Major contributions of women

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Major contributions of women in Business, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

There have been many notable contributions by women in the fields of business, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Here are a few examples:

  1. Business:
  • In 2014, Mary Barra became the first female CEO of General Motors, one of the world’s largest car manufacturers. Under her leadership, GM has focused on sustainable transportation and electric vehicles.
  • Indra Nooyi, served as the CEO of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018, where she led the company to record profits and diversified the product portfolio.
  • Sheryl Sandberg, is a business leader, author, and philanthropist. She currently serves as the COO of Facebook and the founder of Leanin.org.
  1. Science:
  • Rosalind Franklin, was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA was crucial to the discovery of the DNA double helix.
  • Chien-Shiung Wu, was a Chinese-American physicist who made significant contributions to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and later conducted research in radioactivity and nuclear physics.
  • Barbara McClintock, was an American cytogeneticist and the only woman to have received unshared Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, for her discovery of genetic transposition.
  1. Technology:
  • Grace Hopper, was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer during World War II, and later developed the first compiler, which translated written language into computer code.
  • Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer, credited as the world’s first computer programmer for her work on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
  • Hedy Lamarr, was an Austrian-American actress and inventor. She co-invented an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping which later became the foundation for modern technologies such as Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi.
  1. Engineering:
  • Elsie Eaves, was an American engineer, who in 1919 became the first woman to be elected as a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
  • Ellen Ochoa, was an American engineer, astronaut and former Director of the Johnson Space Center. She is the first Hispanic woman astronaut and served on four spaceflights, logging nearly 1,000 hours in space.
  • Anousheh Ansari, is an Iranian-American engineer, entrepreneur and the first female private space explorer. She became the first Iranian in space, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station.
  1. Mathematics:
  2. Emmy Noether, was a German mathematician who made significant contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She is considered as one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century. Noether’s theorem, which states the relationship between symmetries and the underlying mathematical structure, is considered one of the most important mathematical theorems of the 20th century.
  3. Maryam Mirzakhani, was an Iranian mathematician and the first woman to win the Fields Medal, which is considered one of the highest honors in mathematics. Her work focused on the geometry and dynamics of Riemann surfaces, and also made important contributions to the study of moduli spaces and Teich1müller theory.
  4. Sofia Kovalevskaya, was a Russian mathematician who made significant contributions to differential equations, elliptic integrals, and mechanics. She was the first woman in modern Europe to hold a full professorship in mathematics, and the first female member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
  5. Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer, credited as the world’s first computer programmer for her work on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. She is known for her work in developing the first published algorithm and her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first published algorithm intended for implementation on a computer.
  6. Grace Hopper, was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer during World War II, and later developed the first compiler, which translated written language into computer code. She also popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages.