March is Women’s History Month
Spotlight Scientists
Annie Jump Cannon (1863 - 1941)
Annie Jump Cannon was a force to be reckoned with in her time. She was a staunch suffragist, attending the meetings and marches that eventually led to women gaining the right to vote. She worked at Harvard as a computer, one of the few women at the time, working alongside other bright women in astronomy such as Williamina Fleming and Henrietta Leavitt. Henrietta and Annie bonded during their time at Harvard, as both women were not taken seriously by their male counterparts and both women were deaf. During her time at Harvard, she created the current stellar classification system we use to this day, sorting stars into OBAFGK or M types. She manually classified more stars in her life than anyone else in the process of creating and developing her classification method, classifying approximately 350,000 stars, with 300 variable stars, 5 novas, and 1 special binary star. For her work, she was awarded the first honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford ever awarded to a woman. She was also the first woman to be an officer for the American Astronomical Society.
Angela Clayton (1959 - 2014)
Angela Clayton is an internationally known physicist who worked on Nuclear Criticality Safety and Health Physics from the UK. After traumatic early interactions with medical professionals, she transitioned without medical support. After several years, she tried once more to transition with medical support and succeeded. All her life, she was a trans activist, campaigning for equality for trans people. Her campaigning for equality lead to her appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire, as a Dame. In her career work, she was the Head of Criticality Safety at the Atomic Weapons Establishment for many years, as well as serving as a Chairperson of the UK Working Party on Criticality. She published numerous papers on the topic before retiring early due to complications from a car accident.
Laura Bassi (1711 - 1778)
Laura Bassi was the second woman ever to earn PhD, with the first being a philosopher. She made history when she elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna in 1732, as she was the first female member of any scientific establishment with this appointment. In her career, she popularized Newtonian mechanics in Italy, with several of her works showing the influence of Newtonian mechanics on light and optics. She also defended a thesis on the properties of water, leading to her appointment as a Professor of Physics at the University of Bologna, the first salaried female teacher at any university. When Pope Benedict XIV formed a special group called the Benedettini that would regularly present their research, she lobbied to be a part of the group for her work. She was inducted by the Pop to the Benedettini, without the voting rights of the other 24 male members. She was eventually appointed the Chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Bologna, becoming the first woman named to a chair of physics at a university. There is currently a 31 km crater on Venus named in her honor.
Spotlight Scientists at George Mason University
Lara Kamal
My name is Lara Kamal, and I am an Astrophysics student, black holes researcher, and a Data Scientist. I was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq and currently reside in the Washington D.C area. My passion in Astrophysics originated when I saw the starry sky in the middle of the desert for the first time as I was waiting for a permission to cross the border to escape the war in Iraq. I work at George Mason University as a physics learning assistant and black holes researcher. My work consists of developing machine learning algorithms to predict the mass of the black holes. I had the opportunity to participate in CERN Summer program to work on a particle identification algorithm for the NA62 experiment. I was recently accepted into a graduate school in California, and I plan to pursue a Ph.D. in this field. I aspire to share the wonders of space science in Arabic and English and inspire future generations to pursue a STEM-based career.
Natasha Latouf
My name is Natasha, my pronouns are she/her, I am a senior at George Mason University, and a co-founder of Spectrum! I’ve been a Physics major since entering the school, and I primarily work on simulating exoplanets. Usually you can find me studying in the physics lounge or goofing off in the Johnson Center Library. In my spare time, I love to read, listen to music, and binge historical Docu-Series on Netflix. I can’t wait to get to know you, and hopefully make your experience as a physicist a little bit easier, a little bit less frightening, and a little bit more fun!
Kathryn Fernandez
My name is Kathryn, though most people call me Kat, and my pronouns are she/her. I’m a co-founder of Spectrum and the resident Physics Education Researcher. My academic journey wasn’t conventional – I was homeschooled. I was introduced to physics in an introductory course while I was dual-enrolling at a college in my hometown. After graduating, I joined the honors college and got involved in lots of STEM extracurricular and mentoring activities. When the time came for me to transfer to a university to finish my bachelors, I was hesitant to pursue physics full-time – it seemed like a man’s world and I didn’t know how a Latina like me would fit in, if at all. I decided to go for it, got involved with physics student clubs, and developed further materials and structured a multifaceted mentorship program. During my senior year, I conducted physics education research on how the mentorship program helped prepare students for their careers. I am currently a second-year physics PhD student focusing on (1) the holistic preparation of undergraduate physics students through various active learning techniques; (2) how mentorship programs affect women physics students’ identity, sense of belonging, leadership identity, and career choices; and (3) how to change the culture of physics departments into a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. Lately, I enjoy going to weekly farmer’s markets, practicing yoga, and boxing.
The men and women in our spotlight changed the course of science over and over. However, there are uncountable more that accelerated our progress further.
To learn more about these incredible people, follow the links below:
Williamina Fleming: Scientific Women, National Library of Scotland
Sally Ride: Women’s History, NASA
Mary Golda Ross: American Indian Magazine, NASA