WISE: Ada Lovelace

Ada Gordon, more often known as Ada Lovelace was born in 1815 and was an only child. She was the daughter of a poet, George Gordon, and a mathematician, Annabella Milbanke. Her parents separated just a month after Lovelace was born. Her mother feared that Ada would inherit her father's poetic temperament she raised her daughter on under an strict regime of science, logic and mathematics. From childhood Ada had a fascination with machines. She would design boats and steam flying machines, and would pour over the diagrams over new inventions that the Industrial Revolution brought about that filled all of the scientific magazines at the time 
At the age of 19, she married to William King who was an aristocrat. When her husband, in 1838 became Earl of Lovelace, Ada King became Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. She had her husband had three children together. 
Lovelace was introduced to Charles Babbage in 1833 by her mentor Mary Somerville who was a a scientist. Babbage was a Professor of Mathematics who was famous for his visionary and unfinished plans for gigantic clockwork calculating machines. Both Lovelace and Babbage had unconventional personalities and ended up becoming lifelong friends. 
Lovelace had become deeply interested by Babbage's plans for an extremely complicated device that he called the Analytical Engine. It was to combine the array of adding his earlier Difference Engine. The Analytical Engine was never built, however the design had all the essential deigns of a modern computer. 
During 1842, Lovelace had translated a short article that described the Analytical Engine by an Italian mathematician for publication in England. Babbage had then asked her to expand the article as he believed that she understood the way it worked very well. The final article is over three times the length of the original one It contains several early 'computer programs' as well had strikingly observations on the potential use of the machine. These things included the manipulation of symbols and the creation of music. Babbage and his assistants had sketched out programs for the machine before but Lovelace's were the most elaborate out of all of these ans they were the first to be published. Because of this she is often referred to as the 'first computer programmer'. 
A the age of 36, Ada Lovelance died from cancer, just a few short years after the publication of 'Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes from the Translator', and was buried alongside her father whom she never met, 
The Engine still remained a vision even after her death, that was until her notes had become one of the critical documents that inspired Alan Turing's work on the first modern computer in the 1940s. 
Although Lovelace herself was not able to carry through the vision that she had helped Babbage with, her thoughts and ideas carried on and had affected the way we use technology today.

WISE: Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina Vladimirnova Tereshkova was born in Russia in 1937. Her father was a tractor driver whilst her mother worked in a textile plant. Her father had passed away during World War Two, which left her mother to raise three children by herself.Tereshkova, herself, began school when she was eight years old. At the age of sixteen she left school but continued her education through correspondence courses. 
From a young age she had an interest in parachuting and later on she trained in skydiving, making her first jump at the age of 22. At the time, Tereshkov had been working as a textile worker in a local factory. 
In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and after that Tereshkov volunteered for the Soviet Space Programme. She didn't have any experience but was accepted as she had done 126 parachute jumps at the time of her volunteering. During those days. cosmonauts had to jump out of their capsules and parachute down to Earth, moments before landing.
There were more than four hundred applicants who had volunteered and in the end, only five of them were picked. They had to be parachutists under the age of 30, their height had to be under 170 cm and had to weigh under 70 kg. 
Along with the four other women who had been chosen, Tereshkov undertook 18 months of training. The tests during the training included seeing how long they would react to long periods of time alone, to extreme gravity conditions and to zero-gravity conditions. They also undertook training in spacecraft engineering and 120 parachute jumps.
Tereshkova was to pilot Vostok 5 and it was going to be a dual mission, with Valentine Ponomaryova to follow her into orbit with Votok 6.The flight plan was then altered though. A male by the name of Valeriy Bykovsky was now to pilot Vostok 5. The State Space Commission then nominated Tereshkova to pilot Vostok 6 and was picked. 

