Katharine Kay Way is widely regarded as a talented scientist whose work has changed the world. She is best known for her theories and formulas on nuclear fission and her collections and journals on nuclear decay. Katharine encountered many times of adversity in her career due to prejudice against women in her field, but she met her challenges and overcame them. Way exceeded the barriers put on women in her time to become one of the world’s most famous scientists and used her knowledge to the benefit of humanity. Katharine Kay Way was born on 20 February 1902 in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. She was the second child of William Addisson Way, a lawyer of Pennsylvania, and his wife Louise Jones. Both of her parents are deceased. Louise Jones Katharine’s …show more content…
Knowledge was everything to Katharine expressing herself passionately not only about education as a student, but also focusing on “many issues of human fairness and social justice.” From an early age, it was very clear to Kay that females in the world of education are at a lower standard of treatment and fairness sparking what would become a lifelong struggle. Way was educated at Miss Hartridge's boarding school in Plainfield, New Jersey, and transferred to Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut for most of her primary schooling being an all-girls boarding …show more content…
By her sophomore year in college, Katharine had to drop out after two years of battling suspected tuberculosis making her studies very difficult. Her serious infection resulted in a disease that mainly affected her ability to breathe tacking tremendous effort to attend class. After recovering from her illness, Katharine attended Barnard College for a couple of semesters in 1924 and 1925, becoming unsatisfied with her field of study, and transferred during her second semester. Starting her career in physics Kay enrolled during 1929 at Columbia University to receive her B.S. in Physics in 1932. She attended Columbia for a number of years leaving in 1934 with many academic accomplishments. One of her greatest accomplishments during her first few years at Columbia was Way's first published academic paper co-authored by Edward Kasner. Kasner was a prominent American mathematician who became, a full professor of Mathematics at Columbia University in 1910. Way states that with the help of Kasner in her findings “liquid drop models are unstable under certain conditions. Due to a limitation of the liquid drop model, the opportunity to predict nuclear fission was lost.” Being in the mathematics department, he soon became Way’s first mentor at Columbia assisting her with her dreams of becoming a
People discussed in the book includes those such as scientist Marie Curie whose discovery of Radium,almost ruined her career, and the writer Mark Twain, whose short story Sold to Satan featured a devil who was made of radium and wore a suit made of . Also discussed is Maria Goeppert-Mayer, a German-born American who earned a Nobel Prize in Physics for her groundbreaking work, yet continually faced opposition due to her gender.
Moore, M., & Weisgall, J. M. (1994, May). The Able-Baker-Where's-Charlie Follies. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25-34.
Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4th 1802 in Maine and the first of three children of Joseph and Mary Dix. Dix’s home life was less than pleasant because her mother was mentally unstable and her father n abusive alcoholic (Gollaher, 1995). Dix’s troubles through the course of her childhood may have been one of the reasons she developed an altruistic social role; a passion capable of changing the treatment of others. Although her father was violent toward Dix, he did teach her how to read at a young age and this sparked interest in teaching and assessment (Bumb, 2008). During the early 1800’s women lacked permission to attend school but could be privately educated by other women; therefore Dix decided to embrace this approach. Dix ran a school near her grandmother’s home for three
For a long time, women’s potential in Science was little to none. However, over the years, it has now changed because of the outstanding breakthroughs and encouraging accomplishments women have done through the years. It is because of them, women’s potential in Science and other realms of studies has now evolved with more understandings and discoveries. It is for the reason of Maria Mitchell, one of the first female astronomers to be recognized in Science, that women’s potential were essentially respected. Her discoveries during her time as a student, a teacher, and an astronomer paved the way for many others, not just in Science, but also for woman’s rights and potential to be seen.
One of the strongest women scientist/astronomer was born in 1818 as Maria Mitchell whom led an unbelievable life and had an incredible discovery. Maria Mitchell was born when women were not given the opportunity to vote nor did women have the same equal rights as men did, but given her circumstances of her father being a principal, founding his own school and being a distant family member of Benjamin Franklin she was given the same rights as the men did. Given a few obstacles she led an extraordinary life and became the first woman in America to work as an astronomer professionally, which she than later received an award personally from King Frederick VII, for her work and discovery.
Mary Whiton Calkins was born on March 30, 1863 in Buffalo, New York. Her father was Wolcott Calkins and a Presbyterian minister. She was from a close knit family, especially to her mother, and the eldest of five children. In 1880, when she was seventeen, she moved to Newton, Massachusetts where her family built a home that she lived in the rest of her life. Her father, knowing the education that women received, decided to design and supervise Mary's education. This enabled her to enter Smith College in 1882 with advanced standing as a sophomore. However, in 1893, an experience that permanently influenced her thinking and character, was the death of her sister, Maude. The following academic year she stayed home and took private lessons. She reentered Smith College in the fall of 1884 as a senior and graduated with a concentration in classics and philosophy (7).
