What is the most signifigant controbution women have made to math and science ?

Question

http://www.aip.org/history/curie/ Marie Curie a link for those who want to know more.

Great answers so far.

http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=madameCurie

Answer 1

Hypatia. The first woman and last librarian of the Alexandrian Library before the christians burned it down.

Funny thing...the whole reason women haven't made many contributions to science and mathematics is because of men and religion. When women have not been prevented from working, they have often exceeded what their male counterparts achieved.

Marie Curie is mentioned by many, but one could also name Theano, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Rosalind Franklin or any of the unnamed herbalists of Europe who were burned as witches for studying natural medicines and midwifery.

Answer 2

There are many women who have contributed to mathematics. Because mathematics has so many branches, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say who made "the most significant contribution".

Hypatia (370-415) is the first woman recognized. She summarized work from Diophantus and Euclid and added to it.

Maria Gaetano Agnesi (1718-1799) brought together all the learning at that time to create a calculus text that could be used by the masses. She was the second woman in history to be offered a professorship. She was also offered the chair of the mathematics department at the University of Bologna.

Sofia Kovalevsky (1850-1891) was the first woman given a doctorate in mathematics. She also won the "Prix Borden". It was THE prize to win in mathematics in her day. It was about the revolution of a sold body about a fixed point.

There are many other women who have made great contributions to mathematics. You can read about some of them in "Women in Mathematics" by Lynn Osen.

Answer 3

Marie Curie is a double Nobel prize recipient (1903 - Physics, 1911 - Chemistry), not too many people can say they have done that!

Women in the field of mathematics also played an important role,
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/alpha.htm

Answer 4

In physics, the Randall-Sundrum models

One woman who has made many contributions to math physics and science in general is Lisa Randall. I feel the body of her work speaks for itself and not just one particular contribution. She is most famous for the Randall-Sundrum models.

In physics, Randall-Sundrum models imagine that the real world is a higher-dimensional Universe described by warped geometry. More concretely, our Universe is a five-dimensional anti de Sitter space and the elementary particles except for the graviton are localized on a (3 + 1)-dimensional brane or branes. The models were proposed in 1999 by Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum while studying technicolor models. (from Wikipedia)

Read about her at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Randall. Or read her book "Warped Passages : Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions".

Answer 5

Personally, I think the contribution by Madame Curie was pretty darn significant. Her work with radiation contributed to the development of xrays, and in the end, it killed her.

oh I thought of someone else too, the female admiral who worked at developing computers... darn I can't remember her name.

How about Florence Nightengale? She contributed to health care in a significant way.

Answer 6

I think that the most significant contribution is that they gave birth to all the scientists. If you want, on the other hand, a straight answer, I'll say that Marie Currie was, from what i know, the most important female scientist of all times...

Answer 7

Marie Curie was pretty great. Can't think of anyone else.

Answer 8

Playing an active role in math and science is the most significant contribution anyone one, male or female, can make.

Answer 9

Liza Meitner - Major contributor to nuclear science pre-WWII.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper - Major contributor to early computer development. see
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Hopper.Danis.html

Another excellent source:
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/contents.html

Rózsa Peter:
She was called Aunt Rózsa by generations of students and worked to increase opportunities in mathematics for girls and young women. She died on the eve of her birthday in 1977. In her eulogy, her student Ferenc Genzwein recalled that she taught "that facts are only good for bursting open the wrappings of the mind and spirit" in the "endless search for truth."

Answer 10

marie curie discovered radium
admiral grace hopper invested fortran (a computer language)