Powerful Women of the Past
Throughout history, many of the accomplishments in government,
education, science, and other fields have been made by women, but
they received essentially no credit. In many cases, their work was
dismissed or even stolen by their male counterparts. I hope my blog
about these brilliant and bold women from the past inspire readers to
learn more about other successful women who have been overlooked by the
history books.
Rosalind Franklin
English chemist and X-ray crystallographer, Rosalind Franklin was a
pioneer in biology. Although Watson and Crick typically receive credit
for discovering the structure of DNA, their discovery relied heavily on
Franklin's data. Specifically, Watson and Crick realized DNA was a
double helix after observing Franklin's "photo 51" shown to them by
Wilkins, Franklin's work collegue who had a tense and unfriendly
relationship with Franklin. The diffraction picture clearly illustrated
DNA's helical property. Armed with Franklin's photo and their own data,
Watson and Crick published their work and their famous DNA double helix
structure, giving Franklin none of the credit. Furthermore, Franklin
died in 1958 as of ovarian cancer, likely a result over x-ray exposure
when working. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize
for discovering DNA's structure, but since Franklin had died four years
earlier, she did not share the Prize with them because the Nobel Prize
cannot be posthumously awarded.
Charlotta Bass
Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass was born in Sumter, South Carolina some time between
1874 and 1880. In 1910 she moved to Los Angeles and began working for
the Eagle newspaper. This newspaper, run by John Neimore until he turned
the operations over to Bass, proved instrumental for black immigrants relocating to
southern California by providing information about housing and jobs in LA.
Charlotta Bass renamed the newspaper the California Eagle and took a decisive political and social
stance against discrimination by practicing advocacy journalism. Bass' "On the Sidewalk" column discussed social
injustices in her community and inspired her readers to seek reform. However, not everyone agreed with
Bass' work, which was often dismissed by the white press. She even received multiple death threats, but nothing stopped
her from fighting for equality. In 1952, she was the first African American woman nominated
for vice president of the United States as a candidate of the Progressive Party. Unfortunately, many people
to this day are unaware of the great strides Charlotta made for civil rights and women's rights in the United
States. Nonetheless, Charlotta Bass was clearly a trailblazer who courageously used her
newspaper to motivate others to join her fight for gender and racial equality.
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was one of the first computer programmers, despite being born in 1815—long before computers were invented.
Since her mother had mathematical training, Ada was encouraged to pursue the field of mathematics, even though this field was largely male-dominated at this time.
When Lovelace met Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge, she further explored the realms of mathematics as it related to Babbage's idea of a calculating machine: The Analytical Engine.
Italian engineer Lugigi Menabrea eventually wrote a paper of Babbage's Analytical Engine and Lovelace took extensive notes on and translated the article so that it was triple the length of the actual work.
In her notes was the invention of the first computer program.
She helped mathematicians and other STEM scientists during the Industrial Revolution acknowledge that a machine can perform more than one task.