A Look at Women Inventors
Today is International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate all the achievements, small or large, women have accomplished. We would like to take this a step further and take a look at a group of women inventors who have accomplished so much and invented everyday items we couldn’t live without today.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska in 1867, grew up in Warsaw, Poland. She left Poland and traveled to Paris where she studied physics and 
mathematical sciences. She became the head of the Physics Laboratory at Sarbonne, obtained her Doctor of Science Degree and became Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences. While working with her husband, Pierre Curie, they discovered the isolation of polonium and radium. Marie Curie went on to develop methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties. Marie Curie is held in high regard by scientists throughout the world, she has been honored with her husband Pierre, half of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 (the other half went to scientist Becquerel), she was awarded a second Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1911 for her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921. In addition to the many accolades she achieved she was also published in many scientific journals and authored a few publications herself, Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives (1904), L’Isotopie et les Éléments Isotopes and the classic Traité’ de Radioactivité (1910). (1)
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy was born in Vienna Austria in 1914 as Hedwig Kiesler; she started her career at the age of 17 as an actress where she changed her name 
to Hedy Lamarr. Most people don’t and still don’t know that in addition to acting she was extremely intelligent and worked with composer/inventor George Antheil to invent a Secret Communication System (U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387). This invention became extremely important to the military during World War II. It changed radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception to prevent the enemy from being able to detect classified messages. This invention was first used on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and has paved the way for some of today’s most technical items like cell phones and Wi-Fi. Hedy has been honored with the Electrical Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award, the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award and most recently has been noted as one of the most important women inventors of the 20th century.(2)
Stephanie Kwolek
Stephanie grew up in New Kensington, Pennsylvania and at a young age was always interested in science and medicine. She has been noted as one of the first women research chemists and has been nationally recognized for her work with long molecule chains at low temperatures. Her most famous invention came when she had been working with a liquid crystal polymer solution, she found that its strength is five times stronger than steel and is now what we refer to as Kevlar®. Kevlar is used in so much more than just bullet proof vest, it is also used in safety helmets, suspension bridge cables and camping gear just to name a few. Stephanie has been honored with the Kirby Award, the National Medal of Technology and the 1999 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award.(3)