Vostok 5 was launched on June 14th 1963 and on June 16th 1963, aged 26, Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space. She spent two days, 23 hours and 12 minutes in space. She orbited the Earth 48 times but the flight had nearly turned into a disaster. 
The spacecraft's automatic navigation software had a problem which caused the spacecraft to move away from Earth. Tereshkova had noticed this and the Soviet scientists the quickly developed a new algorithm for landing. Treshkova landed safely but with a bruise on her face. She near, what is today, the Kazakhstan-Mongolia-China border.Villagers had helped her out of her spacesuit and asked her to join them for dinner and she accepted the offer. 
Tereshkova was awarded with the title Hero of the Soviet. She also received the Order of the Lenin and the Glod Star Medal. She became a spokesperson for the Soviet Union and whilst doing this she received the United Nation Gold Medal of Peace.
She never ended up flying into space again but she later became a test pilot and instructor and earned a doctorate in technical science. On November 3rd 1963, Tereshkova married a fellow cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev. They had their first child 1864, who was a daughter called Elena, she later became a Medical doctor. Tereshkova and her husband divorced in 1980. 
Two years later she married Yuily Shaposhnikov, who was a surgeon. Later she became the deputy to the Supreme Soviet and then a people's deputy. She was a member of the Supreme Soviet Presidium and later become the head of the Soviet Women's Committee. As well as that, she was also the head of the International Cultural and Friendship Union and became the chairperson of the Russian Association of International Cooperation. But in 1999 her husband passed away. 
In 2008, Tereshkova became a torch-bearer in the 2008 Summer Olympics Torch Relay in Saint Petersburg, Russia. And as of 2013, she became a serving member of the Russian Parliament and deputy chairperson  of the Parliamentary Committee on International Affairs. 

WISE: Nora Stanton Blatch Barney

Nora Stanton Blatch Barney was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England on the 30th September 1883. When she was a young child her family moved to New York, America. Barney was the daughter of Harriot Blatch and the granddaughter of Elizabeth Stanton, both of these ladies were leaders of the women's rights movement in America. 

Barney went to Cornell University in New York and it was here that she obtained her degree in civil engineering; she was the first woman to do so in the USA. The same year that she had graduated, Barney also became the first member of the American Society of Civil Engineers - with a junior status. From 1905 until 1906, she worked for the American Bridge Company and the New York City Board of Water Supply. She also took courses in mathematics and electricity at Columbia University so that she would be able to be a laboratory assistant to Lee  De Forest who was the inventor of the radio vacuum tube. Barney ended up marrying De Forest in 1908. Barney worked for her husband's company in New Jersey until 1909 when they separated and later divorced in 1912. 

Barney then returned to New York after she had separated from her husband and worked as an assistant engineer and chief draftsman at the Radley Steel Construction Company from 1909 - 1912. For several years she worked as an engineer for the New York Public Service Commission. In 1914, Barney started to work as an architect and developer on Long Island. 

In addition to her work in civil engineering, Barney had devoted her time to the women suffrage movement. She had founded a suffrage club whilst studying for Cornell, and from 1909 to 1917 she heavily campaigned in New York for the cause. She ended up becoming the president of the Women's Political Union in 1915, succeeding her mother, and edited the organisations 'Women's Political World'. 

In 1919, she married Morgan Barney, who was a marine architect. The pair ended up moving to Greenwich, Connecticut, where she work as a real estate developer. Barney carried on being politically active in her later years and wrote things such as, 'Women as Human Beings'. 

On January 18th, 1971, Barney passed away. 

WISE: Emily Warren Roebling

Emily Warren Roebling was born on the 23rd September 1843 in New York and was the second youngest of twelve children. She was close to her older brother Gouverneur Kemble Warren, who eventually became a general in the United States Army. When Roebling was fifteen years old, her brother had decided to enroll her in the Georgetown Visitation Convent in Washington D.C. Here she studied a wide range of subjects that included French, algebra and geography as well as piano and tapestry. 

Source

In the February of 1864, Roebling had travelled to visit her brother at an army camp. It was whilst on this trip that she found a young officer named Washington Roebling, who had been serving under her brother during the Civil War. After eleven months of keeping in contact with each other once she had left, the pair were married in 1865. After the war was over Roebling and her husband travelled Europe to study caissons which are used on bridges. Whilst she was overseas Roebling gave birth to her first and only child. John August Roebling II in 1867

Her father-in-law at this point had been planning and undertaking a huge mission that would see a bridge that'd connect Manhattan and New York in construction. On the couple's return, Roebling's father-in-law passed away from tetanus. During the construction of the actual bridge, her husband ended up falling ill and was bed ridden. It was at this point that Roebling stepped in and became the "first woman field engineer" and overlooked the completion of Brooklyn Bridge. 

