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Hertha Marks Ayrton was a Mathematician, Physicist, and Electrical Engineer. Ayrton was the first female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the first woman to ever read her own paper before the Royal Society of London.

Early Life

Phoebe Sarah Marks was born on April 28th 1854 in Portsea, England. Phoebe was the third of eight children. Her father, Levi Marks, was a clockmaker and a jeweler. He had fled Poland as a young man to escape growing anti-Semitic persecution. Levi married Alice, Phoebe's mother, who later after Levi's death had to provide for Phoebe and her brothers and sisters through needlework.

At 9 years old, Phoebe was sent to live with her maternal aunt, Marion Harzog. Marion, along with her husband Alphonse, owned a school where they educated their own children. It was here that Phoebe, who in her teens changed her name to Hertha after the Teutonic Earth Goddess found in Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "Hertha", was exposed to mathematics by her Cambridge educated cousin, and to philosophy by her Uncle (who mingled with, among others, George Eliot). Although proud of her Jewish heritage, Hertha would forever after her education be an agnostic.

Tutoring, Embroidery, and Charity

During these years of schooling, Hertha tutored and embroidered, sending most of her earnings back to her struggling family (who had lost Levi). Eager to attend University, she received financial assistance through the efforts of Mme. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, a woman passionate in the promotion of higher education for women. Hertha entered Girton College, Cambridge, for women after passing the Cambridge University Examination for Women in 1874 with honors in English and Mathematics and later passed the Mathematical Tripos in 1880. Since at that time Cambridge gave only certificates and not degrees to women, she went on and completed an external examination and received a B.Sc. degree from the University of London in 1881.

Work and Honors

In 1885 Hertha married William Edward Ayrton. They worked together on Physics and Electrical Experiments. Hertha became an acknowledged expert on the subject of the electric arc, being published several times in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London and The Electrician. Hertha also published a book in 1902 called appropriately enough "The Electric Arc". Later that year she was the first woman nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, but was unable to accept the honor due to subtle legal issues regarding the Societies Charter (It wouldn't be until 1943 when the first woman was admitted into the society). Hertha was however the first female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899. Furthermore, in 1906 the Royal Society awarded Hertha the Hughes Medal for her experimental investigations on the electrical arc.

Ayrton continued to make contributions to a number of fields until her death on August 23, 1923 and is remembered as an accomplished scientist and inventor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertha_Marks_Ayrton

http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/articles/ayrton/ayrtonbio.html

http://www.agnesscott.edu/LRIDDLE/WOMEN/ayrton.htm

This year a record five women were awarded Nobel Prizes.

The Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious awards one can receive. Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each prize consists of a medal, personal diploma, and a cash award.¹ Often the previously unheralded winners of the prize find themselves celebrities, never quite the same.

The Women who won a Nobel Prize this year include:

Elizabeth H Blackburn (left) and Carol W. Greider (right) were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Each received 1/3 of the prize as did Jack W. Szostak.

Ada E. Yonath was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. Yonath shared the award with Thomas A. Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan.

Herta Müller was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature who "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

Elinor Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. Ostrom shared the award with Oliver E. Williamson.

_{1. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/}

In 2006 Muhammad Yunus and the bank he founded, Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." The success of Yunus and Grameen Bank would have been impossible without the hard working, impoverished women of Bangladesh.

It all started in Jobra, Bangladesh in 1976. Muhammad Yunus was head of Chittagong University's Economic Department at the time. Yunus realized that the women in Jobra, who were all very poor and who sold homemade bamboo furniture to make money, had to take out usurious loans to buy the bamboo. The women had to pay these high interest rates because only money lenders were willing to lend to them. Conventional banks didn't deal in the small loans the women needed. Yunus realized that if he offered these women affordable loans, their profits would increase significantly, which would improve their standard of living. Yunus was a social scientist and activist and had been looking for a means to help the vast impoverished people of his country Bangladesh. Seizing the moment, he committed to his first loan, $27 dollars total (64¢ per person), lent to 42 women in the village of Jobra. He charged only 2¢ interest per loan which gave him a profit of .50¢ for all of the loans. Certainly not a fortune, but the point was that he had helped the poor without charity, by offering microcredit to women.

In December 1976. Yunus received a loan from the government owned Janata Bank and started offering microloans to the impoverished people of Bangladesh. Microloans being loans ranging from several hundred dollars to often less than $10 dollars. In 1983 Yunus' pilot microlending project became an actual bank and was named appropriately enough Grameen Bank (Grameen is Bengali for "Village").

