"I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. "
American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist Rachel Carson was born #OTD in 1907.
Carson wrote only four books published during her lifetime which were "best-sellers": "Under the Sea-Wind" (1941); "The Sea Around Us" (1951); "The Edge of the Sea" (1955); "Silent Spring" (1962). A fifth book The Sense of Wonder (1965) was published posthumously.
American nurse midwife and the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service Mary Carson Breckinridge died #OTD in 1965.
In 1925, she founded the FNS, which aimed to improve maternal and infant health by providing midwifery and nursing care to families in the Appalachian mountains. Her efforts also helped to elevate the role of nurse-midwives in the United States and contributed to advancements in rural healthcare delivery.
Scottish astronomer Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming was born #OTD in 1857.
Fleming's most significant contributions came in the field of stellar classification. She developed a system for classifying stars based on their spectra, which became known as the Harvard Classification Scheme. In 1890, she published the first catalog of stellar spectra, which contained over 10,000 stars classified according to her system.
English chemist Dorothy Hodgkin was born #OTD in 1910.
Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin as previously surmised by Edward Abraham and Ernst Boris Chain; and mapping the structure of vitamin B12, for which in 1964 she became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hodgkin also elucidated the structure of insulin in 1969 after 35 years of work.