Alice Augusta Ball (July 24, 1892 – December 31, 1916)

Alice Ball was an African American chemist who developed an injectable oil extract that was the most effective treatment of leprosy until the 1940s. She was also the first woman and first African American to graduate from the University of Hawaii with a master's degree.

 Ball attended Seattle High School and received top grades in the sciences. She graduated from Seattle High School in 1910 and entered the University of Washington to study chemistry. During her four years there, she earned bachelor degrees in both pharmaceutical chemistry and pharmacy. She also, with her pharmacy instructor, published a 10-page article in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society titled "Benzoylations in Ether Solution." Following her graduation, Ball was offered scholarships to attend the University of California Berkeley and the University of Hawaii. Ball decided to move back to Hawaii to pursue a master's degree in chemistry. In 1915, she became the first woman and first African American to graduate with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii.

In her postgraduate research career at the University of Hawaii, Ball investigated the chemical makeup and active principle of Piper methysticum (kava) for her master's thesis. While working on her thesis, Ball was asked by Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, an assistant surgeon at Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii, to help him develop a method to isolate the active chemical compounds in chaulmoogra oil. Chaulmoogra oil had previously been used in the treatment of Hansen's disease (leprosy) with mixed results. Most patients with Hansen's disease were hesitant to take the oil over the long term because it tasted bitter and tended to cause an upset stomach. Ball developed a process to isolate the ethyl esters of the fatty acids in the chaulmoogra oil so that they could be injected, but died before she could publish her results. Another chemist at the University of Hawaii, Arthur L. Dean, continued her work and began producing large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra extract. In 1918, a Hawaii physician reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that a total of 78 patients were released from Kalihi Hospital by the board of health examiners after treatment with injections. The isolated ethyl ester remained the preferred treatment for Hansen's disease until sulfone drugs were developed in the 1940s.

Alice Augusta Ball died on December 31, 1916, at the age of 24. She had become ill during her research and returned to Seattle for treatment a few months before her death. A 1917 newspaper article from the Pacific Commercial Advertiser suggested that the cause may have been chlorine poisoning that occurred while teaching. However, the cause of her death is unknown as her original death certificate was altered, giving the cause of death as tuberculosis.

Although her research career was short, Ball introduced a new treatment of Hansen's disease which continued to be used until the 1940s. The University of Hawaii did not recognize her work for nearly ninety years. In 2000, the university finally honored Ball by dedicating a plaque to her on the school's lone chaulmoogra tree behind Bachman Hall. On the same day, the former Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, declared February 29 "Alice Ball Day" which is now celebrated every four years. More recently, Ball was honored by the University of Hawaii Board of Regents with a Medal of Distinction in 2007.

Barbara Askins (1939 - Present)

Barbara S. Askins is an American chemist. She is best known for her invention of a method to enhance underexposed photographic negatives. This development was used extensively by NASA and the medical industry, and it earned Askins the title of National Inventor of the Year in 1978.  She was the first individual woman to earn this honor.

Barbara Askins (née Scott) was born in Belfast, Tennessee, in 1939. Originally a teacher, she returned to school to pursue a science career after having had a son and daughter. Askins earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Askins is a physical chemist who worked for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and is best known for her pioneering invention of a process in which "images on developed photographic emulsions can be significantly intensified by making the image silver radioactive and exposing a second emulsion to this radiation." The resulting print, known as an autoradiograph, reproduces the image with significant increases in density and contrast. Her groundbreaking method enhanced underexposed emulsions and increased the limits of photographic detection. In short, it made visible the invisible in photos that would otherwise have been useless. This was very useful for a number of applications, including the coaxing of data from underexposed space images—such as those peering deep into space as well as those highlighting the geology of other bodies in our solar system.

Askins' invention also led to significant advances in the field of medical technology. In particular, Askins' method prompted improvements in the development of X-ray images. Medical images that were 96 percent underexposed suddenly become readable; this meant that doctors could dramatically decrease the amount of X-ray radiation they gave to patients when running routine or emergency tests. Askins' process was also later used in the restoration of old photographs. Askins patented her invention in 1978 (U.S. patent No. 4,101,780), and NASA employed it extensively for its research and development work.

Askins is a member of the American Chemical Society, the Sigma Xi honorary research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the World Future Society.

Elsie Widdowson (October 21, 1906 – June 14, 2000)

Elsie Widdowson, was a British dietitian. She and Dr Robert McCance were responsible for overseeing the government-mandated addition of vitamins to food and war-time rationing in Britain during World War II.

Widdowson was born in Wallington, Surrey. Her father was a grocer's assistant. Her younger sister Eva Crane trained as a nuclear physicist but became a world renowned authority on bees.