Today Grameen bank has issued 6.38 million USD in loans to 7.4 million borrowers, 97% of which go to women. Why women? Mohammad Yunis explains that at first he didn't consider gender when he began offering microloans, but it quickly became apparent that women were much more likely to devote their earnings to their families and defaulted on the loan much less frequently. After a while it just made good business sense to lend only to women.

Soon many other institutions and nonprofits started microlending and it worked. They stuck to the same model of lending to the women, who more often than not spent the money on bettering their family and were reliable in paying back the loans.

Over time some of these banks wished to convert to more traditional banks that hold deposits, but still cater to the impoverished (since it was profitable). Unfortunately studies show that when a bank makes this transition, they tended to lend larger and larger amounts and much more frequently to men over time because such lending has higher profit margins, essentially reverting to the traditional banking model (source).

Grameen Bank itself has continued on it's mission of microlending. In addition it has also expanded into other ventures such as Grameen Communications, which enables rural poor to own a cell-phone. Again, because of their reliability, women are usually the customers, paying for a prepaid phone by a loan provided by Grameen Bank, and then being trained on how to charge others to use their phone so as to make a profit. Basically, the woman's cell phone becomes a pay-phone for the village which makes ownership of the phone a profitable venture. Such microbusiness applications based on the microfinance model are springing up all over impoverished nations.

Ultimately time will tell the tale of the success or failure of microeconomics. Will the system help poorer families change their stars and thus in turn improve the economic stability of their countries? Or will poverty perpetuate despite financially empowering mothers?

Maria Mitchell was an American astronomer who later became the first professor at Vassar College and the first director of the Vassar Observatory.

Early Life

Maria Salmon Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She was one of ten children born to William Mitchell and Lydia Coleman Mitchell, both Quakers. Like other Quakers, Mitchell's parents valued education for all of their children, highlighting the intellectual equality between the genders.

Mitchell attended North Grammar school, where her father was the first principal. When Maria was eleven, her father built his own school where she became a student and teaching assistant. Her father encouraged her pursuits in and out of the classroom. At home, he taught Maria astronomy using his own telescope. When she was twelve, Mitchell helped her father calculate the exact moment of annular eclipse.

After her father's school closed, Mitchell attended the Pierce School for Ladies until she decided to operate her own school from 1835-36.

Miss Mitchell's Comet

In 1836, Mitchell was hired as the first librarian at the Nantucket Atheneum, where she pursed her studies in languages, mathematics, and navigation. During this time, she and her father made observations of the stars, assisting in navigational timekeeping on the coast of Nantucket.

On October 1, 1847, Mitchell observed a star five degrees above the North Start – a spot where no star had been seen previously. Thinking it might be a comet, Mitchell recorded the coordinates and checked back the next day. Sure enough, the "star" had moved again, thus confirming that it was actually a comet. Her father wrote to Professor William Bond at the Harvard University Observatory about Maria's discovery. Bond then submitted her name to the King of Denmark, who offered a gold medal for the discovery of a comet through a telescope.

Unfortunately, Father Francesco de Vico of Rome discovered the same comet two days after Mitchell and the decision to give him the medal had already been decided before news of Mitchell's discovery. After some negotiations, the medal was ultimately given to Mitchell a year later. The comet was named "Miss Mitchell's Comet" or C/1847 T1.

Curiosity Over a Female Astronomer

After her discovery, Mitchell continued to work as a librarian. At the same time, she was receiving letters of congratulations from scientists and tourists who had become interested in seeing a woman astronomer. In 1848, Mitchell became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A year later, Mitchell was offered a job by the United States Nautical Almanac Office. Her position would be as a computer for tables and positions of the planet Venus. This job also allowed her to travel for scientific meetings. During this time, in 1850, the Association for the Advancement of Science also inducted Mitchell as a member.

Seeing the World

In 1856, a wealthy Chicago banker named General H. K. Swift offered Mitchell a chance to accompany his daughter Prudence through the American West and South, and to Europe. Mitchell agreed to the trip, but also took her Nautical Almanac work with her.

The duo traveled to southward to New Orleans, and continued to London from there. While in London, Mitchell visited the Greenwich Observatory. Eventually, Prudence returned to the States, but Mitchell stayed in Europe. She traveled next to France on her own, and then to Rome with Nathaniel Hawthorne's family.

Mitchell had hoped to visit the Vatican Observatory in Rome, but was told that it did not admit women. She tried to receive a special permission, and was eventually allowed to visit in the daytime. This, however, did not allow her to see the stars of night.

When Maria Mitchell retuned to the United States, she was presented a new telescope bought with money collected from women, to honor the first woman astronomer of the United States.

