Women who have achieved in the fields of science and medicine are celebrated in this wonderful book, in which we meet seventeen luminaries. These REMARKABLE MINDS in some cases achieved despite a bias against women and international turmoil. Pendred Noyce wrote an earlier book, MAGNIFICENT MINDS, about such pioneers.
รmilie Du Chรขtelet was born in France in 1706. She learned Latin as a child but enjoyed a social whirl in Paris after marrying a Marquis. Twenty-six, she made intellectual friends and applied herself to scholarship. Voltaire cleverly wooed her by praising her intellect. รmilie submitted papers to a contest, suggesting ideas such as different colours of light carrying different degrees of heat. The paper - under her husband's name - was published by the French Academy of Sciences. She wrote books on mathematics and physics, and died soon after giving birth.
Maria Gaetana Agnesi, in Milan, was in 1745 the first woman to author and supervise the printing of a book of advanced mathematics. She was advanced in languages due to her father, and by twenty she was publishing theses of natural philosophy and science. After her father's death she worked to aid the poor.
Sophie Germain, without formal training, applied herself to learning mathematics and working on Fermat's Last Theorem, among other issues. Napoleonic France was subject to rules barring women from attending lectures. This was a time of turbulence in Europe, and these ladies had relatives who were guillotined. Their wealth enabled them to study all day, advancing science by buying materials for experimentation and publishing privately.
Hertha Ayerton was the daughter of a Jewish refugee from Czarist Poland, born in England in 1854, and she attended the new Girton College for Women in Cambridge University. She had already made herself financially independent as a governess and mathematics tutor. She patented inventions and delivered lectures for women on electricity and how it might save labour in the home, giving examples such as sewing machines and clocks. Conducting many acclaimed experiments and publishing, she became the first woman electrical engineer, but the Royal Society, while applauding her work, refused to grant her membership on the grounds that a married woman had no legal status of her own. Not surprisingly Hertha, who was married to a professor, joined the militant suffragette movement.
Florence Sabin, born in the United States in 1871, became the leading female medical researcher of her generation, helped by grants from a wealthy spinster, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, who aided in founding John Hopkins University provided that it was open to both sexes. Like medical researcher Helen Taussig, who worked to save 'blue babies', Sabin was underpaid and passed over for promotion compared to male colleagues in academia. However, her work was on such highly relevant issues as tuberculosis and public health, and she received many honours in later life. Austrian Marietta Blau, meanwhile, had worked in the Radium Institute but fled the rise of Nazi Germany, moving to Mexico and then the US. Her work with cosmic radiation and particle physics led to her being awarded the Schrรถdinger Prize in 1962.
Gerty Cori was awarded the Nobel Prize for cutting-edge biochemistry, along with her devoted husband and co-worker Carl. Irene Curie, daughter of Marie, was awarded the French Military Medal, and with her husband in 1935 won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, although women in France, where they lived, could not vote. By combining quantum physics and stellar atmospheres, Cecilia Payne helped to establish the field of astrophysics. Jane Cooke Wright, born in 1919, was the only African-American woman in her class, but made breakthroughs in chemotherapy, receiving many awards. Rosalind Franklin is now well known as the fourth person to have contributed to the work granted the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA, awarded to three men.
Reading these fascinating biographies just makes me want to find out more, and the splendid photos and illustrations bring the people and topics vividly to life. All of these women deserve to be celebrated and their achievements are a remarkable struggle against war, bias and unequal opportunities, helping to advance the status of women. I noticed that true intellectual men were more interested in ideas and advancing science, no matter the sex of the scientist. REMARKABLE MINDS by Pendred Noyce is an enlightening and stimulating read, which may inspire a new generation of women.
Full of the inspirational stories girls need for
exploring a future in science.
For centuries, women have risen above their traditional
roles to pursue a new understanding of
the natural world. This book, which grows out of an
exhibit at the Grolier Club in New York,
introduces the lives, sayings, and dreams of 16 women
over four centuries and chronicles their
contributions to mathematics, physics, chemistry,
astronomy, and medicine. Some of the notable
women portrayed in the book include French mathematician
Marie-Sophie Germain, known for
her work in Elasticity theory, differential geometry, and
number theory; Scottish chemist Elizabeth
Fulhame, best known for her 1794 work An Essay on
Combustion; and Rita Levi-Montalcini, who,
with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their
discovery of nerve growth factor. A companion volume to
Magnificent Minds by the same author,
this book offers inspiration to all girls and young women
considering a life in the sciences.
EXCERPT
In many ways, Irรจne Joliot-Curieโs life echoed that of
her mother, the famous physicist Marie Curie. Like Marie,
Irรจne lost a parent at an early age, married a fellow
scientist, won a Nobel Prize with her husband, taught at
the Sorbonne, was refused admission to the French Academy
of Sciences, and died of a radiation-induced blood
disease. Calm and dedicated, Irรจne never appeared daunted
by her parentsโ fame. She freely chose her life in
physics. โThat one must do some work seriously and must
be independent and not merely amuse oneself in lifeโthis
our mother has told us always, but never that science was
the only career worth following,โ she said.
Irรจne Curie was born one month prematurely on September
12, 1897, in Paris, just after her parents returned from
a long bicycle ride. In 1897, Marie Curie was just
beginning the study of uranium rays that would lead to
her great discoveries. To help care for the baby while
her parents spent long hours in the laboratory, Pierreโs
father, Dr. Eugรจne Curie, came to live with the family.
Irรจne adored him. He taught her about nature and
introduced her to the socialist ideals she carried
through her life.
Marie carefully recorded Irรจneโs growth and development.
On vacations in Brittany, Irรจneโs father Pierre took her
on walks or bicycle rides, pointing out plants and
animals and talking to her about mathematics. Both
parents believed that childrenโs education should include
plenty of fresh air and exercise.
When Irรจne was six years old, her parents won the Nobel
Prize in Physics for their discovery of radioactivity,
although they did not travel to Stockholm to collect the
prize for another two years. Irรจneโs sister Eve, who grew
up to be a talented musician and writer with no interest
in science, was born the year after the Nobel award.
Two years after Eveโs birth, when Irรจne was nine years
old, their father Pierre was killed in a sudden accident,
run over in the street by a heavy, horse-drawn cart.
Their mother took over teaching Pierreโs course in
physics at the Sorbonne. Otherwise she withdrew into
mourning and did little but go to her laboratory and
visit the cemetery in the nearby village of Sceaux.
Eventually she moved the family into the village to be
closer to the cemetery.
Once in Sceaux, Marie pulled herself together enough to
help organize a cooperative school with other Sorbonne
professors, including Pierreโs former student, Paul
Langevin. Eminent scholars taught each otherโs children
mathematics, science, Chinese, sculpture, or whatever
else interested both teachers and pupils. The children
were also physically active. โWe did gymnastics,
swimming, bicycling, horseback riding . . . we rowed, we
skated,โ Irรจne remembered.
But sorrow continued to visit. At thirteen, Irรจne lost
another father figure with the death of her beloved
grandfather. The following year, scandal broke over the
family when the tabloid press in Paris published a series
of letters, perhaps partly forged, between the widowed
Marie Curie and the married Paul Langevin. Newspapers
demanded that the โforeignโ home-breaker, Marie Curie,
return to her native Poland, and crowds threw rocks at
the windows of the familyโs house. Marie and her
terrified daughters sought refuge in the home of friends,
Emile and Marguerite Borel.
© 2003-2026