Stephanie Kwolek was an American chemist who is best known for inventing the first of a family of synthetic fibers of exceptional strength and stiffness: poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide—better known as Kevlar. Kwolek was born in 1923 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Her father, John Kwolek, was a naturalist and Kwolek spent hours exploring the woods and fields …
Dr Helen Sharman OBE FRSC, is a British chemist who became the first Briton in space and the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991. Sharman was born in 1963 in Grenoside, Sheffield. Her father, a physicist, inspired an early interest in science and made her realise how relevant science is to …
Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. Franklin attended one of the few girls’ schools in London that taught physics and chemistry, she excelled at science and at 15 decided she would become a scientist. …
Dr. Marie Maynard Daly was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Daly was brought up in a family that valued education, her father had emigrated from the West Indies and enrolled at Cornell University to study chemistry, unfortunately he had to drop out due to a lack of money. Daly attended …
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research into radioactivity. Marie Skłodowska was a top student in her her secondary school, but was unable to attend Warsaw University as it was men-only. She attended the “floating university,” a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. She could not …