Elizabeth Blackwell was the world’s first woman doctor. Blackwell had to struggle all her life to practice medicine.
Elizabeth was born on February 3, 1821, in Bristol, England. In 1832, her family emigrated to America. Elizabeth helped to support the family by teaching and, in 1838, the year of her father’s death, she opened a school in Cincinnati. In her free time she read medical books. It was difficult for her to get training as a doctor but eventually she entered Geneva Medical School in New York State. The men who taught medicine didn’t think it was right for a woman to be a doctor. She was the only woman in a class of 150. Two years later Blackwell was the best student in her class. In 1849 she became the first female doctor in the United States.
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James Barry was a famous English physician, a military surgeon who served in South Africa. At the end of his career he served as inspector general. He did not only treat wounded and sick soldiers of the British Army, but also improved the lives of indigenous people. Dr. Barry has become a hero of documentaries and fiction. English writer Patricia Duncker wrote a novel “James Miranda Barry” dedicated to Dr. Barry.
His real name was Margaret Ann Bulkley. Yes, he was a woman. Dr. James Barry became the first woman in England to go to medical school.
No one knows Dr. Barry’s real name, her birth date, or her family’s background. Some records show that she was born in 1795 in London.
James Barry’s classmates made fun of her because she didn’t have a beard and she was only five feet tall. But no one thought she was a girl. At the age of 20, Barry graduated from the University of Edinburgh as a Doctor of Medicine.
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Max Planck was a German physicist, best known as one of the founders of the quantum theory of physics. Planck also made important contributions in the fields of thermodynamics, relativity, and the philosophy of science. He was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the quantum effect.
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on April 23, 1858 in Kiel, Germany. His parents were Johann Julius Wilhelm von Planck and Emma Patzig. Max was their fourth child. Max began school in Kiel, but at the age of nine his family moved to Münich. There he attended the Königliche Maximillian Gymnasium which he graduated in 1874. In the same year he entered the University of Münich. In 1875 Planck fell seriously ill. After a long period of recovery, he transferred to the University of Berlin for two semesters in 1877 and 1878. In Berlin he studied under a number of notable physicists, including Hermann Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff. In 1878 he returned to Münich and his studies.
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Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist. She became first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and one of very few scientists ever to win that award twice. Together with her husband Curie developed and introduced the concept of radioactivity to the world.
Maria Sklodowska Curie was born on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents were schoolteachers. She was the youngest of the five children.
Curie entered an underground, revolutionary Polish school that prepared young Polish students to become teachers.
At the age of 17 Marie worked as a governess to fund her sister’s medical education in Paris.
In 1891, at the age of 24, Curie became a science student at the Sorbonne, a university in Paris, and became one of the few women in attendance at the university. In 1893, Marie received a degree in physics.
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Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, twice the recipient of a Nobel Prize. He helped to create the field of molecular biology, founded the science of orthomolecular medicine, and was an activist for peace.
Linus Pauling was born on February 28, 1901 in Portland, Oregon. He was the first of three children. His father was a druggist. In 1903 his family moved to Oswego and a year later they moved to Salem, then to Condon (in northern Oregon) and in 1909 they came back to Portland. In 1910 his father died and his mother was left alone with three young children. Since childhood Linus was interested in science. His friend, Lloyd Jeffress, had a small chemistry laboratory in a corner of his bedroom. Pauling was intrigued by his experiments and decided to become a chemical engineer.
In 1917 Pauling entered Oregon Agricultural College, now Oregon State University, in Corvallis. His mother was unable to pay family bills and Linus had to work to help her.
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Jane Goodall is the British scientist, primatologist and ethnologist, known for her research on chimpanzees. Her discoveries changed the way chimpanzees are studied and understood.
Dame Valerie Jane Morris Goodall was born on April 3, 1934, in London, England. When she was two years old, her father gave her a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. It was her favorite toy. In her childhood Jane dreamed of living in the African forests among the animals.
Goodall attended the Uplands private school, receiving her school certificate in 1950 and a higher certificate in 1952. At age eighteen she left school and found employment as a secretary at Oxford University.
In 1957, when she was about 23 years old, a school friend invited Goodall to Kenya, Africa. There she met the famous scientist Dr. Louis Leakey. Leakey was studying wild chimpanzees in order to find out more about the origins of human life.
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Akio Morita was a founder of Sony Corporation. Now Sony is one of the most successful companies in the world.
Morita was born on January 26, 1921 in Nagoya, Japan. For 14 generations, his family owned a company that made a rice drink called sake. He graduated from Osaka University.
As a physicist by profession, Morita was an officer in the Japanese Navy during the Second World War. In military research committee he met Masaru Ibuka, who was looking for young and talented engineers for his own company.
On May 7, 1946, they founded the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo KK (Tokyo telecommunications engineering corporation), the predecessor of the Sony. Ibuka was 38 years old, while Morita was 25.
In 1949, the company made a magnetic recording film, and in 1950 they sold the first tape recorder in Japan.
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