10 Super Star Scientists You’ve Never Heard Of 

(Hint: They’re Not Men)               

By Thea Fiore-Bloom, PhD

 

Did you know that in the eleventh century, Italy had female doctors and female scientists, who instructed female students in the latest methods in eye surgery?*1

I’m not making this up.

Italy’s attitude toward educating women in medicine was one of the most advanced in history from the 1100s through the 1800s.

And it’s surging forward again today.

Female geniuses have cut a Milky Way-like swath through the firmament of science.

Yet, few of us know about any of these women.

Are you up for meeting some of the world’s greatest scientists, almost no one’s heard of?

To do this, we’ll need to take a ten-stop imaginary voyage.

We’ll begin in the Middle Ages and end in 2021.

Ready?

Let’s fly through time.

 

Time Tour – Italian Style

If you were a woman who longed to practice medicine in the late 1100s, your dream destination would have been southern Italy.

Why?

Because if you had journeyed to southern Italy, you might have joined the Salerno School.

The Salerno School sprang up there because of a perfect storm of historic events.  

Right around that time, Latin translations of Islamic and Greek medical texts were starting to pelt the shores of Sicily and North Africa; two places where both men and women were allowed to contribute to the medical renaissance that took place there.

In Salerno, you would have wanted to study under a certain, famous female physician named Trotula.

 

 

Our First Great Female Scientist 

Trotula of Salerno (late 11^th-12^th century) was an expert diagnostician and clinician.

Ever heard of a book called The Trotula?

It’s one of the most important medical texts of the Middle Ages.

Actually, it’s a trio of texts.

The Trotula is the collected teachings and writings of doctors and healers, starring the work of Trotula of Salerno.

Trotula was famous for her expertise in the then-perplexing treatment of birth complications.

 

But what would a medically inclined gal like you do after the eventual decline of the Salerno School in the 1300s?

Perhaps you hocked your trousseau and rode to Northern Italy?

Since it was there, you could study at one of pre-modern Europe’s most prominent institutions of learning.

The University of Bologna.

Here, you would become a scholar at the place where both women and science were reaching unprecedented heights in the Western World.

At the university, you may have met the Persiceto-born lady anatomy professor  Alessandra Giliani.

 

Our Second Great Italian Female Scientist 

Alessandra Giliani (1307-1326) began her career as a surgical assistant to Mondino de Luzzi (believed to be the seated figure holding the big book in the image here).

Look closely to notice Mondino is watching a woman (believed to be Giliani) expertly working away at a cadaver.)

Giliani was famous for being the only known female “qualified prosecutor” (or pathologist) in Europe at the time.

It was the brilliant Giliani who invented a method of replacing cadaver blood with dyes to better observe the intricacies of the human circulatory system.

This invention (like much of women’s intellectual and artistic work from the past)  can no longer be found and is lost to history.

However, an antique plaque detailing Giliani’s contribution to medicine still exists.

You can see it for yourself in the church of San Pietro e Marcellino in Rome.

Let’s say you were born later.

Say… maybe in the 1400s.  

Lucky you.

Because you would have gotten to study under Naples-born science star, Dorotea Bucca.

 

Our Third Great Italian Female Scientist

Dr. Dorotea Bucca (1360-1436) held not one, but two,  chairs at the University of Bologna for forty years.

The first chair was in medicine and the second, philosophy.

Few records remain of Bucca’s work, but both she and Trotula are honored guests at one of my favorite works of art, The Dinner Party by artist Judy Chicago.

The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings.

Each place setting commemorates an important woman from history.

If you are lucky enough to see The Dinner Party in person, eyeball 999 other heroines’ names inscribed on the ceramic tiles that grace the floor of the exhibit.

 

But we need to move on to the 1600s.

A time when you might have headed to Venice to go to the University of Padua and be close to a newborn star, who is our fourth scientist.

 

Our Fourth Great Italian Female Scientist 

Mathematician and polymath Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684) has been compared to Leonardo DaVinci.

Before the age of eleven, the “prodigy of Venice” dazzled audiences with pyrotechnic displays of genius in math, music, and astronomy.

And she did it in six languages.

Around 1677, Piscopia astonished her University of Padua doctoral examiners by breezing through every difficult question tossed her way.

In 1678, over twenty thousand spectators packed into Padua Cathedral to hear Piscopia’s lecture.

Afterward, the crowd was said to have cheered wildly as she was crowned with laurel and became one of the first female doctoral recipients.

Like many of our ten here, Cornaro decided against marriage and children in favor of pursuing her research.

But not so for our fifth scientist, the 18th-century’s Laura Bassi.

 

Fifth Great Italian Female Scientist

Physicist Laura Bassi (1711-1788) played a crucial role in the introduction of Newtonian physics to Italy.

 

Bassi published twenty-eight articles on physics and hydraulics during her tenure as a professor and science chair at Bologna’s University.

And Bassi did this while rearing eight children.

In 1745, the pope elected Bassi to an elite roundtable of scholars known as the Benedettini.

Bassi taught experimental physics and electricity at the Institute of Sciences from 1745 until she died in 1788. 

