Some female scientists who contribute to space science

[RainDreamer]

From http://www.techinsider.io/pioneering-women-who-changed-science-forever-2016-7

I thought I should share some of the little known female scientists who had contributed to our space endeavours. Sorry for a bunch of spoiler boxes, phone formatting is tough.

Spoiler

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: Figured out what the Sun was made of

Smithsonian Institution/Wikimedia Commons

Celia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) was the astronomer who discovered that the sun is made of hydrogen and helium.

She went to college in Britain for botany, then attended by chance a lecture given by a prominent physicist, which she found so intriguing she changed fields (the lecturer, Arthur Eddington, became an important mentor for her). She moved across the Atlantic to study at Harvard, where she spent the rest of her career.

Her dissertation was called "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy." In addition to our sun, she also studied variable stars, taking more than a million photographs of them with her team.

Spoiler

Katherine Johnson: Calculated Apollo 11's flight path to the moon

President Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Katherine Johnson.Evan Vucci/AP

Katherine Johnson (1918- ) did the math that launched the manned Mercury mission into orbit around the Earth andcalculated the flight path for the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon.

She also helped write the first textbookabout space.

As a child, she loved to count — and from that springboard she graduated college at 18 and spent three decades at NASA.

Spoiler

Annie Easley: Helped write the code behind the Centaur rocket system

NASA Science and Engineering Newsletter/Wikimedia Commons

Annie Easley (1933-2011) planned to become a nurse, but was inspired to work for the precursor of NASA when she read an article about local twin sisters who worked there as human computers.

She became first a mathematician and then a computer programmer, working particularly on the code for the Centaur rocket launcher and navigation system.

She also tutored inner-city children (she had previously helped neighbors learn to pass Jim Crow voting tests) and worked on energy issues.

Do you know any more female scientists in space related fields?

Edited July 25, 2016 by RainDreamer

[James Kerman]

Linda A. Morabito - She discovered volcanic activity on Io during Voyager 1's flyby.  This was the first time in history that active volcanism was detected outside Earth. Her discovery is considered by some planetary scientists as the largest discovery of the planetary exploration program that has come out of Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

 

[peadar1987]

Most female astronauts will work as some form of scientist or researcher. Samantha Cristoforetti is pretty awesome, for example

[James Kerman]

Dr Jill Tarter - Founding member of SETI (with Thomas Pierson).  Dr Tarter was the inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in the film "Contact".  She is also credited with coining the term "brown dwarf" for the classification of stars with insufficient mass to sustain hydrogen fusion.

[Just Jim]

21 hours ago, peadar1987 said:

Most female astronauts will work as some form of scientist or researcher. Samantha Cristoforetti is pretty awesome, for example

This was also my pick!  Samantha is not just an amazing astronaut and scientist, she's done several great instructional videos about everyday life on the ISS.  Just between you and me and the krakens, Ms. Cristoforetti is on my top 10 list of people I would love to meet someday.

 

 

Edited July 26, 2016 by Just Jim

[benzman]

I vote to include Ada, Countess Lovelace.  Arguably, the world's first computer programmer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

 

[James Kerman]

Jennifer Cole Chief of the Aerodynamics and Propulsion Branch at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California.

[James Kerman]

Mary Sherman Morgan The U.S. rocket fuel scientist credited with the invention of the liquid fuel Hydyne in 1957, which powered the Jupiter-C rocket that boosted the United States' first satellite, Explorer 1.

[Nuke]

Grace Hopper, more for computer science reasons. i like her lecture on nanoseconds and why they are important to computer performance (and also satellite communications). especially when a cycle nowadays is 1/4 of a nanosecond. she died in 92 but if she was still kicking she probibly would be wondering why pcs put their ram so far away from the cpu (in sub-nanosecond timescales anyway). she arguably wrote some of the first compilers ever, at a time when people were still hand assembling machine code.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Cecila Payne-Gaposhkin is my great-great grandmother!

[radonek]

Caroline Lucretia Herschel
 

[RainDreamer]

Just wanted to add that I would prefer this thread not spiralling down to discussion about sexism in the STEM field. I want it to be a celebration of the women who gave significant contribution to space science, not a debate point.

[peadar1987]

[snip]

And to get things back on track, Ada Lovelace, one of the most famous female scientists out there, whose work was fundamental to the development of modern computers.

[stibbons]

Margaret Hamilton is awesome. She was the director and lead programmer for the software engineering teams for Apollo and Skylab.

Dr. Katherine Mack is a pretty cool theoretical astrophysicist and science communicator who's well worth following on the social medias.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Don't forget Annie Jump Cannon!   A first-class scientist, and one of the coolest names in astronomy!

[Gordon Fecyk]

Roberta Lynn Bondar, for contributions to medicine in space. Also, not a nut job.

Edited August 3, 2016 by Gordon Fecyk

[Vanamonde]

Several posts have been removed from this thread or edited. Rather than hash out social policy and the nature of sexism, let's please just have a nice, friendly thread recognizing women in space science. 

[IWanttobeEVA]

Can I name an engineer?

Dr. Claudia Alexander, project manager for NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter. She also studies and is published on the interior physics and evolution of comets, Juptier and its moons,magnetospheres, space plasma, the solar wind, and the planet Venus.