CONTRIBUTION OF  WOMEN IN SCIENCE

For a many centuries, women have seldom gotten recognition for their achievements in science, technology and medicine. Unfortunately even now very less women work in the field of science as compared to men. For example when you hear the word “nurse” what is the first thing that your mind pictures? A woman or a man. I’m sure many of you must’ve   pictured a woman helping a doctor or taking care of a patient. Another question that I want to ask you is that which scientist in your opinion has contributed the most? Nikola Tesla? Galileo Galilei? Or even Stephen Hawking? I am sure most of you have noticed by now that all of them are males.

          But did you know that the first programmer in the world was Lady Ada Lovelace. Ada lovelace is considered to be the founder of scientific computing and is the first programmer of the world. She worked alongside Charles Babbage who is the father of computers.  Lady Ada Lovelace was allowed formal education and was able to pursue her desired subject  only because she  belonged to a noble family. Marie curie, a physicist and chemist is considered as one of the brightest minds in History. She is one of the four people who have won Nobel Prizes in two different categories. The 84^th element of the periodic table i.e  Polonium was named after Curie’s country. She, along with Pierre curie discovered this highly radioactive metal which is nowadays used as an atomic heat resource. But her journey to achieve these milestones were not easy and even more difficult as compared to her male counterparts. She was denied a seat in the Polish University only because she was a woman and even later in life she was publicly shamed and gossiped about in news tabloids just for being romantically involved with a student whom she eventually ended up marrying. Her husband had to write letters to noble prize committee multiple times just for her to get some credit. Another women who generously contributed to the field of science is Rosalind Franklin, a British chemist. She is best known for her research that was essential to elucidating the structure of DNA. Sadly she was not credited for her key role.

It is often said that behind every successful man there is a woman, which is quite literally true in the case of Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric. She   worked alongside Einstein  and went on to write  groundbreaking research papers on the theory of special relativity. Sadly, she was not given the noble prize and became a forgotten name in history just like many other female scientists who worked just as hard as men but were denied credit. 

                                                        In India, there are a lot of people who still believe that women don’t belong in science which is again totally wrong. There are innumerable female Indian scientists like E.K Janaki Amal, who was a renowned botanist of the 19^th century, B Vijayalakshmi who researched about wave equations and their proportions, Anandibai Joshi who was the first Hindu woman to obtain a medical degree. The first female astronaut of Indian origin  Kalpana Chawla and many more. So, people can’t deny that women cannot or have not excelled in this field.

         I would like to conclude my article  by stating  that women have been constantly proving that they can do anything by attaining success in not only science but other fields as well. Therefore, we must not underestimate them. Although, women having science and engineering degrees are fewer in number as compared to males. Therefore  we, the young generation of girls must try our best to bring change in the society and prove ourselves by our actions. I would also like to request parents and teachers to uplift young girls and encourage  their STEM dreams.

                                                        Preyasha Majumdar