Behind some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries and innovations are women whose names might not be familiar but whose stories are worth knowing:
—Marie Tharp revolutionized oceanography by mapping the seafloor, uncovering a rift valley that helped prove plate tectonic theory.
—Margaret Morse Nice transformed ornithology with her empathetic study of song sparrows, pioneering methods still used today.
—Tu Youyou led groundbreaking research in Maoist China, extracting artemisinin from traditional medicine, which became a lifesaving malaria treatment.
—Emmy Noether, a mathematical genius praised by Einstein, overcame systemic barriers to make foundational contributions to theoretical physics.
—Chien-Shiung Wu, an atomic physicist, played a critical role in the Manhattan Project and experimentally disproved a long-standing nuclear theory … though her male colleagues received the Nobel Prize for the discovery.