Let’s Talk About It: Women In STEM

STEM is an acronym defined as science, technology, engineering, and math. But, society’s definition of STEM has been unofficially defined as an industry many MEN around the world work in. I’m here to tell you STEM is for everyone. Looking back through the years, women have made some of the most important contributions to the world we know today. Here are some examples.

  Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson are just a few of the brilliant women who helped NASA with making crucial calculations to help launch the first successful rocket (with people in it) to the moon.

Marie Curie, one of the most notorious names in STEM. So far, she has been the only woman in the field of science to win the Nobel Prize in two different categories of sciences, physics and chemistry. She coined the theory of radioactivity, which was crucial to World War 1. 

Lydia Villa-Komaroff is a molecular and cellular biologist who has worked as a research scientist, university administrator, and entrepreneur. She contributed to the discovery of how bacterial cells may be used to produce insulin as part of her postdoctoral study in 1978. She was instrumental in the discovery of a chemical that causes the destruction of brain cells in Alzheimer's disease, spawning an entire area dedicated to the study of how to identify and treat the condition.

These women defied the unspoken gender barrier and have paved the paths for many more brilliant women to follow! Never let someone telling you that you can’t do something stop you from following your dreams.