors in the reverse order, and iterate.

Navier–Stokes equations

Olga Ladyzhenskaya provided the first rigorous proofs of the convergence of a finite difference method for the Navier–Stokes equations. Ladyzhenskaya was on the shortlist for potential recipients for the 1958 Fields Medal,^[63] ultimately awarded to Klaus Roth and René Thom.^[64]

Braid groups are linear

Ruth Lawrence's 1990 paper, "Homological representations of the Hecke algebra", in Communications in Mathematical Physics, introduced, among other things, certain novel linear representations of the braid group — known as Lawrence–Krammer representation. In papers published in 2000 and 2001, Daan Krammer and Stephen Bigelow established the faithfulness of Lawrence's representation. This result goes by the phrase "braid groups are linear."^[65]

Recursion theory

recursion theory, a branch of mathematical logic, of computer science, and of the theory of computation that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degrees. The field has since expanded to include the study of generalized computability and definability. In these areas, recursion theory overlaps with proof theory and effective descriptive set theory.^[66][67]

Hilbert's tenth problem

Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of mathematical problems that the German mathematician David Hilbert posed in 1900. It is the challenge to provide a general algorithm which, for any given Diophantine equation (a polynomial equation with integer coefficients and a finite number of unknowns) can decide whether the equation has a solution with all unknowns taking integer values.

For example, the Diophantine equation ${\displaystyle 3x^{2}-2xy-y^{2}z-7=0}$ has an integer solution: ${\displaystyle x=1,\ y=2,\ z=-2}$. By contrast, the Diophantine equation ${\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2}+1=0}$ has no such solution.

Hilbert's tenth problem has been solved, and it has a negative answer: such a general algorithm does not exist. This is the result of combined work of

Matiyasevich's theorem

or the MRDP theorem.

Optimal design

In the

criterion. The creation of this field of statistics has been credited to Danish statistician Kirstine Smith.^[70][71]

Three-gap theorem

The three-gap theorem states that if one places n points on a circle, at angles of θ, 2θ, 3θ ... from the starting point, then there will be at most three distinct distances between pairs of points in adjacent positions around the circle. When there are three distances, the larger of the three always equals the sum of the other two.^[72] Unless θ is a rational multiple of π, there will also be at least two distinct distances.

This result was conjectured by Hugo Steinhaus, and proved in the 1950s by Vera T. Sós, János Surányi [hu], and Stanisław Świerczkowski. Its applications include the study of plant growth and musical tuning systems, and the theory of Sturmian words.^[73]

Noether normalization lemma

The Noether normalization lemma is a result of

algebraically independent

elements y₁, y₂, ..., y_d in A such that A is a finitely generated module over the polynomial ring S:=k[y₁, y₂, ..., y_d].

The theorem has a geometric interpretation. Suppose A is integral. Let S be the

coordinate ring of the d-dimensional affine space

${\displaystyle \mathbb {A} _{k}^{d}}$, and A as the coordinate ring of some other d-dimensional

affine varieties

${\displaystyle X\to \mathbb {A} _{k}^{d}}$. The conclusion is that any affine variety is a branched covering of affine space.

The

Nullstellensatz

.

Noether's theorem

Noether's (first)

principle of least action

.

Noether's theorem is used in

dissipative systems with continuous symmetries

need not have a corresponding conservation law.

If a system has a continuous symmetry property, then there are corresponding quantities whose values are conserved in time.[78]

Noether's second theorem

In

principle of least action

.

Isomorphism theorems

In mathematics, specifically abstract algebra, the isomorphism theorems are three theorems that describe the relationship between quotients, homomorphisms, and subobjects. Versions of the theorems exist for groups, rings, vector spaces, modules, Lie algebras, and various other algebraic structures. In universal algebra, the isomorphism theorems can be generalized to the context of algebras and congruences.

The isomorphism theorems were formulated in some generality for homomorphisms of modules by Emmy Noether in her paper Abstrakter Aufbau der Idealtheorie in algebraischen Zahl- und Funktionenkörpern which was published in 1927 in Mathematische Annalen. Less general versions of these theorems can be found in work of Richard Dedekind and previous papers by Noether.

Three years later, B.L. van der Waerden published his influential Algebra, the first abstract algebra textbook that took the groups-rings-fields approach to the subject. Van der Waerden credited lectures by Noether on group theory and Emil Artin on algebra, as well as a seminar conducted by Artin, Wilhelm Blaschke, Otto Schreier, and van der Waerden himself on ideals as the main references. The three isomorphism theorems, called homomorphism theorem, and two laws of isomorphism when applied to groups, appear explicitly.

Lasker–Noether theorem

In mathematics, the Lasker–Noether theorem states that every Noetherian ring is a Lasker ring, which means that every ideal can be decomposed as an intersection, called primary decomposition, of finitely many primary ideals (which are related to, but not quite the same as, powers of prime ideals). The theorem was first proven by Emanuel Lasker (1905) for the special case of polynomial rings and convergent power series rings, and was proven in its full generality by Emmy Noether (1921).

The Lasker–Noether theorem is an extension of the

algebraic set may be uniquely decomposed into a finite union of irreducible components

.

Albert–Brauer–Hasse–Noether theorem

In

Abraham Adrian Albert

.

The earthquake flow on Teichmüller space is ergodic

Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani proved the long-standing conjecture that William Thurston's earthquake flow on Teichmüller space is ergodic

.

Radio guidance

device

Austrian-American Hollywood actress

CDMA and Bluetooth technology.^[81]

Chocolate-chip cookies

Invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1938.

Pizza saver

Patented in 1985 by Carmela Vitale of Dix Hills, New York.

Mint chocolate chip

Invented by Marilyn Ricketts in 1973.

Biology

DNA structure

radiographs

of the DNA.

Sex chromosomes

Nettie Maria Stevens is credited with the discovery of sex chromosomes.^[82]

The Cori cycle (lactic acid cycle)

Gerty Cori, together with Carl Ferdinand Cori, discovered the Cori cycle, the metabolic pathway in which lactate produced by anaerobic glycolysis in the muscles moves to the liver and is converted to glucose, which then returns to the muscles and is metabolized back to lactate.^[83]

Radioimmunoassay

Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx, New York. This technique is used to accurately measure levels of substances such as hormones which are found in small concentrations in the body.^[84]

Transposable elements

DNA sequences which change their position within the genome. Transposons make up a large fraction of the DNA in eukaryotic cells (44% if the human genome^[85] and 90% of the maize genome^[86][87]) and play an important role in genome function and evolution.^[88] In Oxytricha, which has a unique genetic system, these elements play a critical role in development.^[89]

Nerve growth factor

neurons. This discovery was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986.^[90]

Gap genes

Eric Wieschaus were the first to describe gap genes, genes involved in the development of segmentation in Drosophila embryogenesis. This work was foundational to our understanding of the genetic control of embryonic development.^[91]

Telomerase

chromosomes which protects the DNA in the rest of the chromosome from damage.^[92]

Grid cells

May-Britt Moser, together with Edvard Moser and their students Torkel Hafting, Marianne Fyhn and Sturla Molden, discovered grid cells, cells which contribute to the brain's positioning and navigation system. The grid cells of a freely moving animal fire when the animal is near the vertices of a hexagonal grid in the environment.^[93]

CRISPR gene editing

Jennifer Anne Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier

Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers invented this psychological test, where participants answer an introspective self-report questionnaire. The result takes the form of 16 types, indicating the psychological preferences of the participant.

See also

• Women in science
• Women's history
• List of women's firsts
• History of women in engineering

References