But what if all you cared about was math?

Well, our sixth female scientist and author would have been your ideal mentor.

 

Sixth Great Italian Female Scientist

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) is often credited as being the most important female mathematician since Hypatia.

In 1748, the Milanese Agnesi published the first book in the world that addressed both differential and integral calculus.

Her book was entitled Instituzioni Analitiche Ad Uso Della Gioventù Italiana.

It’s still in print today. 

Agnessi wrote so comprehensively and accessibly that she rocketed to fame throughout Europe.

But what if you dreamt of blossoming as a scientist in the post-Agnesi era?

No dice, my friend.

The 1800s imposed strongly defined gender roles that effectively barred women from enjoying formal scientific education.

It would take WWII to disrupt the suppression.

One innovator, our seventh scientist, miraculously managed to make a great contribution anyway.

Let’s meet her.

 

Seventh Great Italian Female Scientist

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was a math prodigy, scientist, physician, and philosopher from Chiaravalle, Italy.

Maria traveled the globe to promote a science-based teaching method she invented.

The Montessori method was built upon years of research the doctor conducted with children in Rome’s San Lorenzo district.

Her method encouraged independent thinking.  

And it changed the nature of childhood education forever.

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know.

Larry Page, Sergey Brin (the founders of Google), and Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) were asked what they owed their inventiveness to.

Did they answer, “We owe it all to our Ivy League education”?

Nope.

All three said they absolutely owed their inventiveness/success to their Montessori education as kids.

 

Grazie Maria.

I had no idea Montessori also traveled the world to advocate for an end to war.

Or that she was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

You may not know that our eighth great female scientist actually did nab a Nobel in 1986.

 

Eighth Great Female Italian Scientist 

Nobel Prize-winning neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 – 2013) was a Turin-born Italian-Jewish doctor.

She bravely defied Nazi-imposed racial laws to advance science.

Levi-Montalcini’s and Stanley Cohen’s research resulted in the discovery of the Nerve Growth Factor, a chemical vital to science’s understanding of cell growth and organ regeneration.

She and her identical twin sister (the painter Paola Levi-Montalcini) constantly encouraged one another.

Both said they thought about their work through a dual lens of art and science.

Before the Nobel, the scientific world largely ignored Levi-Montalcini’s contributions.

But now her works are seen as key in the fight against cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.

Levi-Montalcini rocked Italian-made silk suits until her death at 103.

However, our 9th super-scientist, unlike Levi-Montalcini, was not “fashion forward”.

Ninth Great Italian Female Scientist 

The practical and charming astrophysicist Margherita Hack (1922 – 2013) wore an overcoat-turned-inside-out for her bridal gown.

Margherita loved telling Italian reporters that her “first and last” appearance in church was in 1944 to marry childhood playmate Aldo De Rosa (to whom she remained wed for seventy years).

This full professor of astronomy at the University of Trieste (1964-1992) was a stellar astronomer.

In both senses of the term.

She contributed to the spectral classification of stars.

The Florentine’s bold piloting of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory (1964-87) resulted in global recognition for the institution.

Margherita was an outspoken vegetarian and atheist with an impish wit. 

Her ability to explain complex theorems in a down-to-earth way led to her appearing often on Italian TV. 

Hack won a suitcase full of fancy awards.

But rumor has it that what thrilled her was when the European Space Agency named an asteroid (8558 Hack) after her.

That was right around the time that Time Magazine declared our tenth and final female scientist as runner-up to President Barack Obama for “Person of the Year.”

 

Our 10th and Final Great Female Italian Scientist

Fabiola Gianotti Ph.D. (1960-)

In 2012, Roman-born, top experimental particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti announced something big to the world.

She’d led her Hadron Collider team of thousands at CERN to discover the elusive Higgs boson particle.

Scholars say her recent isolation of this subatomic element “completed the standard model of particle physics.”

Not bad, right?

Fermilab’s director, Nigel Lockyer, stated, “Fabiola is a superb scientist, led ATLAS to a great discovery, and is respected and well known around the world.”

In fact, Gianotti became the first woman director of CERN in 2016.

And, at its 195th Session in 2019, the CERN Council selected Gianotti for an unprecedented⁷ second term as Director-General.

Her second five-year term began on January 1, 2021, and will go on until 2025.

Dr. Gianotti is well aware of the current disparity between women and men in the sciences.

She insists: “In the future, we will have to be very vigilant that young female scientists have the same opportunities as their male colleagues.”

So take note, if you’re a woman in the 21^st century who longs to study science, your dream destination may once again be Italy.

Here’s a final inspiration for the road: a quote from the first African American female astronaut in space.

“Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity.

It’s your place in the world; it’s your life.

Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.” 

– Mae Jemison

Endnotes

*1 One example of a female eye surgeon who practiced in Florence in the 1400s was Constance Calenda.  Another Italian female eye surgeon of the 15^th century was Calrice di Durisio. 

What do you think?

Who is your favorite unsung or underappreciated woman?

Let me know in the comments below.

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