Thread by @biomedhistories

Happy International women’s day. To celebrate #IWD we are sharing a series of tweets with the profile of different #WomeninScience who through the ages have played a significant, but often forgotten role, in biomedical science and healthcare

Our first profile is that of Agelina Fanny Hesse (1850-1934), an overlooked heroine of modern microbiology who was the first to propose the use of arar, in 1881 to grow bacteria which is now used everywhere as a means to study and identify microbes. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/exhi…
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Next is Rosalind Franklin, the x-ray crystallographer who helped to uncover the double-helix structure of DNA. JD Bernal declared her x-ray photos of DNA to be ‘amongst the most beautiful photos of any substance ever taken’. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

Another important woman, all too often overshadowed by her husband, Joshua, is Esther Lederberg, a major pioneer of bacterial genetics who discovered the lambda phage, a bacterial virus now used as a tool to study gene regulation and genetic combination. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

Beverly Griffin, earned two doctorates in chemistry when it was unusual to pursue a scientific career and went on to uncover the molecular biology of two viruses that cause cancer - the polyomavirus and Epstein Barr Virus. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

Rita Levi-Montalcini is another standout. Awarded the #NobelPrize for discovering body's chemical tools that direct cell growth and build nerves, research she was forced to begin in her bedroom because Mussolini banned Jews from academia. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

Then there is Janet Mertz, who was pivotal to the discovery of the first enzyme for easily joining together DNA from different species and designed the first protocol which underpinned the development of the first recombinant DNA cloned in bacteria. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

Today #bioinformatics is a critical tool to understand the origins and spread of #SARSCov2. This would not be possible without Margaret Dayhoff, who pioneered the application of maths and computational techniques to sequences proteins and nucleic acids. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

In the age of COVID it also seems appropriate to highlight the work of June Almeida, the major pioneer of electron microscopy who took the first image of a human coronavirus. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

With attention now focused on the importance of antibodies for countering COVID-19, it is hard to ignore the work of Brigette Askonas who made significant contributions to the understanding of the origin and synthesis of antibodies. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

One of the key founders of developmental genetics is the #NobelPrize winner Christianne Nüsslein-Volhard, whose painstaking work on the development of fruit fly embryos laid the foundation for understanding genetic defects in human embryos. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

In 2020 Jennifer Doudna and Emanuelle Charpentier made the headlines by winning the #NobelPrize for their development of #CRISPR/Cas9 which has revolutionised the scale and speed at which gene editing can now be carried out. whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/peop…

In the last year a number of women have played a leading role in the development of the COVID-19 vaccines. This includes Sarah Gilbert, behind the Oxford/AZ vaccine and Katalin Kariko who pioneering the technology now being used in a number of mRNA vaccines.

And finally the last tweet goes to Sharon Peacock who had the courage and vision to set up #COGUK to track the spread and evolution of the #SARSCoV2 virus which is now proving invaluable for tracking the spread of new variants.

@threadreaderapp unroll please

* 'arar' should read 'agar', of course.