Mary-Claire King

Mary-Claire King discovered the BRCA1 gene (a mutation in this gene leads to a 70% risk of developing cancer, as opposed to 13% in the general population) in 1990 after 17 years of looking for a genetic link in breast cancer. She originally studied mathematics but went to Berkeley for grad school to study genetics. She dropped out briefly when the National Guard was sent in against student protestors of the Vietnam War and she spent a year doing consumer advocacy for Ralph Nader investigating effects of pesticides on farm workers. When she went back to Berkeley, she showed in her doctoral work that humans and chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical through comparative protein analysis. She is also known for her work identifying the genetic causes of hearing loss and schizophrenia as well as her human rights work using mitochondrial DNA and human leukocyte antigens to identify missing persons in many countries including Argentina, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, and many more. 

-Emi

Florence R. Sabin

Florence R. Sabin was a trailblazer physician scientist, and the first woman in history to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. Born in 1871 to a middle-class family in Colorado, Sabin attended Smith College and developed a strong aptitude for science. When Johns Hopkins School of Medicine admitted its first female students, Sabin was hopeful that her dream of attaining a post-secondary education would come true. For two years, she taught math at a Denver secondary school, after which she taught zoology at Smith College for a year, to save up for medical school. There, she earned a reputation for being a gifted anatomist, and her model of the fetal brain stem was widely celebrated and used by many other medical schools. Following her graduation from Hopkins, she was unable to receive a faculty position due to her identity as a woman, but she joined a group that supported female researchers and continued her research efforts. She had a wide and diverse variety of research interests, and she studied everything from the fetal lymphatic system to the role of white blood cells during the progression of tuberculosis. Eventually, Sabin became the first female faculty member at the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and eventually was promoted to full professor. She then joined the cellular immunology department at the Rockefeller Institute, from which she retired at age 67. After this, she became very interested in public health, and while retired, she successfully re-designed and lobbied to revamp the organization of Colorado's state health department, as well as promoted the passage of new public health laws, which became known as the Sabin Program.


-Anjali

Mario J. Molina

Mario José Molina was a Mexican-born American chemist who was jointly awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with chemists F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen for their research on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and how CFCs floated into the upper stratosphere, where solar ultraviolet radiation broke them apart and set off an ozone-destroying chemical reaction. Their discovery helped lead the international movement in the late 20th century to limit the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. Mario Molina was born in Mexico City and in his early childhood he wanted to be a chemist. As a child, he admired his aunt who was also a chemist and emulated her by converting a spare bathroom into a makeshift chemistry lab. Molina studied chemical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and received an advanced degree from the University of Freiburg (1967) in West Germany. He continued his education in the US at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1972), where he worked for a year before joining Rowland at the University of California, Irvine. Molina and Rowland performed experiments on pollutants in the atmosphere, where they eventually discovered that CFC gases rise to the stratosphere, where UV light breaks them apart and decomposed the ozone layer that protects the Earth from solar radiation. He later became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.


-Jamilett

Eunice Foote

Eunice Foote was an American scientist and women's rights activist. Her work is particularly interesting because she first discovered the greenhouse gas effect; however, she continues to be overshadowed by British scientist John Tyndall. Foote conducted experiments with different gases in glass cylinders and observed the effect the sun had on temperatures within. This highlighted how temperatures rise when the sun rays pass through more moist air and especially through gases like CO2. She even published her results in the American Journal of Science and Arts, but was often not taken seriously. Today, scientists are aiming to bring light to her findings and how they preceded those of Tyndall. 


-Isha

Kay Chung

Kay Chung is a systems immunologist who did her bachelor's at Seoul National University, PhD at Stanford, and postdoc at Salk Institute. She just recently gained a professorship in the department of Cell Biology and Physiology at UNC. Her current projects include making an atlas of T cell transcription factors and differentiation states, as well as rewiring intracellular signaling pathways to improve CAR-T cell therapy. During her undergraduate and graduate career, she was interested in solving protein structures and engineering improved proteins. Her early work with proteases and protein structures inspired her to synthesize these together to rewire cell signaling. A fun fact about her is that she has an adorable Maltese dog!


-Joshua

Tu Youyou

Tu Youyou is a Chinese scientist who earned a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015. Tu Youyou’s discovery of artemisinin revolutionized malaria treatment and saved millions of lives worldwide. Through her research in traditional Chinese medicine, she identified a compound from sweet wormwood that effectively kills malaria parasites. The treatment using this compound is known as artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT). Her findings were groundbreaking, as previous treatments faced increasing resistance from malaria strains. Despite initial skepticism, artemisinin-based therapies are now the global standard for malaria treatment. Tu’s work exemplifies how traditional knowledge, combined with modern science, can lead to transformative medical breakthroughs.

