At littleBits, we love to celebrate! This month, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day by spotlighting ground-breaking, historical women who succeeded in science, technology, engineering, art, and math. In other words, they’re total STEAM rockstars! We believe it’s essential to celebrate these pioneers who changed the world.
Read about the women who invented the world they wanted to live in, and how they made an impact on our lives.
Stephanie Kwolek
Photo via Wikipedia
Stephanie was a game-changing American Chemist. She is well-known for inventing synthetic fibers, such as Kevlar in 1965. Kevlar is commonly found in racing sails, bicycle tires, and even body armor! This synthetic fiber can withstand high impacts. We think that’s pretty cool.
Learn more about Stephanie’s discovery of Kevlar below:
Grace Hopper
Photo via Wikipedia
Did you know that Grace Hopper was one of the first computer programmers on the Harvard Mark I Computer and a US Navy admiral? In 1944, she worked on this project, and she also invented the first compiler for a computer programming language! President Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
Want to know more about Grace’s amazing life? Check out this video:
Cynthia Breazeal
Photo via Speakerpedia
Cynthia Breazeal is changing the world of engineering as we know it with robots. In graduate school at MIT, she developed Kismet, an expressive robot who interacted with humans. She has continued to be a pioneer in robotics as an associate professor at MIT where new robots are invented to interact with humans and improve daily life.
And, don’t forget to catch her fascinating TED Talk: The Rise of Personal Robots.
Zaha Hadid
Photo via Wikipedia
Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect, and the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Zaha is best known for her neo-futuristic style with curved lines and multiple perspective points. Even though she passed away in 2016, many of Zaha’s designs are being released posthumously, including the 2022 FIFA World Cup stadium.
If you’re looking for more of Zaha’s larger-than-life designs, watch these two video below for insights on her architecture style and the buildings she made around the world:
Maryam Mirzakhani
Photo via Konbini
Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal, which is the highest mathematics award in the world. You can think of it as the Nobel Prize for mathematics (because there isn’t a math Nobel Prize!). She received this award due to her remarkable achievements in new discovery in the Riemann Surface. You can learn more about it here.
Maryam hopes her award will inspire other budding female mathematicians to follow in her footsteps:
“This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians. I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years.”
Learn more about Maryam’s life and how she got inspired to be a mathematician:
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Stephanie Valente
Content Manager
