- Jocelyn Bell Burnell
- (1943-present)
- Emily Noether
- (1882-1935)
- Maria Goeppert Mayer
- (1906-1972)
(Susan Jocelyn Bell (Burnell), taken 1967, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Susan_Jocelyn_Bell(Burnell),_1967.jpg)
“Some of the hydrogen in your body comes from the Big Bang, and when you see a kid walking down the street with a helium balloon, you can say, 'There goes some of the primordial universe.' “
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell(Astrophysicist)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born on July 15,1943 of Northern Ireland. As a child, Jocelyn would accompany her father to the observatory where he worked as an architect, devouring one book after another. She had become infatuated with the the stars and her mother and father merely fanned this flame. Despite her passion for learning, she struggled with academics and failed an exam meant to measure her aptitude for higher education. Jocelyn refused to acquiesce and enrolled into a Quaker boarding School where she had then excelled in science and was admitted to the prestigious University of Glasgow. It is here that she helped to construct a radio telescope as a PhD student and discovered pulsars: rotating neutron stars that give off radiation. She earned her supervisor a nobel and earned a lifetime of respect from the scientific community. In her later years she worked as the president of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics where she continues her research
(Portrait of Emmy Noether, taken before 1910, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noether.jpg)
“My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously.”
-Emily Noether(Mathematician)
Emmy Noether was born in Erlangen, Germany with no distinguishable traits that indicated that she would go on to create one of the most well known theorems in all of mathematics and physics. She was an ordinary child who spent time learning the arts as was demanded by upper middle class girls. In 1900, Emmy became certified to teach English and French but she defied the social stigmas of the period and went to the University of Göttingen in 1903. A year later, women were allowed to enroll into universities so Emmy transferred to Erlangen. She worked without pay or title often, the only way in which she was allowed to lecture was as an assistant to a male mathematician. In spite of this, she kept her chin up and continued to work with the most revered mathematicians of her time and rose to become a world leader in abstract algebra. Many times her long hair would run wild as she talked of mathematics and she wouldn’t care, she didn’t care of earthly possessions or appearance. It was in 1922 that she became an "associate professor without tenure" and began to be paid a meager salary. In 1915, David Hilbert and Felix Klein asked for her to investigate Einstein’s equations as they did not adhere to conservation of energy. It was here that she developed the theory of general relativity and laid the foundation of particle physics.
(Portrait of Dr. Maria Goeppert-Mayer,U.D.,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maria_Goeppert-Mayer_portrait.jpg)
“Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.”
-Maria Goeppert Mayer(Theoretical Physicist/Nobel Laureate)
Maria Goeppert Mayer was born in Kattowitz Germany and was educated at a girls grammar school run by suffragettes. She graduated She spent most of her life working in unpaid positions such at John Hopkins. She eventually became the Professor of Physics at University of California, San Diego. While working with Edward Teller she conducted research on atomic nuclei where she noticed the repetition of “magic numbers”— 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126. These magic numbers became the foundation for mapping out the atom itself.