Women in Science, English, Math, and More!

Professors from across several Andrews University departments answered the questions: “Who is a notable female figure (either current or historical) in your field? What has she contributed to your discipline?”

Dr. Summerscales
(Department of Physics)
The exceptional female scientist I would like to highlight is Gabriela González who is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the Louisiana State University. She led the LIGO Scientific Collaboration as Spokesperson from 2011-2017 and has made many important contributions to gravitational wave detector science. She is someone I admire greatly both in terms of scientific accomplishment and the impact she has had as a mentor of students and young scientists.

Dr. Pittman
(Department of English)
It’s my joy to honor a scholar who has made a massive impact on my field, the great Kim F. Hall, Lucyle Hook Professor of English, Professor of Africana Studies, at Barnard College, Columbia University.  Dr. Hall published one of the single-most influential books in Early Modern and Shakespeare studies in 1996, “Things of Darkness” (Cornell UP), which exposed the white supremacist discourses embedded in the “Golden Age” of Renaissance English literature.  Writing at a time when New Historicism dominated the scholarly landscape of our field, Dr. Hall pointed out the blindspots in such scholarship; though preoccupied with examinations of discourses of power, New Historicism had up until that point thought little about how race and white supremacy inflected structures of authority in the era and its literature.  For me personally, as a graduate student in the 1990s when New Historicism was the methodology I learned, Dr. Hall’s book transformed my outlook, exposed my own privilege as a white, middle-class scholar, and called me to refocus my emerging body of research on the intersecting concerns of gender, class, and race in Shakespearean performance.  After graduate school, when I entered the classroom, Dr. Hall’s book also informed my syllabus construction so that my classes would endeavor to excavate the silenced voices of women and persons of color in the Early Modern period. Dr. Hall has been not just a towering presence through her publications but also as a generous-hearted and gracious mentor of countless younger scholars including several graduates of Andrews University, Dr. Vanessa Corredera, Dr. Emily Shortslef, and Shanelle Kim (her current PhD student at Columbia).  No praise is adequate for her impact on the field, my colleagues, and my own discoveries.

Dr. Corredera
(Department of English)
It is my pleasure to honor Ayanna Thompson, ASU Regents Professor and Director for the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Thompson is one of the central voices in Premodern Critical Race Studies (PCRS), particularly in the area of race and performance. Her work in “Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance” (Routledge, 2006) transformed Shakespeare performance studies, asking for more than token “colorblind” casting; indeed, she argued that casting should be color-conscious, considering the ideological and representational work race does (and is not allowed to) do on the contemporary Shakespearean stage. Her book “Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America” (Oxford University Press, 2011) is equally as significant, placing Critical Race Studies in dialog with Shakespeare to better understand Shakespeare’s role in and Shakespeare as a tool for American racial formation. Thompson’s work illustrates her curiosity and creativity, wide-ranging because she is willing to stretch herself, learn new things, and push the boundaries of the field. She is also a generous mentor to not only to her students, but also to fellow colleagues (myself included), providing astute professional advice and leadership in order to pave the way for PCRS’s bright future.

Dr. Goodwin
(Department of Biology)
For biology, let’s go with Rosalind Franklin.  Franklin was an exceptional scientist who carefully collected the experimental data that made possible the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Dr. Lyons
(Department of Biology)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2020 was awarded to two women, Emmanuelle Charpentier (Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany) and Jennifer Doudna (University of California, Berkeley, USA). These two women have made a huge impact in our understanding of genes, genomes, and the potential for genome editing through their discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. CRISPR-Cas9 is a bacterial “immune system” that these scientists happened upon through their work in bacteriology and biochemistry, and that is now beginning to be applied to the treatment and cure of heritable diseases such as sickle cell disease.

Dr. Kutzner
(Department of Physics)
Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. As the first of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes, she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris in 1906.  She discovered radioactive elements.
Vera Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates.[1] She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem, and was evidence of the existence of dark matter.[2] Although initially met with skepticism, Rubin's results were confirmed over subsequent decades. Her legacy was described by The New York Times as "ushering in a Copernican-scale change" in cosmological theory.[1][3]   She discovered “dark matter.”
Donna Theo Strickland, is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped pulse amplification. She is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Weldon
(Department of Mathematics)
Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891): First woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics; first woman in Europe to become a full-time professor. Contributed to the areas of differential equations and elliptic integrals—applying this to explain behavior of Saturn and its rings.

Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017): Only woman to receive the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics.

Katherine Johnson (1918-2020): Worked for NASA; provided the orbital entry and launch window calculations that enabled John Glenn’s orbit around the moon. Received Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Emmy Noether (1882-1935): Resolved a paradox presented by Einstein’s theory of general relativity—impressing Einstein and providing a fundamental tool for modern theoretical physics. Other work was foundational for further expansions and connections in mathematics.

Dr. Bosman
(Department of Mathematics)
Sophie Germain (1776-1831) was discouraged from studying mathematics and was unable to do so professionally because of her gender. Nevertheless, she persisted and made foundational contributions to Number Theory, although she had to author them using the masculine pseudonym Monsieur LaBlanc. When she disclosed her true identity to the great mathematician Gauss, he responded, "when a person of the sex which, according to our customs and prejudices, must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men to familiarize herself with these thorny researches, succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of them, then without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius."

Dr. Smith
(Department of Biology)
That is tough to pick one, but I guess it would have to be Dr. Elizabeth M Jaffee of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  She is a past president of AACR (American Association of Cancer Researchers) one of the premiere cancer organizations.  She is best known for her work with pancreatic cancer and immunotherapy.  She has developed two vaccines that have greatly improved the lives and outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Matiko
(Department of English)
Anne Lamott has long been at the forefront of contemporary writers who use their own lived experience for subject matter.  The essays and nonfiction narratives of this native Californian deal with day-to-matters (marrying for the first time in her sixties, addiction and recovery, her conversion to Christianity, politics, motherhood, and much more). Lamott comes across at times like a stand-up comedian, at other times as a wise counselor, and often blends both. She is aptly praised for her honesty, humor, and ability to craft amazing, unforgettable prose. She has published fiction as well, but it is her nonfiction that garners the most praise. I read and feed upon every word she pens, and am anxiously awaiting my own copy of her newest book, “Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage” (2021). Lamott reminds readers and fellow writers that we all have stories and that there is hope and healing in the sharing.

Dr. Moncrieff
(Department of English)
Isabel Wilkerson is a writer who has contributed very significantly to the understanding of race in America. Her book “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” (2010), tells the story of Black migration from the South to better opportunities elsewhere in the United States during the first three quarters of the 20th century. Her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent” (2020), talks about the role of caste in America, with comparisons to caste in India and Nazi Germany. Wilkerson occupies a kind of mid-ground between a journalist and an academic, and she is able to communicate well-researched and timely stories to a broad audience.