March 07, 2023
4 Inspiring women with unrecognized accomplishments
Because it is still essential to celebrate women and their small (big) achievements, this International Women's Day we bring you some important milestones that, in this case, were not recognized in time to disclose the impact of women's discoveries for the times that they lived.
1. Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer. She is today recognized mainly for having written the first algorithm to be processed by a machine, Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. During the period in which she was involved with Babbage's project, she developed the algorithms that would allow the machine to compute the values of mathematical functions, being considered the first programmer in all of history. Her recognition only came later, after her death. So far, credit has been given to colleague Alan Turing. (181 1852)
2. Lizzie Magie
Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips, known as Lizzie Magie was an American game designer, known for having created the board game Monopoly, credited to the entrepreneur Charles Darrow. It was only later, after Darrow had generated huge profits from the game, that the invention was attributed to Magie. She was also an activist in the Single Tax movement (single tax or simple tax) led by the economist Henry George, with the aim of "conforming social arrangements to natural laws" and remedying income inequality, unemployment and crises economic conditions that emerge paradoxically with economic progress. (1866-1948)
3. Nettie Stevens
Paragraph Nettie Maria Stevens was an American geneticist who discovered the sex chromosomes. In 1905, shortly after the rediscovery of Mendel's 1900 genetic paper, she observed that male beetles produced two types of sperm, one with a large chromosome and one with a small chromosome. When the sperm with the larger chromosome fertilized the eggs, the eggs produced female offspring, and when the sperm with the smaller chromosomes fertilized the eggs, they produced male offspring. The pair of sex chromosomes she studied later became known as the X and Y chromosomes, but she was only recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1933, long after she died. (1861-1912)
4. Hedy Lamarr
In addition to becoming a well-known actress in the United States, Hedy Lamarr invented the precursor technology for WI-FI and GPS from a radio jamming device during World War II. She submitted her patent to the US Navy, which was shelved even though they began developing technologies based on her design without giving her credit. In 2000, shortly before her death, a researcher revealed the original patent to the world, which earned the inventor the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award. (1914-2000)