This International Women's Day, we're celebrating four women who changed the face of science forever.
Anandibai Joshee, born in 1865 in India, became India's first woman physician with a medical degree. After graduation from a Woman's Medical College, she accepted an offer from the governor minister of Kolhapur in India to serve as "Lady Doctor of Kolhapur". She died at 21 from tuberculosis. Despite her short life, Joshee's accomplishments were unprecedented for an Indian woman, and her achievements open the door for other Indian women to quickly follow.
Mamie Clark, an American social psychologist, specialized in child development in black children. In 1946, Clark and Kenneth founded the only mental health organization for black children in New York. Clark was awarded the American Association of University achievement award in 1973, and ten years later the National Coalition of 100 Black Women awarded her the Candace Award for humanitarianism.
Geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi was born in Tokyo in 1920. Saruhashi became the first woman elected to the Science Council of Japan, the first woman to win the Miyake Prize for Geochemistry, and the first woman recipient of an award from the Society of Sea Water Science in Japan. In 1981, she founded the Saruhashi Prize, a prize awarded annually to a female role model in science.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Ochoa was the first Latina woman to fly in space as part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery in 1993. In 1990, Ochoa was selected to astronaut candidacy as part of a group of twenty-three NASA astronauts, and became an astronaut a year later. Her first spaceflight was aboard Discovery as a mission specialist and lasted nine days, in which the crew conducted scientific experiments and deployed a research satellite to study the solar corona.