Achievements and Recognitions

In 1865, Maria Mitchell became the first professor of astronomy and director of the observatory at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. As director, Mitchell used a twelve-inch telescope – the third largest in the U.S. Mitchell invited her students to the observatory to watch meteor showers and other astronomical events.

When not teaching, Mitchell continued researching the surface features of Jupiter and Saturn. She also photographed stars.

In 1869, Mitchell was elected into the American Philosophical Society. Four years later, she helped found the American Association for the Advancement of Women; she served as the organization's president until from 1874-1876. In the year of the organization's establishment, Mitchell also attended the first meeting of the Women's Congress. This session was also attended by activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

Maria Mitchell retired from Vassar College in 1888 due to poor health. She died on June 28, 1889 in Lynn, Massachusetts.

After her death, her friends and supporters founded the Maria Mitchell Foundation on Nantucket in 1902. In 1905, she was elected into the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at New York University. In 1994, Mitchell was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.

Resources:

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/mitchell.html

http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/mariamitchell.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mitchell

Clara Barton is known as the founder of the American Red Cross and it's first President. Barton worked her entire life on improving disaster and war relief.

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born December 25th, 1821 in North Oxford, Massachusetts. The youngest by a decade of Captain Stephen and Sarah Barton's five children (2 brothers and 2 sisters), she grew up decidedly tom-boyish, preferring outdoor activities to the indoor pastimes of respectable young ladies. Adored by her family, her father would tell her stories of his experiences fighting the Indians while her brothers taught her horseback riding. Clara was painfully shy, to the point that her parents worried it would inhibit her, but she developed a pattern of overcoming her shyness when circumstances demanded it. The first hint of her future endeavors is said to have occurred when her brother became ill when she was still young. Clara is said to have learned how to administer his medicines, even the leeches, and did so for 2 years.

Clara excelled in school, no doubt due to the preparation she received at home as a child from her brothers and sisters. At 17 she became a teacher in Massachusetts's District 9 in Worcester Count and spent the next 6 years teaching at several schools until settling at her own school in North Oxford. At 29 Clara entered the advanced school for female teachers the Liberal Institute in Clinton New York. After a year at Clinton she took a teaching position in New Jersey, where she later opened a free school that grew to 600 students. The school board refused to make Barton the head of the school and hired a man instead, so she left New Jersey and moved to Washington DC where she worked as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. In 1861 the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived in Washington DC after the Baltimore Riots. Barton organized a relief program for the soldiers who were tired and wounded which started her down the path that would eventually define her life.

Barton resigned from the Patent Office to work as a volunteer, distributing bandages, socks, and other goods to wounded soldiers. Seeing that the Army was ill prepared for the providing medical supplies to battle fields, Barton lobbied the army bureaucracy for the right to bring her own medical supplies. At first she had little success, but finally, with the help of U.S. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, she was permitted to bring her supplies to battlefields.

The civil was saw some of the bloodiest battlefields in history, and to those battle fields went Clarissa Barton, medical supplies in hand, to bring relief and comfort to the wounded and dying. Battlefields such as Cedar Mountain, Va; Second Manassas, Va; Antietam Md.; and Fredericksburg Va were all visited by Barton who brought lanterns, bandages, clothing food and supplies, often while herself in harms way. By 1864 Barton was named "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front along the James River. In 1865 President Lincoln placed Barton in charge of the search for missing men of the Union Army. She helped identify 13,000 unknown Union dead from the prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia. Barton published lists of names in newspapers and exchanged letters with veterans and soldier's families.

After several years in this post, Barton travelled to Europe to relax, but with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, her conscience compelled her to assist relieve the hardship brought to many French civilians. As part of the relief effort, she became impressed with a new organization created in 1864 called the Red Cross. The red cross was chartered to provide humane services to all victims during wartime under a flag of neutrality.

Returning to the US, Barton began a crusade to launch an American Chapter of the Red Cross. President James Garfield sanctioned the founding of the American Red Cross, with an expanded role beyond caring for the wounded on battlefields. This role included assisting in the aftermath of natural disasters. Barton became the first President of the American Red Cross, which was officially founded in 1881, in Dansville, N.Y. Barton opened the first international American Red Cross headquarters in Beijing, China in 1896. She also worked in hospitals in Cuba in 1898 at seventy seven. Barton retired from president of the Red Cross in 1904 at 83, but not before she had turned it into a powerful force for good.

Clarissa Barton died on April 12th 1912 in Glen Echo, Maryland.

Pictures

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton
http://www.civilwarhome.com/bartonbio.htm
http://americancivilwar.com/women/cb.html
http://www.incwell.com/Biographies/Barton.html
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/clarabarton.html