-Olivia

Ada Yonath

I admire Dr. Ada Yonath because her life story and groundbreaking discoveries emphasize resilience and curiosity. Despite growing up in poverty and losing her father at an early age, she never let hardship diminish her passion for science, ultimately becoming the first woman from Israel to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her pioneering work in using X-ray crystallography to map the ribosome’s structure, once believed to be impossible, really revolutionized our understanding of protein synthesis and laid the foundation for developing new antibiotics. Beyond her remarkable achievements, she serves as an inspiring role model for underrepresented women in STEM, reminding us that determination and a thirst for knowledge can unlock doors once thought closed.

Learn more: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/ada-yonath
 
-Zahir

Jane Cooke Wright

Dr. Jane Cooke Wright was a remarkable woman who analyzed different anti-cancer agents and developed techniques for administering chemotherapy. 

During her career, Jane Wright accomplished several significant developments. She graduated from New York Medical College with honors in 1945 and then proceeded to intern as an assistant resident in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital. She formally completed her residency at Harlem Hospital. Later in her career, Dr. Wright worked as a physician with the New York City Public Schools system, but later left to join her father, who was another remarkable doctor and was the director of the Cancer Research Foundation at Harlem Hospital. 

At the time, chemotherapy was an experimental procedure and Dr. Wright's father was working on focusing research towards investigating anti-cancer agents. Dr. Jane Wright helped her father conduct this research by performing patient trials. Dr. Jane Wright's work here led to the understanding of the use of methotrexate in breast cancer treatments. This was monumental, and laid a foundation for future treatments with chemotherapy. 

She was determined to make sure that her research had a clinical impact, and to bridge this gap between research and clinical care, Dr. Wright became a founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (the only woman in the founding group). The goal of this group is to set standards in clinical oncology and make research readily available. In 1967, Dr. Jane Wright became professor of surgery, head of the Cancer Chemotherapy department, and associate dean at New York Medical College – the highest ranked African American woman at a nationally recognized medical institution.


-Disha

Carol Greider

Carol W. Greider is a molecular biologist whose curiosity and determination led to one of the most significant discoveries in genetics, telomerase. Greider overcame the challenges of dyslexia at a young age, channeling her passion for science into a remarkable academic journey. As a Ph.D. student at the University of California she identified telomerase in 1984, an achievement that revolutionized our understanding of cellular aging and cancer. Her work continued at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and later at Johns Hopkins University, where she became a leading force in molecular biology. In 2009, her groundbreaking contributions were honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Blackburn and Jack Szostak, for their research on telomeres and telomerase. Beyond her scientific achievements, Greider is a tireless advocate for women in STEM, inspiring the next generation of researchers. Now a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she continues to push the boundaries of discovery, shaping the future of molecular biology.


-Casey

Carol Greider

Carol Greider, an American molecular biologist, became the youngest woman to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2009. At the mere age of 23, while still a grad student at the University of California, Berkeley, she, alongside her professor Elizabeth Blackburn, discovered the enzyme telomerase that maintains the end of chromosomes, which is associated with cellular aging and cell death. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she continues her research on telomeres and cellular aging. 


-Neal

Feng Zhang

Feng Zhang is a Chinese-American biologist born in Shijiazhuang. He is famous because of his work on CRISPR-Cas9. He’s the guy who took it from a bacterial trick to a useful tool for editing human DNA. His big leap was adapting the system to cut DNA in more complex cells. His work at MIT and the Broad Institute earned him big awards like the 2016 Tang Prize and a spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential list. His lab is still developing fresh tools like RNA-targeting CRISPR systems and gene therapies, pushing the boundaries of medicine and sparking big talks about the ethics of tweaking life’s code.

-Junhe

Georgia Dunston

Georgia Mae Dunston, Ph.D., is an African American geneticist who is most notably known for her role as the founder of the Whole Genome Science Foundation and for founding the National Human Genome Center at Howard University, where she taught immunogenetics. The Whole Genome Science Foundation was a nonprofit organization that Dunston founded that aimed to enhance understanding of the biological, technological innovation, and mathematical components involved in studying the human genome. She earned a BS in Biology at the Norfolk State University, obtained a Master’s Degree at Tuskegee University, and went on to become the first Black recipient of a PhD in Human Genetics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Having been born in 1944 in a segregated Norfolk, Virginia, Dunston’s lived experiences enduring the struggles as both a woman of color, and a woman of color in the field of medicine, motivated her to use her scientific knowledge to promote equitable research that would benefit the Black community. One of Georgia Dunston’s major contributions was that she worked to create a genetic reference material for African Americans to account for disparities in diseases that disproportionately affected Black individuals, since most medical research was catered toward White individuals.


