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Inventors

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Maria the Jewess

Maria the Jewess was one of the founding practitioners in western alchemy, in the 1st–3rd centuries CE. She invented several types of chemical apparatus, ran a school of alchemy in Alexandria, Egypt, and was noted for her alchemical sayings. She is the earliest recorded Jewish woman to have published a book.

Jewish Women in Computer Science

From hardware to software, from developing new programming languages to revolutionizing applications, Jewish women have been part of significant projects on the cutting edge of computing in the United States.

Hedy Lamarr

Austrian film star Hedy Lamarr was best known in her day as an exotic beauty, cast in Hollywood as a foreign temptress. Yet during the war, with composer George Antheil, she invented a system for torpedoing U-Boats that was patented and then forgotten.

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr: Not Your Average Movie Star

Hannah Landau

Hedy Lamarr teaches us to be whatever the heck we want to be.

Topics: Film, Inventors
Hedy Lamarr

Discussion Guide for Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Larisa Klebe

The film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which premiered in theaters last November, explores the unusual and tumultuous life of Hedy Lamarr—a Jewish and Austrian-born Hollywood actress considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

2016-2017 Rising Voices Fellow Maya Jodidio Pipetting DNA into a Gel

To Girls Taking Their First STEM Classes

Caroline Kubzansky
Maya Jodidio
If you’re a female-identifying teen and you attend high school, chances are good that you take, or will take, a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) class. Physics, biology, and chemistry are the usual suspects. We’re writing to share some collective wisdom with you from our own high-school experience.

Janet Lieberman-Lu

With her mastery of 3D printing, Janet Lieberman helped create the first successful hands-free couples’ vibrator in 2014.

Alexandra Fine

Using crowdfunding and cutting-edge technology, Alexandra Fine helped create the first successful hands-free couples’ vibrator in 2014 to overcome the difficulties women face in achieving orgasm during sex.

Gertrude Elion / Nina Fefferman

Scientists

Leaders in the Lab

Hedy Lamarr / Mayim Bialik

Actress-Scientists

Stars of STEM and Screen

Actress Hedy Lamarr patents the basis for WiFi

August 11, 1942

“All creative people want to do the unexpected.” — Actress Hedy Lamarr

Frances Slanger

One of four nurses to wade ashore at Normandy Beach on D-Day, Frances Slanger was the only nurse to die as a result of enemy action in the European Theater.
Irene Greif

Living by Their Own Codes

Sarah Weinberg

Women who make history rarely feel the need to adhere to others' narratives—and that goes double for Jewish women.  So it's not surprising that when Radia Perlman, architect of many of the routing and bridging protocols that make the modern Internet possible, discusses her childhood, she casually disposes of the standard geek-culture heroic origin story: "I did not fit the stereotype of the 'engineer.' I never took things apart or built a computer out of spare parts."  Irene Greif, a fellow computer scientist who brought ethnographers, anthropologists and sociologists into systems design through her field of computer-supported cooperative work, cheerfully admits: "I have a whole history of always choosing marginal roles and in marginal subjects of research and so on for myself."  Her work, though, has turned out to be anything but marginal. 

Mollie Orshansky, 1915 - 2006

Mollie was very smart, independent, and a hardworking government employee. She was called 'Miss Poverty' because she developed the poverty index widely used by the Federal government as a basis for benefit programs involving low income individuals and families.

Florence Melton, 1911 - 2007

It was her conviction that others shared her desire to be a knowledgeable Jew, and her dream was to create the way to provide that knowledge.

Florence Zacks Melton

A philanthropist and visionary innovator and a lay leader for over fifty years, Florence Zacks Melton helped build institutions that improved the quality and broadened the scope of Jewish education throughout North America.

Ruth Mosko Handler

Best known as the inventor of the Barbie doll, Ruth Mosko Handler combined her marketing genius with her husband Elliot Handler’s creative designs to form the toy company Mattel, Inc., in 1939. Her battles with cancer later in her career led her to create the company Nearly Me, which developed prosthetics for breast cancer survivors.

Ruth Lewis Farkas

Ruth Lewis Farkas’ remarkable and varied career ranged from creating a retail chain that survived the Great Depression, to teaching sociology, to running international education initiatives. Her impressive and full life spanned many occupations: educator, sociologist, businesswoman, philanthropist, inventor, wife, and mother.

Gertrude Elion

Gertrude Elion’s biochemistry work revolutionized the ways drugs are developed. She received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine even though she never earned her PhD. Her career paved the way for chemotherapy, organ transplantation, anti-viral medications, and AIDS treatment.

Hertha Ayrton

Hertha Ayrton was a distinguished British scientist who was the first woman to receive the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society for a scientific work that was exclusively her own. She was committed to suffrage activism and ensuring proper recognition of women’s scientific work.

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