She was the only person that visited her husband whilst he was ill, due to this she ended up relaying information from her husband to his assistants and reported on the progress of the construction of the bridge. Through her husband's teachings Roebling had developed an extensive knowledge of strength of materials, stress analysis, cable construction, and calculating catenary curves. Her knowledge had been complemented by her interest in and study of the bridge's construction when her husband had become Chief Engineer for the bridge. 

Over the next fourteen years, Roebling became determined in seeing the completion of the bridge. She had taken over a lot of the chief engineer's duties, which included the day-to-day supervision and project management. Together with her husband, the Roebling's planned the bridge's continued construction. Roebling had dealt with the politicians and competing engineers. 

At last in 1883 the construction of Brooklyn Bridge was completed and Congressman Abram S. Hewitt said that the bridge was "an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred." Due to her dedication to the bridge, Roebling was the very first person to cross it at its opening on May 24th 1883. 

Source

Roebling had accomplished much more in her life though, such as obtaining her law degree from New York University's Women's Law class which she had enrolled in in 1899. However, four years later, Roebling's health had started to decline and she passed away on February 28th 1903. 

Emily Warren Roebling took a leading role in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and did not give up. There's now a plaque on the bridge that is dedicated in memory of herself, her husband and father-in-law. 

WISE: Engineering Statistics

I though I'd do something a little different with this month's WISE post. I know that I explained why I wanted to do these posts in my very first WISE post but there's a lot more to WISE. I want to show you guys some statistics that'll hopefully give you an insight to the world of women in engineering. So here are my top five facts about women in engineering. 

WISE: Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born in 1943 on the 15^th July, was a Northern Irish astrophysicist. She ended up being credited with one of the most significant discoveries of the twentieth century whilst she was completing her postgraduate studies.

At a young age Burnell had read a lot of books on astronomy and her interest on the topic was always encouraged by the Armagh Observatory, where her father worked. She ended up attending Lurgan College and then earned a degree in Physics from Glasgow University, Scotland, in 1965. In 1969, she completed her PhD from the University of Cambridge.

In her first two years of studying there, Bell assisted in the construction of an 81.5 – megahertz radio telescope that was going to be used to track quasars, a distant source of energy that give off huge amount of radiation. In 1967, the telescope first went into operation and it was Bell’s job to operate the telescope and to analyse over 120 metres of chart paper that was produced by the telescope every four days. After analysing this data over several weeks Bell had noticed something unusual about the markings that were on the chart. These marking had been made by a radio source that was too fast and regular to be a quasar. Its signal only took up about 2.5 centimetres of the 121.8 metres of the chart paper but Bell had recognised the importance of it. She had detected evidence of the first pulsar. The work was published in the February of 1968.

In the same year Bell’s work as published she married Martin Burnell, who was a government worker. His work ended up making them travel around England. Burnell worked part time while she looked after their son, Gavin Burnell. During this time she started studying almost every wave spectrum. in astronomy and gained extensive experience. In 1970 - 972 she held a junior teaching fellowship in Southampton University. It was here she developed and calibrated a 1-10 million electron gamma ray telescope. She also held research and teaching positions in x-ray astronomy at Mullard Space Science Laboratory in London, and in Edinburgh she studied infrared astronomy. 

Burnell didn't end up sharing the Nobel Prize with Hewish - her thesis supervisor - for the discovery of pulsars but she ended up gaining numerous different awards. She was chosen to be a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1969 and has now served as it's Vice President. She's also won the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 1987, which recognises the outstanding research contribution to astronomy or astrophysics. She also won the Herschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1989 which is awarded for outstanding work in the area of observational astrophysics  astrophysics and has won many other awards. 

Currently, Jocelyn Burnell in a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics as the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of Masfield College. she is also the current President of the Institute of Physics 

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a women who never stopped achieving and believes that there should be more women in science. 

