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femalescientist

The Glorious Path of a Female Scientist

by خانم هاشمی February 5, 2025

Maryam Razzaghi Azar’s remarkable journey is a testament to the power of determination, dedication, and the pursuit of knowledge. From a young age, she balanced the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood while forging a distinguished career in science. Her story is not only one of personal achievement but also an inspiration for women around the world, proving that with resilience, it’s possible to break barriers, shape the future, and uphold national pride.

An Inspiring Journey of Success

The life story of Maryam Razzaghi Azar is an inspiring narrative of the achievements of Iranian women. She married at the age of 17, and despite having four children, she completed all her academic degrees. During her studies, she simultaneously focused on both her education and raising her children, even studying for exams with her child in her arms and a book in hand.

Breaking Barriers in Science

She is the first non-European scientist to become a member of the European Endocrine Society. By securing 200 votes from 200 members, she changed the association’s rules to allow the admission of non-European specialists.

This Iranian professor has earned numerous accolades throughout her career. In addition to being recognized as the best pediatric endocrinologist in the world, she has received various awards, including the title of Best University Professor in Iran, Best Female Specialist in the Country, and Top Researcher of Tehran Province. Her membership in the faculty of Iran University of Medical Sciences and her extensive involvement in research, treatment, and education are other key achievements.

Empowering the Next Generation

Razzaghi Azar has always advised medical students never to rely solely on their current education and to constantly seek the latest knowledge. She believes that marriage and family life not only do not hinder progress but can also bring more time and success to individuals. Her personal experience of managing both education and family serves as a role model for young girls.

A Role Model for National Pride

Maryam Razzaghi Azar’s prominent presence in international events and her fierce defense of her country’s national identity have made her a role model for the younger generation. This female doctor has proven that it is possible to be a successful scientist, a devoted wife, and an exemplary mother while defending national values. Her boldness and courage in advocating for the name of the Persian Gulf reflect her deep commitment to national identity and Iranian values.

en.jahanbanou.ir

From: imna

February 5, 2025 0 comment

Asia Women Pioneers

EK Janaki Ammal: The ‘nomad’ flower scientist India forgot

by Narges Mohammadi November 15, 2022

In March, the magnolias begin blooming at Wisley. For the next few weeks, rows of pink flowers dot the small town in Surrey in the UK, beckoning passers-by to stop and smell them.

Few know, however, that many of these blooms have Indian roots. They were planted by EK Janaki Ammal, a scientist who was born in the southern Indian state of Kerala in the 19th Century.

In a career spanning almost 60 years, Janaki studied a wide range of flowering plants and reworked the scientific classification of several families of plants.

“Janaki was not just a cytogeneticist – she was a field biologist, a plant geographer, a paleobotanist, an experimental breeder and an ethno-botanist and not in the least, an explorer,” says Dr Savithri Preetha Nair, a historian who has researched the scientist’s life for years.

It’s difficult, Dr Nair says, to name even one Indian male geneticist from the time who adopted such cross-disciplinary methodology in their research.

“She talked about biodiversity as early as the 1930s.”

Janaki lived an inspiring life, but for decades, her work went largely unappreciated and her contribution to science was barely acknowledged.

But this year – which also marks Janaki’s 125th birth anniversary – Dr Nair hopes to change that with an in-depth biography. The book, titled Chromosome Woman, Nomad Scientist: E.K. Janaki Ammal, A Life 1897-1984, was released earlier in November and is the product of 16 years of research spread across three continents.

It also marks, Dr Nair says, the beginning of “a grand project” of recovering stories about Indian women in science. “Until now, published sources on women scientists have focused on Europe and North America,” she says, adding that women from Asia and other regions “hardly figure anywhere”.

An extraordinary life

While Janaki’s professional achievements were numerous, her family members say the way she lived her life was also inspiring. “She thrived on human possibility,” says Geeta Doctor, a writer and Janaki’s grand-niece. “She was passionate about everything, completely liberated and always fixated on her work.”

Janaki was born in Tellichery (now Thalassery) in Kerala in 1897. Her father, EK Krishnan, was a high court sub-judge in the Madras Presidency, an administrative subdivision in British India.

She grew up in privilege, in a large family that lived in a house called Edam, which Ms. Doctor says was “the center of Janaki’s life”.

The two-story house had a grand piano, a sprawling library and spacious halls, its large windows overlooking a carefully-tended garden. Janaki belonged to Kerala’s Thiyya community, which is regarded as socially backward under the Hindu caste system.

But at Edam house, Janaki’s life was far removed from any prejudices, Ms. Doctor says.

