Saturday, January 20, 2007

top 5 female chemists

1) Maria Skłodowska-Curie (1867-1934)



A candidate for the first place of the 'top 5 chemists' as well. Two Nobel prizes, a named-unit and a named-element.

2) Lise Meitner (1887-1968)


Worked with Otto Hahn on nuclear chemistry, but did not receive the Nobel prize (Hahn did). She has a named-element though. When I saw this picture I decided to rank her a place up again.

3) Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958)




'The dark lady of DNA', was unable to be a candidate for a Nobel prize because of her early death.

4) Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911)



The first woman at MIT and the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry.

5)Maud Leonora Menten (1879-1960)



Worked on histochemistry and enzyme kinetics. Well known because of the Michaelis-Menten equation.(I was unable to find a picture of her as an old lady.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The top 3 are all very well deserving. I know less about the other 2.

Mitch

Jordan said...

Maud Menten was Canadian (from south-western Ontario). She was one of the first female doctors in Canada, I think, and there is a large memorial plaque to her outside the Medical Sciences building at the University of Toronto, where she studied.

Anonymous said...

What about Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin??
She is clearly missing in this list!

Anonymous said...

Michaelis-MENTEN equation!
THE most important relationship in enzyme kinetics.