-Marleigh

Lotte Strauss

Lotte Strauss was a female Jewish pathologist born in Germany in 1913, and at just 20 years old, she was forced to flee to Italy, and later to the US, to escape persecution. Dr. Strauss was a pioneer in perinatal and pediatric pathology, with her most well-recognized discovery being that of Churg-Strauss syndrome, now known as Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis. This syndrome is an autoimmune disorder that results in inflammation of blood vessels and seems to begin in the respiratory system. Dr. Strauss, along with her colleague Dr. Jacob Churg, first described this disease based on a case series of 13 patients with a pattern of severe asthma, fever, blood eosinophilia, and autopsy evidence of granulomatous necrotizing vasculitis. Another area of her research was fetal development pathology. Dr. Strauss’s professional history includes working at Mount Sinai Hospital, Lebanon Hospital, and Columbia University, as well as being a founding member of the Society for Pediatric Pathology.

-Sarah

Maurice Hilleman

Maurice Hilleman was one of the most important vaccinologists in history. Over his lifetime, Hilleman developed more than 40 vaccines, including those for diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and several others. Despite being so incredibly productive, Hilleman was also not interested in becoming famous. He didn't name any of his discoveries after himself and -- despite running a very tight ship (as one who was as productive as he was must've) -- was known to be intellectually modest. One estimate claims that his vaccines saved over eight million lives a year, an astounding figure by any metric.

-Raife

Richard Altmann

Richard Altmann improved cell fixation methods using osmium tetroxide and potassium dichromate and along with a staining technique and heat to find filaments developed from granules. He named these granules 'bioblasts' which he claimed had metabolic and genetic autonomy. His explanation of these 'bioblasts' gained great criticism and skepticism because scientists had not found how cells made energy or even knew what ATP was. Today, these 'bioblasts' are known as mitochondria. His true curiosity and integrity in his work led other scientists to study organelles more and provided scientists with early morphology of mitochondria. 

-Cindy

Ignaz Semmelweis

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, a Hungarian obstetrician, was a pioneer of using antiseptics and someone I think is one of the most important figures in the history of womens medicine. Born in 1818, Semmelweis is best known for discovering the cause of childbed fever, which was one of the leading causes of female deaths in the nineteenth century. His work took place in 1847, when he was the Chief Resident at the Vienna General Hospital. At that time, the maternal mortality rate in the hospital was alarmingly high, particularly in the "first clinic" where medical students were the ones to treat the mothers in rotation programs. In contrast, much lower mortality rates were seen in the "second clinic", where midwives were trained for treating mothers specifically. Semmelweis set about investigating the reason for this discrepancy.

He conducted research about variables that were different about the two rooms, specifically tracking mortality rate differences during epidemics, seasonal changes, and overcrowding. None of these seemed to cause the death rate issue. However, a revelation hit him when he observed the body handing procedures following the death of his mentor Professor Jacob Kolletschka's death, whose deathbed symptoms also looked like what was on the autopsy on a woman who died of childbed fever. Semmelweis proposed that childbed disease might be a transferable one, spread by touching cadavers and then the mothers in the first clinics who had were highly susceptible after childbirth. He theorized that the disease could be transmitted by contaminated hands, especially from student autopsy work done before they came for their first room labor ward rotations. Because of that, he introduced hand disinfection with chlorine, which brought a significant fall in the death rate.

Despite his remarkable success, Semmelweis was met with fierce opposition from his peers, who rejected his theory since it contradicted the current medical ideas of his time. There was no acceptance of his approach of handwashing for disease prevention, and he thus had his career cast to the sidelines. Without getting the recognition he deserved, Semmelweis passed away, almost totally ignored by practically the entire medical fraternity, in a mental asylum in 1865 at the age of 47. It wasn’t until after his death, with the advent of germ theory and the works of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister that Semmelweis’ work was validated. Today, Semmelweis is remembered as a crucial figure in the development of modern medicine. His discoveries led to the widespread adoption of antiseptic techniques especially in surgery rooms, saving countless lives. 


-Srinithi

Shinya Yamanaka

For a long time, we thought that mature cells could not be reverted to their immature, embryonic state. In 2006, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka's work helped discover genes that, when altered, could revert cells back to a pluripotent state. In short, he found out how to turn say a skin cell into a stem cell. There are more than 20 clinical trials going on that are testing the applications of induced pluripotent stem cells. Some of these trials are looking at things like regenerative medicine. 
 
Learn more:
 
-Joseph

Nina Braunwald

Dr. Nina Braunwald was the first female cardiothoracic surgeon, and she set up the first cardiothoracic program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She designed and implemented the first prosthetic mitral valve. More than just training wonderful surgeons, she also inspired many women to begin a career in medicine.