She lived in Dulwich and attended Sydenham County Grammar School for Girls. She studied chemistry at Imperial College, London and graduated with a BSc in 1928, becoming one of the first women graduates of Imperial College. She did postgraduate work at the Department of Plant Physiology at Imperial College, receiving a PhD in chemistry in 1931 for her thesis on the carbohydrate content of apples. She did further research with Professor Charles Dodds at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at Middlesex Hospital, on the metabolism of the kidneys, and also received a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute.

Dodds suggested that Widdowson should consider specialising in dietetics, and she started a postgraduate diploma at King's College, London. Widdowson met Robert McCance in the kitchens at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1933, where she was studying industrial cooking techniques as part of her diploma on dietetics. McCance was a junior doctor researching the chemical effects of cooking as part of his clinical research on the treatment of diabetes. Widdowson pointed out an error in McCance's analysis of the fructose content of fruit, and they both realised that there were significant errors in the standard nutritional tables. They became scientific partners and worked together for the next 60 years, until McCance died in 1993.

McCance became a Reader in Medicine at Cambridge University in 1938, and Widdowson joined his team at the Department of Experimental Medicine in Cambridge. They worked on the chemical composition of the human body, and on the nutritional value of different flours used to make bread. Widdowson also studied the impact of infant diet on human growth. They studied the differing effects from deficiencies of salt and of water, and produced the first tables to compare the different nutritional content of foods before and after cooking. Their work became of national importance during the Second World War. Widdowson and McCance were co-authors of The Chemical Composition of Foods, first published in 1940 by the Medical Research Council. Their book "McCance and Widdowson" became known as the dietician's bible and formed the basis for modern nutritional thinking.

Widdowson and McCance and their colleagues became their own experimental subjects, eating a starvation diet of bread, cabbage and potatoes for several months to find out if wartime rationing - with little meat, dairy or calcium intake - would affect their health. They showed that good health could be supported by a very restricted diet, with calcium supplements, and their work became the basis of the wartime austerity diet promoted by the Minister of Food Lord Woolton.

Widdowson and McCance headed the first mandated addition of vitamins and mineral to food. Their work began in the early 1940s, when calcium was added to bread. They were also responsible for formulating the war-time rationing of Britain during World War II.

Widdowson and McCance were employed by the Medical Research Council from 1946, and spent most of their working life in Cambridge. They were consulted on the rehabilitation of the victims of severe starvation in Nazi concentration camps, and visited Holland, Germany and Denmark in early 1946 to study of the impact of the poor wartime diet on the people in Nazi-occupied territories. Widdowson followed up this work in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by studying malnourishment in Africa. Research on animals showed that malnourishment in early life led to lifelong effects on growth and health.

Widdowson showed that a new-born human infant has 16 per cent of its weight as fat, much greater than the one or two per cent of other species. She also studied the importance of the nutritional content of infant diets, particularly trace vitamins and minerals in natural and artificial human milk. Her work led to revised standards for breast milk substitutes in the UK in the 1980s.

Widdowson became head of the Infant Nutrition Research Division at the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory in Cambridge in 1966. She formally retired in 1972, but continued academic research in the Department of Investigative Medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital. She was president of the Nutrition Society from 1977 to 1980, president of the Neonatal Society from 1978 to 1981, and president of the British Nutrition Foundation from 1986 to 1996. She became a Fellow of Imperial College in 1994.

She became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976 and was appointed a CBE in 1979. She was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1993, which is awarded for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry, or religion.

The British Nutrition Foundation published a book in 1993 to celebrate 60 years of her partnership with McCance, McCance & Widdowson. A Scientific Partnership of 60 Years, 1933–1993, edited by Margaret Ashwell.

Widdowson lived in Barrington near Cambridge for over 50 years. She ate a simple diet, including butter and eggs, and attributed her longevity to good genes: her father lived to 96 and her mother to 107. She died at Addenbrooke's Hospital after suffering a stroke while on holiday with her sister in Ireland. She never married.

Maria "Sister of Moses" (fl. 1st. Cent. BCE)

(fl. 1st. Cent. BCE/CE) CHEMICAL ENGINEER OR ALCHEMIST? THE PROOF MAY BE IN THE PUDDING, BUT THIS 'SISTER OF MOSES' HAS A LIFE STORY AS SHROUDED IN MIST AS THE KITCHEN DEVICE NAMED FOR HER.

'Alchemy', it calls to mind a mystic in a wizard's robe distilling gold from dross. But ancient alchemy was the equivalent of modern chemical engineering, and alchemists expanded the frontiers of science. Alchemist Maria the Jewess is thought to have lived in Egypt between the first and third centuries A.D. Founding mother of Egyptian and Hellenistic alchemy, she was also honored as 'Maria the Prophetissa' and a 'Sister of Moses'.