gisw13_chapters

1950Olive Ann Beech(1920-1986)Co-founded Beech Aircraft,which she ran until her deathwhen it was an internationalaerospace corporation.Xide Xie(1921-2000)Banished during the CulturalRevolution, she was key tothe development of solidstate physics in China.Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder,Fran Bilas, Kay McNulty, MarlynWescoff and Ruth LichtermanOriginal programmers in 1946of the ENIAC, the first generalpurposeelectronic computer.Received formal recognitionof their contribution 50 yearsafter the development ofENIAC through the Hall ofFame award from Women inTechnology International.Erna Schneider Hoover(1926- )Created the first computerisedtelephone switching machinefor Bell Laboratories.Mary Allen Wilkes(1937- )In 1965, she becamethe first person touse a computer in aprivate home, and wasthe first developer ofan operating system(LAP) for the firstminicomputer (LINC)Mary Spaeth(1940- )Developed severalinventions around lasertechnology, includingthe integral part of laserdevices used to scanbarcodes at cash registers.Neta Assaf Bachall(1942- )Specialises in the studyof the universe, helped tocalculate the weight of theuniverse.Bozena Czerny(1952- )Studies accreting black holesto look at the behaviour ofand test general relativity ina strong gravitational field.Dora Nkem Akunyili(1954- )A Nigerian pharmacist whohas survived violence andassassination attempts forher war against deadly fakedrugs.Rose Dieng-Kuntz(1956-2008)A Senegalese scientist andone of the first scholars tounderstand the importanceof the Web and to map howit would evolve, specialisingin artificial intelligence andknowledge management.Kalpana Chawla(1962-2003)Astronaut who perished inthe Space Shuttle Columbiadisaster in February 2003.Itziar Aretxaga(1965- )Mexican astrophysicist withover 100 publications.Katherine Adebola Okikiolu(1965- )Mathematician of Nigerianorigin who works ondifferential geometry andoperator theory.Grace Alele Williams(1932- )The first Nigerian woman toearn a doctorate, awarded inmathematics, she has been atthe forefront of mathematicaleducation in Africa – andwas inspired by the Sputnikprogramme!Roseli Ocampo-Friedmann(1937-2005)Apart from working in SETI,this Filipino-Americanmicrobiologist has a mountainin Antarctica named after her,for her work exploring theterraforming of Mars.52 / Global Thematic Information reports Society / 52Watch