31 Smithsonian Portraits of Women Behind Scientific Breakthroughs

Eleanor Plunkette Brown was born in 1887. When this photograph was taken during the 1930s, she was National Secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Blindness. By 1944, Brown had become the Society’s Executive Director and made history as the first woman president of the National Health Council.

Born in Shohola, Pennsylvania, in 1878, Olive Swezy was an American Zoologist who specialized in dinoflagellates, amoebas, and chromosome studies. Swezy attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her Bachelor of Science in 1913, followed by her MS in 1914 and her P.h.D. in Zoology. After finishing her studies, Swezy co-authored key research and discovered a new amoebic dysentery strain.

Born in 1910, Edith Kroupa was an Austrian chemist who worked under Professor A. Franke at the University of Vienna. In 1934, she and Friedrich Hecht examined a sample of a radioactive rock from Manitoba, determining it to be over 1.7 billion years old. In that same year, Kroupa and Friedrich Hecht discovered triple-weight hydrogen.

Wilhelmine Marie Euteman Key, born in 1872, was an American geneticist, zoologist, and author of Heredity and Social Fitness in 1920. Studying wasp coloration, Key was the first woman to earn a PhD in zoology at the University of Chicago. She also taught German and Biology at numerous institutions, even mentoring notable geneticist Sewall Wright.

Mildred Trotter (1899-1991), an Anatomist and Anthropologist, completed her studies at Mt. Holyoke College in 1920, receiving a Ph.D from Washington University in 1924. She devoted almost her entire career to Washington University, where she conducted research and taught for decades. Following World War II, she briefly served as a U.S Army forensic anthropologist.

Louise Pearce (1885-1959), physician and pathologist, gained recognition for her research on sleeping sickness. After earning her A.B from Stanford in 1907 and her M.D from Johns Hopkins University in 1912, she spent many years at the Rockefeller Institute. Later, she served as the president of Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia from 1946 to 1951. Pearce’s contributions to medicine and education were recognised, and she received honorary doctorates from multiple colleges.

After completing her Ph.D at the University of Chicago, Emma Perry Carr(1880-1972) began teaching Chemistry at Mount Holyoke College until 1946. Renowned for advancing spectroscopy, she pioneered research on simple unsaturated hydrocarbons and absorption spectra. In 1937, she received the American Chemical Society’s Francis P. Garavan Medal and later the Norris award.

Secretary and Associate Director of the National Society of the Prevention of Blindness from 1916, Winifred Phillips Hathaway (1870-1954), was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales. She studied at Normal College of New York, Radcliffe College, and New York University, and also conducted research at the Eugenics Records Office. Best known for her work as a teacher and public health researcher, Hathaway was the second woman to receive the Leslie Dana Gold Medal by the St. Louis Society for the Blind.

Nathalia Clara Ruth Crane (1913-1998) was a famous child prodigy. At the tender age of ten, Crane published her very first book and went on to become a professor of literature. The photograph above was used in a news story titled, "The four ages of behavior," which declared that Crane embodied "the creative age” that most rise to once in a while, but few “live on the heights regularly”.

Participating in numerous protests for women’s rights, Washington, D.C, native Minna P. Gill (1896-1964) was active in the Women’s suffrage movement in the 1910s. She became a Science Service librarian between 1920 and 1930 after completing her B.B.A. at the University of Texas. Gill later joined the Smithsonian Library, working there until retiring in 1955. Beyond her professional life, she was an accomplished amateur artist.

Flora May Slosson Wuellner attended the University of Michigan, where her father was a professor of history. Wuellner began preaching when she was 17 and, after graduating from the University of Chicago theological seminary in 1954, became a Congregationalist minister. She later married Wilhelm Wuellner, an ordained but non-practicing Lutheran minister. A renowned author, Wuellner has written 14 books on religion and spirituality, focusing on inner healing and renewal.