Learn more:

-Violet

Hadiyah-Nicole Green

Hadiyah-Nicole Green is a physicist from St. Louis, Missouri. She was orphaned at a young age and raised by her uncle and aunt. She was the first in her family to attend college and studied computer science and physics. After watching her aunt and uncle's battles with cancer, she became interested in how her work with lasers could be integrated with cancer therapeutics. She now works at the Morehouse School of Medicine and studies laser-activated nanoparticles to target malignant tumors. 


-Kameryn

Hadiyah-Nicole Green

Lasers are fun, but have you ever thought of using them to “melt” cancer? Well, that’s what medical physicist Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green has accomplished. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and got a PhD in physics at Morehouse College of Medicine. A major reason Dr. Green got involved in cancer research was because she lost her aunt and uncle to cancer and saw how taxing chemotherapy was on them. As a cancer researcher, she specifically wanted to develop cancer treatments that had fewer negative side-effects. Later in her career, she’d go on to develop this and would establish the Ora Lee Foundation, a cancer research nonprofit named after her late aunt. Dr. Green’s cancer-melting treatment utilizes gold nanoparticles that can attach to individual cancer cells. Upon being heated up by a laser, they would “melt” the cancer cells that they were attached to while sparing healthy cells. Her studies showed that after one 10-minute treatment, tumors in mice were eliminated in just 15 days with no observable side effects. Currently, Dr. Green is fundraising for clinical trials to make her cancer treatment a reality.

Learn more: https://oralee.org/research/

-Pristine

Beata Halassy

Dr. Beata Halassy is a virologist and immunologist at Croatia's University of Zagreb. While battling a relapse of non-metastatic breast cancer, she decided to self-experiment with oncolytic virotherapy (OVT). Oncolytic viruses can both target cancer cells and activate the host's immune response. Halassy targeted her tumor with a measles virus and vesicular stomatitis virus, given their propensity for attacking the specific cell type responsible for her tumor's growth. Over months of self-treatment, Halassy observed tumor shrinkage with no side effects from the OVT. Upon tumor removal, pathology reports revealed that the tumor was infiltrated with lymphocytes, suggesting that the OVT had been effective. Halassy's self-experimentation likely saved her life and has significant implications for cancer treatment worldwide. 

Learn more – including info about the ethics of self-experimentation: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03647-0

-Aidan

Avadhesha Surolia

Avadhesha Surolia is a glycobiologist from Rajasthan, India. His work with lectin structure and carbohydrate receptors aims to study how cells recognize and communicate with their environment, influencing immune responses and pathogen interactions. His work with protein folding has relevance to neurodegeneration and cancer, where misfolded proteins disrupt cellular homeostasis. 

Some of the notable accomplishments he has made to the field of cell biology include discovering novel blood group and tumor antigen-specific lectins, contributing to the understanding of the mechanism of protein-sugar recognition, and genetically re-engineering lectins to impart T-antigen tumor-recognizing ability to peanut agglutinin. He is one of the most highly accomplished biologists from India.


-Akhil

Neil Hanchard

Dr. Neil Hanchard has completed both an M.B.B.S and PhD, focusing on pediatrics, human genetics, and clinical medicine. He has supported the field of medicine and healthcare by caring for patients with rare conditions, teaching the next generation of medical students and scientists, and researching complex pediatric conditions. His achievements have helped push forward potential treatments and key understandings into diseases, identifying genes involved in congenital cardiovascular disorders and their pathogenesis. Dr. Hanchard has been developing new insights into alloimmunization transfusions for sickle cell disease. He is currently a Senior Distinguished Investigator at the NIH NHGRI institute, working on multiple projects in childhood complex disease genomics and collaborating with the CAfGEN, a multi-national project working to support and grow genomic/genetic technologies to advance healthcare support in Africa. His commitment to his research and work has supported the medical field with a greater genetic understanding of disease and impacted afflicted populations directly through patient care and improved genetic technologies. He not only brings more attention to rare disorders that are often overlooked but also addresses health disparities that are prevalent globally.


-Alacia

Rita Levi-Montalcini

In World War II, Rita Levi-Montalcini sheltered in her childhood home in Italy and cobbled together a small research lab in her bedroom. With bombs falling around her, she used fertilized chicken eggs to understand a fundamental question: how does our nervous system make precise connections to its targets (muscles, etc) all over the body? She discovered that during embryonic development, we make far more nerve cells than we need. Those nerve cells grow out everywhere. Then, the many nerve cells that fail to connect to targets just die. It's an extraordinarily wasteful mechanism, but it's also an extraordinarily robust way to make precise connections. 

-Bob

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