Women Who Changed The World

Evelyn Berezin (1925-2018)

When Evelyn Berezin, an American expert in logic design, developed the first computerized word processor, it paved the way for Microsoft to introduce Word and Google to create Google Docs. Berezin introduced to the world the Data Secretary, the first electronic word processor for secretarial use, and founded a company to manufacture and sell it. The Data Secretary, which debuted in 1971, included advanced features like the ability to record and play back what users typed so it could be edited or printed. It also included features like delete and cut and paste.

Marie Curie (1867-1934)

Two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, born in Warsaw, Poland, is known for her significant discoveries of the elements radium and polonium and her huge contribution to finding treatments for cancer. During World War I, the physicist developed the portable X-ray machine. Curie also innovated the X-ray machine discovered by German scientist Wilhelm Röentgen in 1895 and used radium as its gamma-ray source, resulting in more accurate and stronger X-rays. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win two.

Virginia Apgar (1909-1974)

American anaesthesiologist

Virginia Apgar designed and introduced the “Apgar Score,” a newborn scoring system in 1952. The first standardized method for assessing and evaluating a newborn’s transition to life outside the womb reduced infant mortality and laid the foundations of neonatology. The scoring system evaluates newborns’ health status based on their heart rate, respiration, movement, irritability, and color initially one minute after their birth. Eventually, the one-minute and five-minute Apgar Scores became standard.

Gertrude Belle Elion (1918-1999)

Nobel prize winner

Gertrude Belle Elion developed the first immunosuppressant, making organ transplants possible. Elion was granted the patent for the drug Azathioprine or Imuran in 1962, which made it possible for people with compromised immune systems to receive organ transplants without their bodies rejecting them. She also invented Zyloprim, which fights gout, and Zovirax for herpes infections. The American biochemist and pharmacologist was named on 45 patents.

Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)

Born Hedwig Kiesler, Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr devised a coded form of radio communication to securely guide torpedoes for the Allied coalition, a group of countries that opposed the Axis powers in World War II, to reach their targets. She called her invention “frequency hopping,” a way of switching between radio frequencies in order to avoid a signal being jammed. She submitted a patent for it in June 1941 along with George Antheil. “Frequency hopping” is the technology that is today being widely used in WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth.