If you or someone you know are passionate about STEM, you may be looking for that last push to encourage you to commit to a STEM career — so why not look towards some of the most inspiring women of all time? Below are some inspiring real-life stories of STEM’s greatest women.
Exploring radioactivity
When Marie Curie was born in Poland, the Russian Empire forbade women from studying in universities. Determined, she studied in Paris and wrote a thesis on radiation. She went on to discover the elements polonium and radium, unlocking knowledge on radioactivity that we use to treat cancer today. In the 2011 biography Radioactive , artist and writer Lauren Redniss narrates Curie’s life work, highlighting her achievement as the first female Nobel prize winner.
The mother of Wi-Fi
Hedy Lamarr was a woman who could do it all. An actress during the Golden Age of Hollywood, she’s probably best known for her role as Delilah in the 1949 film, Samson and Delilah. Yet, she was also an inventor. During World War II, she developed a frequency-hopping technology to help missiles find their targets without being intercepted on the radio waves. The US military rejected its use — so it instead became the foundation of wireless communication technologies like Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth.
Fuelling the Space Race
Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden were four human supercomputers stuck teaching math in segregated public schools. Then, they were recruited by NASA in its desperate effort to win the Space Race. Non-fiction author Margot Lee Shetterly recounts their journey in Hidden Figures— an explosive piece that was adapted into film the same year it was published. It reveals that though the four African American women were discriminated against due to their race and gender, their prodigious mathematical skills helped them worked their way up to some of the highest positions NASA had to offer.
The achievements of women in STEM inspire us today by showing that anyone, regardless of gender, can make a difference in the world of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Their stories of overcoming challenges and breaking barriers encourage us to follow our passions, work hard, and never give up on our dreams. By sharing their successes, they show us that diversity and inclusion are key to unlocking innovation and solving the world’s biggest challenges.
