STEM

Dorothy Hodgkin

Dorothy Hodgkin OM FRS was a British biochemist who developed protein crystallography. She won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for her determination of the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12. She is one of the pioneering scientists who worked in the field of X-ray crystallography studies of biomolecules. Hodgkin was born in 1910 in …

STEM

Helen Sharman

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 …

artists STEM women in the arts

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She wrote and illustrated more than 20 children’s books featuring the animals Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Benjamin Bunny. Potter was born in 1866 in London. Her father Rupert had trained as a lawyer but devoted himself to art and photography, her mother Helen …

STEM

Marie Skłodowska-Curie

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 …