Celebrating Women’s History Month: Inspiring Women to Emulate

Women’s history month is a celebration held annually in the month of March in the United States. It’s a month-long celebration of the many contributions and achievements of women throughout history, particularly of those whose accomplishments have gone unnoticed and undervalued. These historical women have served as role models for generations of young women and girls, allowing them to see they can achieve their dreams in a “man’s world.” These women have been forced to break barriers and overcome all sorts of obstacles to achieve the greatness that we still discuss decades or even centuries later.

ADA LOVELACE

Ada Lovelace was born in December of 1815 in London England. She was an English mathematician and an associate of Charles Babbage. She is best known as the first computer programmer. She married William King in 1835 and became Countess of Lovelace. She became interested in Babbage’s machines and most notably translated and annotated an Italian article written by Italian mathematician and engineer, Luigi Frederico Menabrea. Her thorough annotations were excellent and renowned. She famously mentioned how the “Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as a loom weaves flowers and leaves.” The early programming language was named Ada, after Lovelace, and the second Tuesday of every October has now officially become Ada Lovelace day, to commemorate the contributions of Lovelace and many women around the world to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

FRIDA KAHLO

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907. She had a very painful childhood, suffering from polio as a child. She then almost died in a bus accident as a teenager, as she suffered multiple fractures and a dislocated shoulder. As she was recovering in a body cast, she began focusing heavily on her paintings to distract from the pain. In her lifetime, she had 30 operations due to this accident. Her physical and emotional pain (due to her turbulent relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera) was visible in her paintings. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits depicting the agony she felt in her life, Her first self-portrait was created in 1926. The Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico City depicts many of her personal belongings, and this is one of the most visited among Mexico city residents!

ROSALIND FRANKLIN

Rosalind Franklin was born in July 1920 and died at the young age of 38 in April 1958 due to cancer. She is a British scientist who is best known for the contributions she made to the discovery of DNA, and how many of her contributions were given credited to her male coworkers, but not to Franklin. She studied physical chemistry at the University of Cambridge and graduated in 1941. She served as a London air raid warden during the height of World War II. Before the war, she was given a fellowship to conduct research in physical chemistry at Cambridge but gave up the fellowship during the war to work for the British Coal Utilisation Research Association. She was able to use this research for her doctoral thesis and received her doctorate from Cambridge in 1945. In 1951, she joined the Biophysical Laboratory at King’s College in London as a research fellow. She soon discovered the density of DNA and established that the molecule existed in a helical formation. Her work laid the foundation for Francis Crick and James Watson to suggest, two years later, that DNA is a double-helix polymer. Franklin continued to do more research but it was sadly cut short by her untimely death in 1958 due to cancer.

VALENTINA TERESHKOVA

On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. She went on a solo mission, and to this day, remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission. She also remains the youngest woman to have flown in space. She orbited Earth 48 times on the Vostok 6 and logged more than 70 hours in space in just under 3 days. In her early days, she was very interested in parachuting and was eventually trained in skydiving. This also made her the first jump at age 22 in 1959. She was selected for the space program despite having no actual space or pilot training due to her successes in her parachute jumps. She joined the Soviet air force and was commissioned as a lieutenant after her training. After Tereshkova’s first marriage to fellow cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev, their daughter Elena was the subject of much medical attention and interest, as she was the first child born to TWO parents who had both been exposed to space.

IRENA SENDLER

At the start of World War 2, Irena Sendler was just a 29-year-old social worker. She was employed by the welfare department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation of the area, this department continued to take care of the many people who were displaced in their community. Sendler took advantage of her job to help the Jews who were being sent to concentration camps at horrific rates. The conditions of this crowded ghetto were poor and though attempting to rescue Jews from the ghetto posed a grave risk for Sendler, she braved ahead. She managed to obtain a permit from the municipality that allowed her to enter the ghetto to inspect the sanitary conditions. Once she was inside, she established contact with activists of the Jewish welfare organization to help them. She helped smuggle people out of the ghetto to the “Aryan side” and set up hiding places for them. In October 1943. Sendler was arrested but managed to hide away any evidence (like the coded addresses of children in the care of the new organization she worked for). She was sentenced to death and sent to prison, but underground activists were able to bribe officials for her release. Even her almost-death encounter did not stop her from continuing to save the Jews of Poland. She continued her brave work but eventually went into hiding due to the grave dangers she faced. She died in 2008 and saved over 2500 children.