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.

Elsa Theresa Andersson (April 27, 1897 - January 22, 1922)

Elsa Theresa Andersson, Swedish aviation pioneer, called the chipper Scanian. She was the first Swedish woman to receive a pilot's license.

Andersson was born in St. Peter's Farm in Strövelstorpsvägen near Angelholm , Skane , Sweden, daughter of farmer Edward Andersson and his wife, Alma Svensson.

In her early youth, she became fascinated by flight and studied in the Enoch Thulin flight school at Ljungbyhed . She became the school's 101st student and the last student because the school was closed down in connection with the company's bankruptcy in 1920. On 30 June 1920 she received her pilots license and became the first Swedish woman.

She was not content with this and dreamed of going further and train as a skydiver. The only expert in the area of Sweden, Raoul Thörnblad , refused teach women the art. Andersson then traveled to Berlin in 1921 to go to Otto Heineckes parachute school. The course included two student jump and theoretical training.

Andersson made ​​her first exhibition jump October 2, 1921 outside Kristianstad and her next jump took place a week later outside Helsingborg .

Her third jump occurred before several thousand spectators at Edö outside Askersund January 22, 1922 pilot Albin Lundberg carried her up to about 650 meters, where she jumped. The parachute did not open immediately, because the cord wrapped around her arm. She tried to resolve the critical situation but failed, she struck down in a wooded mountainous area along the road to Edö and died immediately upon impact. On the site traveled Royal Swedish Aero Club is a memorial in 1926.

Elsa Andersson is buried in Strövelstorpsvägen .

Émilie du Châtelet (17 December 1706 – 10 September 1749)

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet was a French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her crowning achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica. The translation, published posthumously in 1759, is still considered the standard French translation.

Voltaire, one of her lovers, declared in a letter to his friend King Frederick II of Prussia that du Châtelet was "a great man whose only fault was being a woman". She was also romantically linked with two other influential philosophers of the period, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertius (1698-1759) and Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51).

Du Châtelet's education has been the subject of much speculation, but nothing is known with certainty.

Among their acquaintances was Fontenelle, the perpetual secretary of the French Académie des Sciences. Émilie's father Louis-Nicolas, recognizing her early brilliance, arranged for Fontenelle to visit and talk about astronomy with her when she was 10 years old. Émilie's mother, Gabrielle-Anne de Froulay, was brought up in a convent, at the time the predominant educational institution available to French girls and women. While some sources believe her mother did not approve of her intelligent daughter, or of her husband's encouragement of Émilie's intellectual curiosity, there are also other indications that her mother not only approved of du Châtelet's early education, but actually encouraged her to vigorously question stated fact.

In either case, such encouragement would have been seen as unusual for parents of their time and status. When she was small, her father arranged training for her in physical activities such as fencing and riding, and as she grew older, he brought tutors to the house for her. As a result, by the age of twelve she was fluent in Latin, Italian, Greek and German; she was later to publish translations into French of Greek and Latin plays and philosophy. She received education in mathematics, literature, and science. Her mother Gabrielle-Anne was horrified at her progress and fought Louis-Nicolas at every step, once attempting to have Émilie sent to a convent.

In 1733, at the age of 26, du Châtelet resumed her mathematical studies. Initially, she was tutored in algebra and calculus by Moreau de Maupertuis, a member of the Academy of Sciences. Although mathematics was not his forte, Maupertuis had received a solid education from Johann Bernoulli, who also taught Leonhard Euler. By 1735, however, du Châtelet had turned for her mathematical training to Alexis Clairaut, a mathematical prodigy known best for Clairaut's equation and Clairaut's theorem.

Scientific Research and Publications

Criticizing Locke and the debate on thinking matter
In her writings, Emilie du Châtelet criticizes John Locke’s philosophy in an elementary respect. She emphasizes the necessity of the verification of knowledge through experience: Locke’s idea of the possibility of thinking matter is […] abstruse. Her critique on Locke originates in her Bernard de Mandeville commentary [on the Fable of the Bees]. She confronts us with her resolute statement in favor of universal principles which precondition human knowledge and action, and maintains that this kind of law is innate. […] Du Châtelet claims the necessity of a universal presupposition, because if there is no such beginning, all our knowledge is relative. In that way, Du Châtelet rejects John Locke’s aversion of innate ideas and a priori principles. She also reverses Locke’s negation of the principle of contradiction, which would constitute the basis of her methodic reflections in the Institutions. On the contrary, she affirms her arguments in favor of the necessity of a priori and universal principles. “two and two could then make as well 4 as 6” if a priori principles did not exist.

