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Physics

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Joyce Jacobson Kaufman

A pioneer in the field of physical chemistry, Joyce Jacobson Kaufman did groundbreaking work in the fields of jet propulsion fuels used in the space program, psychotropic pharmacology, and drug design. Kaufman also discovered a novel strategy for using computers to predict drug reactions and the trajectory of a significant number of carcinogens.

Sulamith Goldhaber

Sulamith Goldhaber’s family immigrated from Vienna to Palestine, and Goldhaber later moved to the United States to complete her education and begin her career. Her pioneering work with particle accelerators put her at the forefront of a seismic shift in the research of particle physics. She was also renowned for her work concerning nuclear emulsions.

Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber

Throughout a career limited by her gender, her religion, and her marital status, physicist Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber helped ensure other women scientists would not face the same hurdles.

Mildred Cohn

Biochemist Mildred Cohn used new technology to measure organic reactions in living cells. She not only breached new frontiers in atomic chemistry, but also did so by breaking through barriers as a woman and a Jew in a male- and Christian-dominated field

Marietta Blau

German physicist Marietta Blau joined the Institut für Radiumforschung, where she developed an emulsion technique for recording the tracks of particles that allowed her to detect neutrons and observe nuclear disintegration caused by cosmic rays. Forced to emigrate in 1938, worked for the US Atomic Energy Commission and later taught at the University of Miami. Throughout her career, she faced discrimination for her religion and gender and was denied paid work.

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.

Tikvah Alper

South African radiobiologist Tikvah Alper, who spent a lifetime questioning accepted theories and the established order, discovered that diseases like scrapie and mad cow replicated without DNA, challenging our modern understanding of disease. Along with her tremendous scientific contributions, Alper overcame rampant sexism in her field and stood by her opposition to apartheid at a professional cost.

Fay Ajzenberg-Selove

Fay Ajzenberg-Selove not only made significant contributions to physics, she also made huge strides for women by demanding she be judged on her merits, not her gender. Despite her struggles against sexism and a long battle with cancer, Ajzenberg-Selove was praised for both her dedicated teaching and her contributions to nuclear spectrometry of light elements.

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