Women Who Changed Science Forever
This International Women's Day, we're celebrating three women who changed the face of science forever.
Ellen Ochoa
Ellen Ochoa is an American engineer and retired astronaut. She was the first Latina woman to fly in space as part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery in 1993. Ochoa attended San Diego State University and then continued her education at Stanford. Ochoa regards her mother, whose passion for learning kept her in part-time college courses all through Ochoa's childhood, as an important influence on her career.
At the end of her flying career, Ochoa had traveled nearly 1,000 hours in space. From 2012 to 2018, Ochoa served as the director of Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, only the second woman to head up NASA's human spaceflight headquarters.
Mamie Phipps Clark
Mamie Phipps Clark was an American social psychologist (心理学家), who specialized in child development in black children. Born in Arkansas, Clark drew on her early experiences as a black child in the segregated (种族隔离的) American South to help children growing up with the same iniquities.
Clark stated at Howard University in 1934, and went on to complete a PhD in psychology. She and Kenneth, now her husband, were the first two black people to earn PhDs at Columbia. With their funding, she started the famous Doll Test, which showed the negative effects of school segregation on black children.
Anandibai Gopalrao Joshee
Anandibai Jpshee was to become India's first woman physician with a medical degree. When she was young, her father strayed (偏离) from the traditional Hindu belief that women should not receive education and encouraged her to go to school. When she was fifteen, she was determined to study medicine, a choice likely influenced by the loss of an infant son and surviving a serious illness herself. At the Woman's Medical College, Joshee studied devotedly, hoping to return to India to serve other Indian women.
She died in February 1887 at the young age of twenty-one. Despite her short life, Joshee's accomplishments were remarkable for an Indian woman, and her achievements were enough to open the door for other Indian women to quickly follow.