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis’ and Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s reference to Du Châtelet's deliberations on motion and free will, on thinking matter and numbers and on the way to do metaphysics indicate the importance of her reflections. She rebuts the claim to finding truth by using mathematical laws, […] and argues against Maupertuis.

Heat and light
Dissertation Sur La Nature et La Propagation du feu, 1744
In 1737, Châtelet published a paper entitled Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu, based upon her research into the science of fire, that predicted what is today known as infrared radiation and the nature of light.

Institutions de Physique
Her book Institutions de Physique (“Lessons in Physics”) appeared in 1740; it was presented as a review of new ideas in science and philosophy to be studied by her thirteen-year-old son, but it incorporated and sought to reconcile complex ideas from the leading thinkers of the time.

Forces Vives
Réponse de Madame la Marquise du Chastelet, 1741
In 1741, du Châtelet published a small book entitled Réponse de Madame la Marquise du Chastelet, a la lettre que M. de Mairan. Dortous de Mairan, secretary of the Academy of Sciences, had published a set of arguments addressed to her regarding the appropriate mathematical expression for forces vives. Du Châtelet presented a spirited point by point rebuttal of de Mairan's arguments, which caused him to withdraw from the controversy.

Advocacy of kinetic energy
Although in the early 18th century the concepts of force and momentum had been long understood, the idea of energy as a transferrable currency between different systems, was still in its infancy and would not be fully resolved until well into the 19th Century. Émilie du Châtelet contributed towards this resolution when, inspired by the theories of Gottfried Leibniz, she repeated and publicized an experiment originally devised by Willem 's Gravesande in which balls were dropped from different heights into a sheet of soft clay. Each ball's kinetic energy - as indicated by the quantity of material displaced - was shown conclusively to be proportional to the square of the velocity. Earlier workers like Newton and Voltaire had all believed that "energy" (so far as they understood the concept at all) was indistinct from momentum and therefore proportional to velocity. In classical physics the correct formula is E_k = \frac12 mv^2, where E_k is the kinetic energy of an object, m its mass and v its velocity.) Some commentators have perceived this as a precursor to the c^2 multiplier in Albert Einstein's mass-energy formula, and indeed \frac12 mv^2 is the first term in the binomial expansion of the relativistic kinetic energy expression.

Translation and commentary on Newton's Principia
In 1749, the year of her death, she completed the work regarded as her outstanding achievement: her translation into French, with her commentary, of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, including her derivation of the notion of conservation of energy from its principles of mechanics. Published ten years after her death, today du Châtelet's translation of Principia Mathematica is still the standard translation of the work into French.

Other contributions

Development of financial derivatives
Much later in life, she once lost the huge sum of 84,000 francs—some of it borrowed—in one evening at the table at the court of Fontainebleau, to card cheats. To quickly raise the money to pay back her debts, she devised an ingenious financing arrangement similar to modern derivatives, whereby she paid tax collectors a fairly low sum for the right to their future earnings (they were allowed to keep a portion of the taxes they collected for the King), and promised to pay the court gamblers part of these future earnings.

Biblical scholarship
Du Châtelet wrote a critical analysis of the Bible, specifically the book of Genesis and those of the New Testament.

Discourse on happiness
Du Châtelet also wrote a monograph, Discours sur le bonheur, on the nature of happiness, both in general and specialized to women.

Translation of the Fable of the Bees, and other works
Du Châtelet translated The Fable of the Bees in a free adaptation. She also wrote works on optics, rational linguistics, and the nature of free will.

Support of women's education
In her first independent work, the preface to her translation of the Fable of the Bees, du Châtelet argues strongly for women's education, particularly a strong secondary education as was available for young men in the French collèges. By denying women a good education, she argues, society prevents women from becoming eminent in the arts and sciences.

