Women in Science

you may remember this post that i shared a few years ago showing women artists from the collection of The Smithsonian. i decided to delve into their archives again, and discovered this set of Women in Science that they shared in honour of International Women’s Day.

Since 2009, the Smithsonian Archives has posted groups of photographs showing women scientists and engineers at work; women trained in science and engineering who worked outside the laboratory as librarians, writers, political activists, or in other areas where their work informed or was informed by science; family research collaborators who assisted their scientist husbands and fathers; and several images for which we have little descriptive information to which we invite you to contribute!

Brazilian aviation expert and pilot Anesia Pinheiro Machado (1902-1999) was the first person to obtain a U.S. commercial pilot’s license with additional ratings as instructor and for flying on instruments only. She had made her first solo flight in 1922, at the age of 18 and was the first Brazilian woman to make a cross-country flight.

Emma Reh  (1896-1982) a journalist who reported on archaeological excavations in Mexico, as well as the social and political situation in that country. Later she worked at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, writing about food consumption and distribution problems.

Bertha Parker Pallan (1907-1978) is considered one of the first female Native American archaeologists.

Anna “Vesse” Dahl accompanied her husband Odd Dahl on expeditions, a Norwegian adventurer who had no formal scientific training but later made great contributions to research on atomic energy.

William M. Mann was Director of the National Zoological Park. His wife, Lucile Quarry Mann (1897-1986) often accompanied him on collecting trips. A science writer, Lucile Mann would produce the popular accounts of their expeditions. She also became skilled at care of exotic animals, feeding and caring for animals on expeditions and raising several big cat cubs in their home.

Dena Shapiro was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago. This photo describes her as just having traveled “to Palestine, to see how the new cloth of Zionism is fitting into the old garment of the complex Moslem-Christian-Jewish life there.”

Ethel Grace Stiffler was a botanist who studied at Goucher College (A.B., 1922) and University of Pennsylvania

Anna Chao Pai (b. 1935) was a predoctoral student in the Department of Genetics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, working on developmental genetics and cross-breeding special strains of mice.

South African born writer and broadcaster Winifred May de Kok (1893-1969) had attended medical school in England during the 1920s and was in medical practice until 1953, when she became a television broadcaster, engaging in discussions of family life and health on her BBC program Tell Me, Doctor.

Mary Knight Dunlap (1910-1992) was the founder of the Association for Women Veterinarians.

Ruth Colvin Starrett McGuire (1893-1950) was a plant pathologist known for her work on sugar cane diseases.