Contents:
The back cover states:. Ranging across the spectrum of scientific endeavour, from the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, through the medical revolutions of Hippocrates and Galen, it includes the fields of physics, biology, chemistry and genetics. This is the story of the ideas that have shaped the world today, and the ideas that will shape the future.
The list below is a list of prominent, important scientists who were also Christians. Grand Rapids, MI; The book is subtitled: Three years ago, Discover started a project to look into the question of how women fare in science. We knew there were large numbers of female researchers doing remarkable work, and we asked associate editor Kathy A.
Svitil to talk to them. The result of her investigation is a selection of 50 of the most extraordinary women across all the sciences. Their achievements are detailed in the pages that follow. To read their stories is to understand how important it is that the barriers facing women in science be broken down as quickly and entirely as possible.
If just one of these women had gotten fed up and quit—as many do—the history of science would have been impoverished. Even the women who have stuck with it, even those who have succeeded spectacularly, still report that being a woman in this intensely male world is, at best, challenging and, at worst, downright disheartening. It will take goodwill and hard work to make science a good choice for a woman, but it is an effort at which we cannot afford to fail. The next Einstein or the next Pasteur may be alive right now—and she might be thinking it's not worth the hassle.
She now heads an innovative institute where researchers develop smart low-power sensors that both compute and communicate. Bajcsy believes the sensors will be "the next revolution in technology. Barton Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology Barton discovered that DNA conducts electric current but not as well—or not at all—when its tight organization is disrupted by damage from certain chemicals or mutations. That finding should allow researchers to look for mutations, using chips made of strands of DNA attached to gold on silicon wafers.
Barton is investigating whether nature has developed tactics to cope with such damage: Where are electrons funneled? This makes us think about DNA in an entirely new way. Behrensmeyer Research Paleobiologist, Smithsonian Institution Behrensmeyer has spent almost three decades at Amboseli Park in Kenya watching animals disintegrate and fossilize as she researches taphonomy—the science of burial.
Did it have hard parts? Did it die in the water where it could more easily be buried and preserved?
To protect vital genes from being lopped off, chromosomes are capped with telomeres, blocks of DNA and protein. Telomeres are maintained by telomerase, an enzyme discovered by Blackburn see story Why science must adapt to women and biologist Carol Greider. In most healthy cells, telomerase production eventually ceases, telomeres whittle down, and the cell dies. Blackburn's research has shown that in cancer cells, the enzyme never shuts off, and cells become immortal: It is a great favorite of cancer cells," and thus a target for new drugs. Sarah Boysen Professor of Psychology, The Ohio State University Boysen's colony of 11 chimpanzees are often as rambunctious as a class of preschoolers, and her research shows they share another trait with toddlers: The chimps can add, subtract, understand fractions, and associate Arabic numerals with the quantity of objects they represent.
Esther Conwell Professor of Chemistry, University of Rochester Half a century ago, Conwell's research on how electrons course through silicon and other semiconducting materials jump-started the computer age. Now she studies the movement of electrical charges through DNA. And the properties of DNA could be useful in assembling circuit elements in nano-electronic circuits. Her work helped spur a revolution in conservation policy, uniting economists and ecologists. The parts that scientists and engineers use are Daubechies's wavelets—mathematical building blocks that are also used for data compression and encryption.
Now, using giant particle colliders, she studies elementary particle physics.
Because I have young kids, I think of it as finding the smallest Lego that you can make everything else out of. Dresselhaus Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, MIT Before her fourth child hit kindergarten, Dresselhaus deciphered the electronic structure of graphite, the lowest-energy solid-state form of carbon. The daunting problem had long scared off other researchers, which is why she chose it: Sylvia Earle Explorer in Residence, National Geographic Society This oceanographer, diver, and developer of deep submersibles is systematically surveying U.
For three decades, she has campaigned for public awareness of the need to protect ocean systems. That discovery, made by Faber in , "showed that galaxies were made according to some kind of regular process. Faber also diagnosed the Hubble Space Telescope's optical flaw and helped design the massive Keck telescopes in Hawaii. Melissa Franklin Professor of Physics, Harvard University "I build things, and then I fix them when I build them badly," says the experimental physicist, offering a deceptively modest description of her work.