Legacy

Although the classical mechanics of du Châtelet are not approached with the same accuracy as Einstein's concept of mass and velocity,[20] in his famous equation for the energy equivalent of matter E = mc² (where c represents the velocity of light), modern biographers and historians continue to see a neat accord with the principle E ∝ mv² first recognised by du Châtelet from over 150 years before. It should be emphasized, however, that from a physical point of view, du Châtelet's principle is a correct assessment of the kinetic energy in classical mechanics, and is the first term in an expansion of Einstein's mass–energy equivalence.

A main-belt minor planet and a crater on Venus have been named in her honor, and she is the subject of three plays: Legacy of Light by Karen Zacarías; Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight by Lauren Gunderson and Urania: the Life of Emilie du Châtelet by Jyl Bonaguro. The opera Émilie of Kaija Saariaho is about the last moments of her life.

Du Châtelet is often represented in portraits with mathematical iconography, such as holding a pair of dividers or a page of geometrical calculations. In the early nineteenth century, a French pamphlet of celebrated women (Femmes célèbres) introduced a possibly apocryphal story of du Châtelet's childhood. According to this story, a servant fashioned a doll for her by dressing up wooden dividers as a doll; however, du Châtelet undressed the dividers and intuiting their purpose, made a circle with them.

Elsa Beata Bunge (18 April 1734–19 January 1819)

Elsa Beata Bunge (Elsa Beata Wrede) was a Swedish, botanist, writer and noble.

Elsa Beata was the daughter of statesman and noble, baron Fabian Wrede, and Katarina Charlotta Sparre. In 1761, she married the statesman Count Sven Bunge. She was an enthusiastic amateur botanist and had large greenhouses set up at her manor Beateberga; the name of the estate means "The Mountain of Beata". Bunge was connected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and corresponded with Carl von Linné. She became well known as a botanist and wrote the botanical work Om vinrankors beskaffenhet efter sjelfva naturens anvisningar (English: "About the nature of vine grapes by direction from nature itself") with tables (1806), the work for which she was recognised as a botanist.

As a person, Countess Bunge aroused attention because of her way of dressing as a man, with the exception of a skirt. A lot of stories and anectodets are told about her. During the reign of Gustav III (1771–1792), the monarch noticed a peculiarly dressed woman in the Royal Swedish Opera and enquired who she was. Bunge replied : "Tell His Majesty that I am the daughter of statesman Fabian Wrede and married to statesman Sven Bunge."

She died on Beateberga manor in Röö Parish in 1819.

Margaret Eliza Maltby (10 December 1860 – 3 May 1944)

Margaret Eliza Maltby was an American physicist notable for measurement of high electrolytic resistances and conductivity of very dilute solutions. She was born in Bristolville, Ohio, and died in New York City.

Most of her significant research occurred before she began teaching at Barnard College, a women's college founded in 1889, where her involvement in administration left her little time for research. Maltby was a mentor to her students, vigorously extending efforts to support their professional advancement. During her 31 years of teaching at Barnard, and the nearly 20 years that she was chair of the physics department, Maltby took a great interest in her students' learning, even introducing physics courses for non-physicists, including probably the first course in the physics of music.

There are many examples of her efforts to support the professional advancement of female physicists. As chair of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Committee on Fellowships, Maltby administered funds that supported women actively engaged in physics research during the early part of their careers. Since women were not eligible for many research fellowships because of their gender, the AAUW Fellowships were critical for maintaining a cadre of women physicists. Maltby's enormous effort contributed to the Fellowships' preservation.

Despite the college's Dean's Rule that stated, "the College cannot afford to have women on the staff to whom the college work is secondary; the College is not willing to stamp with approval a woman to whom self-elected home duties can be secondary," Maltby supported women's efforts to do both. As chair of the Physics Department, she vigorously opposed the forced resignation of Harriet Brooks when she planned to marry.

Physicist and History of Science interviewer Katharine Sopka wrote that her students greatly admired her. One wrote her that, "Professor Maltby was my mentor--a gracious lady--a friend and a counselor. Her most memorable advice to me was not to forgo marriage for a career--which advice I followed and lived happily ever after." Maltby, never married, although she adopted the orphaned son of a close friend in 1901.