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow graduated Hunter College as the first women to graduate in physics (Bauman et. al. 2011). She also led a way for acceptance and understanding of women’s role in science in America (Bauman et. al. 2011). She even inspired Mildred Dresselhous, who was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and president and officer of many Associations including American Association for the Advancement of Science, to pursue the career she wanted (Bauman et. al. 2011). Rosalyn born to Clara and Simon Sussman in New York City, on July 19, 1921 (Brody 1996). She married Aaron Yalow on June 6, 1943 and had two children named Elanna and Benjamin (Brody 1996). In 1977, Dr. Yalow won the Nobel Prize in medicine and was the second women to ever accept such an award (Brody 1996). She also taught physics in New York until 1950 when the Veterans Administration (during World War II) was interested in exploring and researching radioactivity (Brody 1996). As her life progressed, Dr. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow became an inspiration for young women who want to be recognized and achieve something in their life (Brody 1996). From when she was a child she was fascinated with science and decided to achieve something no women really does. Rosalyn Yalow went to school and started working in the science field, she managed to help the world of radioactivity and radioimmunoassay, how Mrs. Rosalyn impacted the world of science, how Dr. Yalow impacted the lives of other women, and how she never lost her passion for science even in her last years.
Alice Paul grew up in a Quaker home that believed in the ethic of hard work and gender equality (Hawranick, 2008). Women were not commonly educated and if you were poor you had little educational access. Alice’s mother, Tacie, was an educated woman and expected her children to be as well. Sometimes Tacie would bring her daughter with her to suffrage meetings and Alice would learn more about discrimination against women. Alice went to college when she was 16 years old. She got her BA from Swathmor...
Eunice Kathleen Waymon born February 21, 1933. She was the sixth of eight children born to John - an entertainer turned family man - and Mary Kate - who became a church minister - a poor southern black family that lived in Tryon, North Carolina.
In 1894 Martha was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (Pratt 8). She was the daughter of Jane Beers and George Graham. Her father was a well-known physician who treated mental disorders. After living in Pennsylvania for 12 years, she and her family moved to Santa Barbara, California in 1908 (Harmon et al. 182). The.
When most people think of the Scientific Revolution, they think of scientists such as Galileo, Newton, Brahe, and Boyle. However, many people do not even know about the many women who played a vital role in the scientific advancements of this period. Even when these women were alive, most of society either ignored them or publicly disapproved their unladylike behavior. Because of this, these women were often forgotten from history, and very little is known about the majority of them. Although their names rarely appear in history books, the female scientists of the Scientific Revolution still impacted the world of science in several ways. In fact, all of the scientists listed above had a woman playing an influential role assisting them in their research. However, assisting men in their studies was not the only role open to women; several women performed experimentation and research on their own, or advancing science in some other way, even though the society of the time looked down upon and even resisted their studies.
Education for women in the 1800s was far different from what we know today. During her life, a girl was taught more necessary skills around the home than the information out of school books. A woman’s formal education was limited because her job opportunities were limited—and vice versa. Society could not conceive of a woman entering a profession such as medicine or the law and therefore did not offer her the chance to do so. It was much more important to be considered 'accomplished' than thoroughly educated. Elizabeth Bennet indicated to her sisters that she would continue to learn through reading, describing education for herself as being unstructured but accessible. If a woman desired to further he education past what her classes would teach her, she would have to do so independently, and that is what most women did.
University of Alabama, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 4,000 Years of Women in Science. Dec. 2002 2 Nov. 2003 http://crux.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/newintro.html.
Scientists from earlier times helped influence the discoveries that lead to the development of atomic energy. In the late 1800’s, Dalton created the Atomic Theory which explains atoms, elements and compounds (Henderson 1). This was important to the study of and understanding of atoms to future scientists. The Atomic Theory was a list of scientific laws regarding atoms and their potential abilities. Roentagen, used Dalton’s findings and discovered x-rays which could pass through solid objects (Henderson 1). Although he did not discover radiation from the x-rays, he did help lay the foundations for electromagnetic waves. Shortly after Roentagen’s findings, J.J. Thompson discovered the electron which was responsible for defining the atom’s characteristics (Henderson 2). The electron helped scientists uncover why an atom responds to reactions the way it does and how it received its “personality”. Dalton’s, Roentagen’s and Thompson’s findings helped guide other scientists to discovering the uses of atomic energy and reactions. Such applications were discovered in the early 1900’s by using Einstein’s equation, which stated that if a chain reaction occurred, cheap, reliable energy could b...