We’ve spent a lot of time over the past decades fighting for the recognition women deserve in the fields of technology, science, health, engineering and math. In fields that seem overwhelmingly male dominated it’s always encouraging to see increasing numbers of women joining the ranks and receiving credit for their accomplishments. If we look back throughout time we will find that extraordinary women in these fields have always existed, it just can take a bit of digging to get to them. And they’re from all over, if we look at a timeline. Whether it was research and development, inventions, hard work or even just unadulterated support and contribution to the efforts of science, technology, et al women have always been there since time historic.
So in this series of stories we will explore the lives and contributions of some wonderful women who have helped bring us to where we are today. Let’s get a basic understanding of a few things though. While some of the first people that would come to mind are famous ones such as Marie Curie or Ada Lovelace (who we will certainly cover), there are many other women who contributed to where we got to today and who’s contribution is more subtle, unknown or overlooked. In fact, researching these topics finds an overwhelming amount of amazing women who have or are devoting their lives to science, health, technology and engineering.
It’s also important to remember the roots of these fields. These fields all stem from ancient times. The word technology comes from the Greek word τέχνη [techne] and λογία [logia], meaning roughly “learning/knowledge of skill from the hands”; the oldest human tools are technology! (We can consider ancient cave peoples engineers, as funny as that sounds.) The study and skill of Philosophy (translated to “love of learning/wisdom”) also opened the gates for these skills as we know them today; giving birth to physics, logic, mathematics, metaphysics, astronomy and above all, curiosity and experimenting and learning for the sake of learning! We can thank our ancient civilizations for setting us up with the tools for success.
So while we are going to learn about a variety of women in fields we currently recognize today we are going to also have some fun looking outside the box and digging up some history about some female founders from long, long ago. Exciting, no? Stay tuned for our first Fantastic Female, coming soon!