The first edition of American Men of Science, published in 1906, recognized her name with star to note her as one of the country's top scientists.

Education

A.B. Oberlin College 1882
A.M. Oberlin College 1891
B.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1891
Ph.D. Göttingen University 1895 under Friedrich Kohlrausch.

In 1887, Maltby enrolled as a "special student" at MIT because the institution did not accept female students. She was the first woman to earn a B.S. degree at MIT in 1891. She was the first American woman allowed to take a degree at University of Göttingen in 1895. She was also the first woman to receive a PhD from Göttingen University; in fact, she was the first woman to obtain a physics PhD from any German university. She completed a year of postdoctoral work at Göttingen.

Career

1889-93 Chair, Physics Department, Wellesley College
1897-98 Instructor, Lake Erie College
1898-99 Research Assistant, Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, Charlottenburg, Germany
1900-03 Instructor, Chemistry Department, Barnard College, Columbia University
1903-10 Adjunct Professor, Physics Department, Barnard College
1910-13 Assistant Professor, Barnard College
1913-31 Associate Professor and Chair, Physics Department, Barnard College

Invited back to Germany in 1898, Maltby worked under Friedrich Kohlrausch and helped set the methodology in the field of conductivity.

Eva Ekeblad (10 July 1724 – 15 May 1786)

Eva Ekeblad, née Eva De la Gardie, was a Swedish agronomist, scientist, Salonist and noble (Countess). Her most known discovery was to make flour and alcohol out of potatoes (1746). She was the first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1748).

Life

Eva De la Gardie was born to statesman count Magnus Julius De la Gardie (1668–1741) and the amateur politician and salonist Hedvig Catharina Lilje.

Eva was at the age of 16 (1740) married to the statesman count Claes Claesson Ekeblad, and became the mother of seven children (one son and six daughters). The couple had a residence in Stockholm and an estate in Västergötland and belonged to the very highest circles of the Swedish nobility. Eva Ekeblad was renowned for her charity to the poor.

Her spouse was often absent, and Eva was responsible for the management for the estates and supervised the bailiffs and the country-assemblys of Mariedal and Stola Manor. In Stockholm, she hosted a culturel salon and was described as "one of few aristocratic ladies whose honour was considered untainted". The first concert performings of the mass music of Johan Helmich Roman were performed in her salon at the Ekeblad palace.

Scientific Activity

Ekeblad discovered how to make flour and alcohol out of potatoes (1746). She thereby made potatoes, a plant introduced in Sweden in 1658 but until then only cultivated in the greenhouses of the aristocracy, a part of the basic food supply. This greatly improved eating habits and reduced the hunger epidemics. Previously, alcohol had been made by wheat, rye and barley, but now, more of that could be saved to make bread instead.

She also discovered a method of bleaching cotton textile and yarn with soap (1751), and of replacing the dangerous ingredients in the cosmetics of the time by making powder from potatoes (1752). She was said to have advertised the use of potatoes by using the flowers of the plant as hair ornaments.

Eva wrote to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences about her first discovery in 1746. In 1748, she became the first woman elected to the Academy, although she never took part in any of the Academy's meeting. After 1751, the Academy came to refer to her as an honorary rather than a full member, as the statutes confined membership to men.

Maria Christina Bruhn (1732–1802)

Maria Christina Bruhn was a Swedish inventor, likely to be the first patented female inventor of her country.

Bruhn was the eldest of three daughters of the book printer Johan Bruhn (d. 1742). She took over a tapestry- and wallpaper manufactury after the death of her widowed mother Inga Christina in 1751. In 1771, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences offered a reward for anyone who would be able to produce a suitable package for gunpowder for the army. During her work manufacturing paint and preparing paper, she had been inspired to the idea which she presented to the academy March 2, 1774. In a letter form 1783, she explained that she often experimented during her work. The men of the Academy expressed deep skepticism against the invention of a woman, and it took twelve years of testing, during which she had to fight among others the attempts of Anrep, General of the Artillery, to take credit for her invention, before the ministry of war approved it, recognized her as its inventor and gave her the reward in 1786. Her invention was long used within the Swedish army.