Today’s passion blog is gonna be a little bit different than usual. Instead of a medical advance, we’re going to take a look back into the history of modern science. So, in honor of International Women’s Day last week and in the same realm as my usual blog topic, here are nine kickass women scientists and some of their accomplishments:

Marie Curie – Duh, everyone knows about Madame Curie. She was a Polish physicist who worked alongside her husband (not as his assistant or secretary, but as equals) to discover the radioactive elements polonium and radium. She won the Nobel Prize for physics and then eight years later won it again for chemistry. She was the first scientist, on top of the fact that she’s a woman, to win a Nobel Prize more than once.

Rachel Carson – Less known than Madame Curie, Carson was a marine biologist and conservationist. She had the foresight to write about the dangers of pesticides all the way back in the early 1900’s and her worked helped to ignite the global environmental movement from then on.

Rosalind Franklin – Watson and Crick did not discover the double helix shape of DNA. It was actually biophysicist Franklin who took the x-ray crystallography pictures of DNA. Watson and Crick later used her work to make their model of DNA, yet somehow they get all the credit while her work seems to fall to the wayside.

Maxine Singer – She was a molecular biologist and science administrator. Her work helped unlock secrets and led to discoveries about the genetic codes. She also spurred debate and discussions concerning the ethics of DNA research, testing, and things like genetic engineering.

Lise Meitner – We’ve all heard of Oppenheimer, the mastermind behind the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb, but none of those discoveries would have been possible without Meitner, the Austrian physicist and co-discoverer of nuclear fission. Her partner, a man named Otto Hahn, won the Nobel Prize for their work — she did not. As a historical consolation prize for being ignored is Element 109, Meitnerium, which is named after her.

Rita Levi-Montalcini – She was an Italian neurologist who discovered nerve growth factor with her partner Stanley Cohen. Together, they won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine.

Jane Goodall – The world famous primatologist, ethnologist, and anthropologist is also a UN Messenger of Peace. Her extensive work with the behavior and sociology of chimpanzees set the benchmark for the way primate life is viewed and studied.

Maria Mitchell – An astronomer, she was the first woman to ever become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She used a telescope in the 1800’s to discover what became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet”.

Shirley Ann Jackson – She is a theoretical physicist as well as being the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her work with Bell Labs is responsible for things like caller-ID and call waiting. In addition to this, she is also the first African-American woman to earn a PhD from MIT.

I hope you got something out of this, cause I definitely did!