That didn’t mean she did not face caste discrimination in her life, she adds – but she never allowed it to stop her. “If somebody displeased her, she would just move on.”

Touch of sweetness

After she finished school, Janaki moved to Madras (now Chennai) for higher education.

In 1924, she was teaching at a women’s college when she received a prestigious scholarship from the University of Michigan in the US.

Eight years later, she became the first Indian woman to be awarded a doctorate in botanical science. She returned to India shortly after, and taught botany in her home state before joining the Sugarcane Breeding Station at Coimbatore.

It was here that Janaki worked on cross-breeding sugarcane and with other plants to create a high-yielding variety of the crop that could flourish in India. She was the first person to successfully cross sugarcane and maize, which helped in understanding the origin and evolution of sugarcane, Dr Nair says.

A particular hybrid she created, the historian adds, went on to produce many commercial crosses for the institute but she didn’t receive credit for it.

In 1940 – just after World War Two had started – Janaki moved to London and joined the John Innes Horticultural Institution to continue her research.

The next few years were the most formative ones of her career. Five years later, she became the first woman scientist to be employed at the Royal Horticultural Society Garden at Wisley. It was also a time of hardships and hard work – Britain was facing the brunt of the war and food supplies were heavily rationed.

“But Janaki was unfazed,” Ms. Doctor says. “When the bombs fell, she would just dive under the table or sleep under the bed – all in a day’s work.” This attitude extended to her personal life, she says. “[The children of her family] were her equals and she expected us to keep up with her strict ways.”

But there was a sweeter side to her as well. Ms. Doctor recalls that her grand-aunt gave them amazing books and took them on delightful picnics.

And she was always brimming with stories – about Kapok, the small black-striped palm squirrel that she had smuggled in her sari to keep her company in London; and her doll Timothy, who fascinated everyone at Edam.

Ms. Doctor does not put dates to these memories – the past is simply the past – but she vividly remembers Janaki’s strident personality and commanding presence; her vibrant yellow saris; and her “energetic yet subtle” ways.

“She enjoyed life in its minutiae and also the grand scheme of things, but with a rigorous scientific mind.” Dr Nair says that this was also evident in her work, which was not about one seminal revelation, but a series of small-scale discoveries which contributed “to the grand history of human evolution”. “The questions she asked were fundamental ones about plants and man.”

Homecoming

In 1951, India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked Janaki to return to the country and help restructure the Botanical Survey of India (BSI). Janaki, who was greatly inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, went immediately.

“But her male colleagues refused to take commands from a woman and her attempts to re-organize BSI were turned down,” Dr Nair says, adding that Janaki was never entirely accepted at the institute.

This caused her great pain and she could never entirely recover from it. So, she took refuge in exploring the country in search of new plants.

In 1948, Janaki became the first woman to go on a plant-hunting expedition to Nepal which, according to her, was the most unique part of Asia botanically, says Dr Nair.

When she was 80, the Indian government awarded her a Padma Shri, one of the country’s highest civilian honours. She died seven years later, in 1984.

Ms. Doctor says that even though Janaki did not receive the recognition she deserved, she never lost her passion for studying life. “She would always say ‘my work will survive’ – and it did. “Dr. Nair agrees. “Janaki’s life continues to be a blazing testament to intellectual integrity.”

Source: BBC News

November 15, 2022 0 comment

Europe Women Pioneers

She’s made 1,750 Wikipedia bios for female scientists who haven’t gotten their due

by Narges Mohammadi October 18, 2022

‘Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have,’ said physicist Jess Wade

While all governmental officials around the world, claim they treasure and promote women in their countries-especially women pioneers- a young female English physicist decides to write biographies of more than 1000 female scientist.

Why? Because they are unknown and less paid attention to.

On a whim, Jess Wade typed out her first Wikipedia page five years ago. It was a biography of Kim Cobb, an American climatologist who — despite earning several scientific accolades — had never been written about on the popular online encyclopedia.

“I met her at a science event, and I was massively impressed,” said Wade, 33, a British physicist, who, after a quick search online, was stunned to see that Cobb had no profile on the public platform.

Wade had stumbled into something she found troubling: Cobb was one of countless deserving women whose names — and lengthy list of achievements — had yet to be chronicled on Wikipedia, the go-to site for an estimated 2 billion people a month who are seeking information about individuals, ideas and topics large and small.

Wikipedia is “used by pretty much everyone,” Wade said. She realized that “despite it being this incredibly important resource, it was suffering from a lack of content, particularly about women, but also about people of color.”

