Category Archives: Advent 2018

Women in STEM advent calendar: Day 20 – Ellen Hutchins

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This winter, we are celebrating the festive season by honouring 25 amazing women in STEM, some of which you might not know of!

Ellen Hutchins

Botanist
17 Mar 1785 – 9 Feb 1815
Ireland

Ellen Hutchins’ extensive collection of rare flora underpinned the work of leading botanists of her day, who featured her work in their books. She studied non-flowering plants like seaweed and moss, drawing them in exquisite detail as well as drying and annotating herbarium samples. She collected over 1,100 specimens from Bantry Bay and discovered several new species, some of which are named after her.   

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Day 19 – Dr Rose Dieng-Kuntz

 

Women in STEM advent calendar: Day 19 – Dr Rose Dieng-Kuntz

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This winter, we are celebrating the festive season by honouring 25 amazing women in STEM, some of which you might not know of!

Dr Rose Dieng-Kuntz

Computer scientist
1956 – 30 Jun 2008
Senegal/France

Rose Dieng-Kuntz was the first black African woman to be admitted to France’s École Polytechnique. She was a senior research scientist at INRIA, where she led a team exploring online knowledge acquisition, the semantic web, and artificial intelligence, just a few years after the web was launched. She was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur in 2006.

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Day 18 – Sutayta Al-Mahāmali

 

Women in STEM advent calendar: Day 18 – Sutayta Al-Mahāmali

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This winter, we are celebrating the festive season by honouring 25 amazing women in STEM, some of which you might not know of!

Sutayta Al-Mahāmali

Algebraist and legal scholar
Died 987 CE
Iraq

Born in Baghdad, Sutayta Al-Mahāmali’s knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence informed her mathematics, and she became an authority on the algebraic inheritance formula which defined how much of an estate each heir received. She made original contributions to algebra and arithmetic which impressed later mathematicians and historians, but have now been lost to time.

For more on Sutayta Al-Mahāmali:

 

Day 17 – Whakaotirangi

 

Women in STEM advent calendar: Day 17 – Whakaotirangi

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This winter, we are celebrating the festive season by honouring 25 amazing women in STEM, some of which you might not know of!

Whakaotirangi

First known Māori horticulturalist
14th Century
Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Whakaotirangi led the Tainui Waka migration from Polynesia to New Zealand, bringing kūmara (sweet potato) and other seeds with her. She established experimental gardens at Aotea where she developed varieties of kūmara that were adapted to the new, colder climate. She also founded the first farm in the area, providing food security for the settlers, growing taro, para (fern), aute (mulberry) and karaka (a fruit tree).

For more on information on Whakaotirangi:

 

Day 16 – Etheldred Benett Day 18 – Sutayta Al-Mahāmali

 

Women in STEM advent calendar: Day 16 – Etheldred Benett

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This winter, we are celebrating the festive season by honouring 25 amazing women in STEM, some of which you might not know of!

Etheldred Benett

First female geologist
22 July 1776 – 11 Jan 1845
United Kingdom

Etheldred Benett collected and catalogued thousands of fossils, discovering several new species and the first mollusc fossils with soft tissue preserved. She provided access to vital specimens and stratigraphic data to her male peers, and sent specimens to museums around the UK. Assuming she was a man, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia granted her a doctorate from the University of St Petersburg.

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Day 15 – Professor Honoria Acosta-Sison Day 17 – Whakaotirangi