The objects she tinkers with are complex particle detectors, including the powerful proton-antiproton Collider Detector at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, which she used to spot the top quark in Her goal is to "figure out the processes that acted on a particular body in the past in order to make its surface the way it is now. History has not always been kind to women scientists. Many have passed long days and nights in the lab stirring noxious concoctions or gathering piles of data only to see the credit for their discoveries awarded to a male colleague.
Ingrid Daubechies Professor of Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University To analyze the signal of an image, sound, electrocardiogram tracing, or even a turbulent gas, one must break it down into simpler parts. This book does not purport to list the "most influential" scientists in history, although these are presumably among them. Put them all together and you have the field of mesenteric science…the basis for a whole new area of science. Susan Solomon Senior Scientist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration In Solomon decided to lead an expedition to Antarctica to investigate the newly discovered ozone hole over the continent. Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, is often not considered when it comes to great biological discoveries but his work on the classification of living things was revolutionary at the time.
Sometimes the work was obscured by a famous mentor. Here is a selection of female scientists who deserve greater notice:. Her collaborator, Otto Hahn, who stayed behind in Germany, was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in In Meitner was finally honored when element was named meitnerium. Her calculations helped Einstein formulate his general theory of relativity. Although she coauthored numerous papers with Whipple, it was he who was honored with the Nobel Prize in medicine. She died after being set afire by an alcohol stove on which she was heating food for her baby.
Eleven years later, Spemann won the Nobel Prize. One massive development in human biology involves the use of 3D printers and human stem cells. The bio-ink is made from a couple of different polymer-based ingredients.
One is derived from seaweed and is, therefore, a natural polymer. Each one of these polymers provides a different role in the bio-ink. The idea behind this ink is to provide a means of being able to 3D print a structure that can remain durable when immersed in nutrients and not damage any introduced cells to the structure.
This process once developed fully, could be used to print patients tissues using their very own stem cells in the future. Other developments include printing kidneys and the potential for printing skin for treating burns. Might this also be the key to immortality?
Many offshoot areas of research have been made possible since the start of the human genome over 25 years ago. One hugely important development could be the production of genetically tailored drugs - sometimes referred to as pharmacogenetics. There are already companies, like Foundation Medicine , that provide DNA screening for cancer cells in biopsy samples. Their analysis provides a report detailing the genes in the patient's DNA that are known to be linked to cancer and provide information on "actionable" mutations.
These actionable sequences of DNA are areas where existing anticancer drugs either exist or are undergoing testing. Such reports would be able to steer doctors and patients towards prescribing specific drugs to treat the patient's particular form of cancer. The future efficacy of this kind of treatment could yield enormous future discoveries into the human genome and, just perhaps, guarantee cancer treatment success. Early last year it was announced that researchers may have made a huge breakthrough in healing wounds.
They may have found a way of 'hacking' tissue within the wound to regenerate skin without leaving scar tissue. They found a method to converting myofibroblasts a common healing cell in wounds to fat cells - this was once thought impossible. Whilst myofibroblasts are essential for healing, they are also a critical element in the formation of scar tissue.
Scars are usually formed, in part, due to a loss of subcutaneous fat cells called adipocytes. If then the myofibroblasts could in some way be converted into fat cells, scaring would be less pronounced if visible at all. George Cotsarelis , the principal investigator of the project and chair of the Department of Dermatology and the Milton Bixler Hartzell Professor of Dermatology at Penn explains: After that, the fat will regenerate in response to the signals from those follicles.
This research can have other applications for diseases as well as slowing down the aging process - specifically preventing wrinkle formation. Researchers recently discovered a method to manipulate the DNA of aging cells in the human body.
The scientists from Caltech and UCLA were able to produce a technique to tinker with the power plants of the cell - mitochondria. Aging in the human body is a consequence, in part, of a compilation of copying errors in our DNA over time. This poor DNA copying leads to telomere shortening and other mutations. Mitochondria are some of the worst culprits for this in the human cell - although mitochondrial DNA abb. Each cell contains hundreds of mitochondria and each mitochondrion carries their own packet of mtDNA.