Looking Back At: March 2014

So, this month meant me going back to school after half term which I was both happy about and slightly not looking forward to. I was looking forward to the fact that I would be more productive during the day but I wasn’t looking forward to controlled assessment deadlines coming in. As soon as I walking into my Resistant Materials class I was told that I had five weeks left until my assessment would be submitted for marking. I has gotten me to get my skates on through and I’m doing my best to make sure that I’m keeping on top of everything going on.

I’ve been throwing myself into a lot of revision and trying to make sure that I’m doing as much preparation as possible ready for May and June. That hasn’t been going to badly and I’ve been making sure I’m attending all after school revision classes which have been helping as well. So, school so far hasn’t been going too badly.

Earlier in the month my sister and I ended up signing up for the local 10K run which is slightly daunting but I’m really looking forward to. We decided that we’re going to try and run it in an hour and fifteen minutes so we’ve been going out on runs to train for that. I can say that it is helping my fitness a lot and I always feel pretty happy after going for a run.

I also finally got signed up for the eDofE. I’m doing the Duke of Edinburgh and have been training since November but we hadn’t enrolled online so that we can track all of our skill, physical, and volunteer work. So, we had a meeting where they gave us loads more paperwork and everyone has pretty much decided what they’re doing for each of the sections and the timescale for each one.

I posted up my first Women in Science and Engineering post this month and am looking forward to posting a more in the coming months. I was speaking to the head of technology in my school who said that he was more than happy to put up some of my posts on his display outside his room which made me extremely happy. The whole reason I’m doing this is to raise awareness of these amazing women and that it’s not unusual for women to go into this line of worse. So, t have him say that he wanted them up meant because hopefully people will start to realise that even though science and engineering is male dominated there are a lot of women in these two fields who have done a lot to contribute.

I’ve also done yet another training day for Duke of Edinburgh which was amazing. It was the first time that it was actually warm and wasn’t tipping down with rain which is always a nice surprise. It was a pretty short walk this time but I would have loved to walk for a little bit longer. We ended up having to draw our own maps and learning some first aid whilst we were out there. 

Book-wise, this month has been slightly slower than February but that books I’ve read or am in the midst of reading have been awesome!

I’ve finished:

• The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
• Soulmates by Holly Bourne
• Larby Lodge by G & P Gallacher

And I’m currently reading:

•  Undone by Cat Clarke

I’ve gotten 13 out of 50 books done for my 2014 reading challenge and am currently one book ahead of schedule! I’ve got a feeling that next month might be a little bit of a slow reading month since exams are going to be so close by but I shall have to wait and see!

So, what did you all get up to in March and what plans do you have for April?

WISE: Marie Curie

This month’s ‘Woman in Science & Engineering’ is Marie Curie. 

Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland on the 7th November 1867. In 1891, she went to Paris to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne and here she met her husband. Pierre Curie, professor at the School of Physics. They married in 1895. 

Together they worked on investigating radioactivity, they had been building on the work of the German physicist, Roentgen, and the French physicist, Becquerel. By 1898, the Curies had announces the discovery of a new chemical element, polonium. They had then announced the discovery of radium towards the end of the year. The Curies and Becquerel had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. 

Marie Curie’s husband had died in 1906 when he was knocked down and killed by a carriage. Yet, she still carried on with her work. Curie took over her husband’s teaching post which made her become the first female teacher at the Sorbonne, and she devoted herself to the work that her and her husband had started together. Curie was awarded another Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911

The research that both husband and wife had done was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War One, Marie Curie helped to equip the ambulances with x-rays and would then drive ambulances to the front line herself. She was made head of the radiological service by the International British Red Cross. She also held training courses for medical orderlies, and doctors in new techniques. 

Though Curie had a huge amount of success, she still faced oppression from male scientists in France and she had never received significant financial benefits from the work that she did. In the late 1920s, her health had started to deteriorate and on the 4th July 1934 she died from leukaemia. Her leukaemia had been caused by the fact that she had had exposure to high-energy radiation for her research. 