Jess Wade – Research fellow physicist at Imperial College London University

She decided to take matters into her own hands. Since 2017, Wade has written more than 1,750 Wikipedia pages for female and minority scientists and engineers whose accomplishments were not documented on the site.

Wade said there’s still much work to be done. Currently, just 19 percent of English Wikipedia biographies are of women.

“Having people know who you are means you get more opportunities,” Wade said, adding that she wants to “make sure people’s stories were on there and in the public domain.”

These kids ride a ‘bike bus’ to school. Residents line the streets and cheer.

Wade, a research fellow at Imperial College London, centers her work on Raman spectroscopy, a technique often employed in chemistry to identify molecules, among other uses. She has received several awards for her scientific contributions, and her own Wikipedia page is robust with her many achievements.

Wade has made it her mission to correct gender and racial biases in the science community, and advocate for women in STEM, who make up only 28 percent of the workforce. Her activity on Wikipedia has been chronicled in the press, and she has written about her work in various publications.

“Wikipedia is a really powerful way to give credit to people who, for a long time, have been written out of history,” she said. “Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have.”

“We do an awful lot of talking about underrepresentation,” Wade added, “but not enough acting on it.”

Most evenings, Wade sits at her desk for several hours, looking online for inspiring lesser-known scientists. There is no shortage of potential subjects, she said.

“I’ve never sat down and not had someone to write about,” said Wade, who scours archived documents, scientific papers, journals and social media in search of notable people without a Wikipedia page.

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She’ll often have 20 internet tabs open at one time, sifting through library archives and institutional sites to scrape together as much information as possible. Each profile takes a few hours to produce.

Since Wikipedia is intended to be an unbiased resource, Wade refrains from writing about anyone she knows personally, and she does not contact her subjects to collect further information.

While it can be a tedious task, it’s also uniquely fulfilling — and educational. “In the process, I actually learn so much science,” she said. “It’s a fun journey.”

About 15 biographies Wade has written have been deleted, including one on Clarice Phelps, a nuclear chemist who is recognized as the first Black woman to be involved with the discovery of a chemical element.

Wade took to social media to vent her frustrations, writing on Twitter:

“thanks to the @Wikipedia editor who spent their Wednesday night tagging the recent biographies I’ve started for #WomenInSTEM as not notable enough to be included in the encyclopedia. it’s really constructive and helpful work.”

Wade fought to get Phelps’s page restored, and ultimately succeeded.

“It’s really hard to get a public profile unless you have a big shiny award,” Wade said. On Wikipedia, which is written collaboratively by self-appointed volunteers around the world, edits are approved or denied by volunteer administrators, who use a set of notability criteria to determine which articles deserve to be published.

“You’re stuck in a spiral where you have to be double exceptional as a woman or person of color to fulfill these requirements,” Wade said.

Wade is not alone in her work to make Wikipedia more equitable. Emily Temple-Wood, 28, has also become known for writing Wikipedia pages about female scientists. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has taken note of their activism.

“Jess and Emily are among a fantastic group of women having a big impact on the quality of content of Wikipedia,” Wales told The Washington Post. “We are very eager to have a more diverse community and the people who are making that happen are heroes to me.”

Anusha Alikhan, vice president of communications at the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation — which hosts Wikipedia — wrote in an email to The Washington Post that the number of biographies about women is growing, a trend the company favors.

“Through the efforts of Dr. Jess Wade and other volunteer contributors, real progress is being made,” Alikhan said. “In the past three years the percentage of biographies on English Wikipedia that are about women has increased from 15 to 19 percent. That may seem like a small change, yet it represents more than 75,000 new biographies about women.”

This is in part because of Wade writing them, and also in part to her teaching other people how to write and edit them.

He started his career as a ramp agent. Now he’s a pilot.

She holds Wikipedia training workshops and “editathons” at conferences, schools and colleges, and has published papers on inequality in academia, including a recent article on Black physicists and engineers, which she co-authored with a group of scientists. She has also partnered with 500 Women Scientists, a grass-roots organization that promotes inclusivity and accessibility in science. “We need to do more to make the process more transparent and equitable for people,” she said.

What gives her the most joy, she said, is seeing a person’s name whose profile she created go on to earn a fellowship or award. She called it her “happiest thing.”

“I truly love seeing people being recognized and honored,” which, Wade said, is “made more possible by having a public profile on something like Wikipedia.” With every biography she writes, she hopes to tighten the gap a little more.

“I’m a tiny fish in a massive sea,” she said. “But I’ll keep doing everything I can to make science a more accessible and inclusive place to be.”

Source: The Washington Post

October 18, 2022 0 comment