Black History Month Spotlight
Canadian Women in STEM
Trailblazing Women in Science
Women’s Firsts in STEM
What's the field
Inventions
Jobs in Science
100
Dr. Mae Jemison was the first black woman in space and the first actual astronaut to appear on this tv show.
What is Star Trek?
100
This Canadian astronaut and neurologist became the first Canadian woman in space after flying aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992.
Who is Roberta Bondar?
100
This term was coined in 1834 as a joke to describe Mary Somerville since the usual term of the times didn't apply to her. She was a physicist, geologist and chemist.
What is "scientist" instead of "man of science"?
100
Marie Curie became the first person in history to win two Nobel Prizes in different scientific fields — one awarded in physics and another in chemistry — in these two years
What are 1903 and 1911?
100
Dr. Hoda ElMaraghy is recognized as the first Canadian woman to obtain a PhD in 1994 in this field.
What is mechanical engineering?
100
This beloved beverage was created by Sumerian and Mesopotamian women almost 7000 years ago.
What is beer?
100
A scientist who studies the composition and structure of matter.
What is a chemist?
200
Myra Adele Logan, an American physician, surgeon and anatomist, was the first black woman to perform this procedure.
What is open-heart surgery?
200
A Nobel‑winning physicist, she’s the first Canadian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018), recognized for breakthroughs enabling modern ultrafast lasers.
Who is Donna Strickland?
200
Became the first woman to receive a PhD in engineering from Concordia University in 1989 and in 2018, the university's Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science was named in her honor,.
Who is Dr. Gina Cody?
200
Recognized as the first computer programmer for publishing an algorithm designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers using the hypothetical analytical engine in the late 1830's/ early 1840's.
Who is Ada Lovelace?
200
Described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener, Amalie Emmy Noether is coined as the most important woman in the history of.
What is Mathematics?
200
This invention, patented by Margret Wilcox in 1893 under her own name, was the forerunner of modern in-vehicle climate control systems.
What is the train car heater?
200
A specialist who designs and tests new technological systems.
What is an engineer?
300
Gladys West, an 21st century mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the earth, developed satellite geodesy models which were later incorporated into what modern tool?
What is Global Positioning System or GPS.
300
One of Canada’s earliest geologists, she spent her career at the Geological Survey of Canada and became the first female Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1938.
Who is Alice Wilson?
300
18th century mathematician credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus.
Who is Maria Gaetana Agnesi?
300
After being denied admission to medical school because she was a woman, Dr. Vera Peters, a Canadian biochemist, went on to discover the world’s first effective treatment for which disease.
What is Hodgkin’s disease (Hodgkin lymphoma)?
300
In the 1960s, the lead developer of NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer, Margaret Hamilton, introduced the term for the discipline she believed deserved the same respect as hardware engineering — a term now used worldwide to describe this field.
What is software engineering?
300
An inventor who devised a method to spread multiple layers of a monomolecular coating onto glass or metal. When applied to glass, it appears "invisible" since light reflected by the layers of film cancel the reflections created by the glass.
Who is Katharine Burr Blodgett?
300
This career involves designing medical tools, prosthetics, or imaging equipment.
What is a biomedical engineer?
400
Marian Croak, an engineer who worked for 3 decades at Bell Labs and AT&T, has filed over 200 patents and invented the technology that powers these modern platforms.
What is Zoom, FaceTime, and WhatsApp.
400
Canada’s first female nuclear physicist, she earned the first master’s in physics awarded to a woman at McGill (1901) and was an early investigator of radon.
Who is Harriet Brooks?
400
A late 4th century AD mathematician whose writings include commentary on Diophantus's "Arithmetica" which is a 13-volume ancient Greek algebra text containing more than 100 mathematical problems, as well as on Apollonius of Perga's work on conic sections.
Who is Hypatia of Alexandria?
400
She became the first woman to graduate from a Canadian medical school.
Who is Ann Augusta Stowe‑Gullen?
400
Gerty Cori was the third women to win a Noel Prize in Science and the first woman to be award the Nobel Prize in.
What is Physiology or Medicine for the "discovery of the course of catalytical conversion of glycogen"?
400
This Hollywood golden era actress invented and patented the frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology which laid the groundwork for modern WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS communications?
Who is Hedy Lamarr?
400
A scientist in this field studies how diseases spread and how to protect populations.
What is an epidemiologist?
500
This American chemist produced the first effective treatment for Hansen's disease, better known as Leprosy.
Who is Alice Ball?
500
In 1912, this botanist/geneticist became the first woman full professor at a Canadian university and founded McGill’s Genetics department
Who is Carrie Derick?
500
The six original programmers of the ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic digital computers.
Who are Kay McNulty, Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Frances Spence, Marlyn Meltzer, and Jean Bartik?
500
Nicknamed the "Mother of the Internet", she invented the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges.
Who is Radia Perlman?
500
Awarded in 2014 to Maryam Mirzakhani, the first Iranian woman to receive this prize, for her groundbreaking work on the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces. This honor is widely regarded as the most prestigious award in this field.
What is the Fields Medal in Mathematics?
500
Nystatin, developed by two women, Rachel Fuller Brown and Elizabeth Lee Hazeh, was a breakthrough drug designed to treat...
What is fungal infections?
500
A medical doctor who focuses on diagnosing and treating disease through tissue samples.
What is a pathologist?