In 1948, which was the same year the National Health Service had been launched, a group of committee members from the Hampstead-based Marie Curie hospital decided to preserve Marie Curie’s name in the charitable medical field, just before the Hampstead-based Marie Curie Hospital was transferred over to the NHS. 

This just happened to be the beginning of the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation – a charity that is now dedicated to alleviating suffering from cancer – today known as the Marie Curie Cancer Care. 

After the donation of an engagement ring, to help raise funds for the charity, the very first appeal was then launched and had brought in a significant £4,000. By 1950, the ongoing appeal raised a massive £30,000 and only two years later the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation had managed to officially become a charity.

The charity had dedicated itself to several ideas which, at the time, were revolutionary and the Marie Curie Memorial Foundation had quickly established itself as a leader in the field of improving facilities for cancer patients. 

They had dedicated themselves to: 
• Providing specialist homes for the care of cancer patients 
• Providing nursing for patients at home 
• Educating the public on the symptoms and the treatment of cancer 
• Providing urgent welfare needs

Today though, the Marie Curie Cancer Care has a few different things that they are aiming for as well: 
• Dedicating themselves to providing better and more care for patients and their families through the Marie Curie Nursing Services and its nine hospices. 
• Is committed to carrying out research and innovation necessary to find out what the best possible care is and how to provide it. 
• Ensuring that measures are in place to give people the choice of place for their life care and death through the Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme. 
• Is determined that the needs of the dying patients remain on the political agenda and will continue to campaign for patients to be able to die at their own homes in all four countries of the UK through its policy and public affairs work. 

Marie Curie has made a huge impact into the world of medicine in the time she was alive and is continuing to make the impact even as she is not here any more. Her work during World War One and the charity that is now set up in her name just shows what an amazing impact one person can have on one field. 

Women In Science & Engineering

So, I’m starting a new feature on my blog, where every month I will be discussing a female figure in science or engineering. The way that they have made a difference in the field that they are or have been working in and why they should be recognised for the work that they have done (AKA: WISE)

I have my sights set on becoming a Medical Engineer when I’m older and there are a few reasons behind my decision for that: I want to be able to help people. I want to be able to know that I’m doing something that is making even the smallest difference and I don’t do to well with blood (unless it’s in a documentary) so being a doctor was ruled out straight away. As well as that, I love doing things that involve practical work, the office type of job is not something that I think would suit me too well. I also love science and technology. They are both things that have been with us a while and, especially in science, we are continuously discovering new things which really fascinates me and I would love to be a part of that.

It all kick started off because I realised that teaching was no longer something that I wanted to go into. Though I have a huge respect for teachers and what they do, I didn’t think it would be something that I would do very well or enjoy very much. So, I ended up speaking to my sister and my mam about it who both asked about the two things I liked doing in school and they pointed me in the direction of engineering, which after I looked into a lot I decided that the field that I wanted to go into was Medical Engineering. My parents and my sister were more than happy to support me in my choice and helped me find out more about it as well.

What I found a lot of though, was that every single time I told someone that I wanted to go into engineering they all seemed to turn to me and go, “Well, you don’t see many girls in engineering!” or “It’s nice to see a girl going into engineering, it’s an extremely male dominated field!” and the most popular one which was, “It’ll be easy for you to get a job in engineering since you’re a girl, they’re looking for more females to go into it!” Now it wasn’t the people who were saying these things that were annoying me so much but more for the fact that there is such a stigma about it.

I understand that there are some fields of work and study that are often heavily dominated by a certain gender because that’s just the way things are sometimes but there’s such a surprise when you hear a female wanting to go into science or engineering or a male wanting to go into a humanities subject. It should have to be such a huge surprise to someone that people want to show an interest in a field that “isn’t dominated by their gender”.

I really don’t like the fact either that because I am a female that wants to go into engineering I’ll be more likely to have get a job against males. I want to know that if I do get interviewed for a job after University that I’ll get it off my own merit, that they won’t just look at my gender and automatically have me in mind before even looking through the rest of my CV. I don’t want to be there just to fill up a quota for people.

So, starting next month I shall be exploring different women in science and engineering.

*Image of girls taken from Google, banner made by myself 

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