Women in Microbiology Illustrations
Illustrations by Veronica Pisano
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Read also our blog 10 Women Microbiologists You Don’t Know About, But Should
Esther Lederberg (1922 – 2006)
Esther Lederberg was an American microbiologist born to parents of an Orthodox Jewish background, whose discovery of Lambda (λ) phage – a virus that infects Escherichia coli – revolutionized bacterial genetics research. Lambda phage is now used ubiquitously in molecular biology to study gene regulation and recombination. Lederberg also identified the transfer of genes between bacteria through a process called “specialized transduction”.
In addition, she developed the widely utilized “replica planting” technique, a method used to replicate bacterial cultures to compare their reactions to environmental change. The list of her contributions can go on! However, like many of the microbiologists we’ve just met, Lederberg also faced gender discrimination as a woman scientist in the 50’s and 60’s, and often worked in the shadows of her husband, a Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist who also discredited her contributions to his work.
Lederberg pushed for advancing women in microbiology and getting representation in academia; she petitioned the dean of Stanford School of Medicine about the lack of female representation across its faculty. Later, she served as an untenured Associate Professor of Stanford University School of Medicine in 1959, and as the Director of Plasmid Reference Center and professor emeritus of microbiology and immunology.
Fannnie Hesse (1850 – 1934)
If you’ve ever used an agar plate to grow and isolate different bacterial strains, you can thank Fanny Hesse! Hesse worked as an unpaid assistant, illustrator, and cook for her husband, Walther Hesse, who was a laboratory technician for German microbiologist Robert Koch.
In 1881, as her husband fiddled with different recipes to cultivate bacteria, Fanny suggested using agar as a gelling agent rather than gelatin, which her husband was previously using. Pulling from her experience as a cook, Fanny recognized that agar was more heat-stable than gelatin and wasn’t as easily digested by bacteria.
Fanny’s insight allowed Koch to eventually isolate the bacteria that caused tuberculosis using agar, but Hesse never received credit for her contribution.
Source: https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/ladybits/forgotten-woman-who-made-microbiology-possible/
Jessie Isabelle Price (1930 – 2015)
Jessie Isabelle Price was an African-American veterinary microbiologist who developed vaccines to fight against bacterial diseases in waterfowl and commercial ducks. She received her PhD from Cornell University in 1959, and went on to develop vaccine against Pasteurella Anatipestifer virus found in ducks and other waterfowl with the Duck Research Laboratory at Cornell.
Price continued her research with the Duck Research Laboratory for 18 years, and by 1974 had developed two vaccines that were used commercially by Pekin Duck farmers in Long Island, the Midwest, and Canada. She also helped develop vaccines for other avian diseases. In 1977, she started working as a research microbiologist at National Wildlife Health Centre of the National Biological Service in Madison, Wisconsin where she continued work on avian diseases and treatment.
Source: https://poc2.co.uk/2019/03/14/dr-jessie-isabelle-price-veterinary-microbiologist/
Katrina Edwards (1968-2014)
Katrina Edwards was an American geomicrobiologist who led pioneering explorations to understand the subseafloor biosphere, in other words the microorganisms that live below the ocean floor. She was interested in finding more about microbial interactions, their geographical surroundings and global processes.
Edwards was involved in several projects and initiatives that helped organize the deep biosphere research community, including spearheading the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigation (C-DEBI) project at the University of Southern California.
In 2012, she received the Royal Society of Canada's A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine Science, becoming the third female to win one of the highest honours in ocean science work.
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1128/9781555819545.ch8
Mary Voytek
Mary Voytek is an astrobiologist and microbial ecologist with a deep enthusiasm in investigating “habitable worlds”, otherwise ways to search for life beyond Earth including Mars. She is currently the Director of the Astrobiology Program at NASA.
Voytek has degrees in biochemistry, biology and ocean sciences and has carried out work in several extreme environments such as Antarctica, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and terrestrial deep-subsurface sites. She is the founding Director of the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), a systems science initiative by NASA to search for life on exoplanets.
Source: https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/directory/voytek-mary/
Roseli Ocampo-Friedmann (1937-2005)
Roseli Ocampo-Friedmann was a Filipino-American botanist and microbiologist, who focused her work on studying cyanobacteria and microorganisms from extreme environments, otherwise known as extremophiles. She was a lover of travelling and collector of over 1,000 types of extremophiles from around the world.
Along with her husband they discovered the extremophiles we call today cryptoendolithis in the cold and of the Ross Desert in Antarctica (previously thought to be lifeless). The name cryptoendoliths is derived from the word crypto which means hidden and endolith which means inside rocks. Her research on cryptoendoliths was cited by NASA, as it was supporting the theory that microscopic life could exist in Mars because of the similar environmental conditions with Antarctica. She also co-discovered endolithic microorganisms in the Beacon sandstone in Friedmann Peak (named after her) in the Darwin Mountains of Antarctica.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseli_Ocampo-Friedmann
Ruth Ella Moore (1903 – 1994)
Dr. Ruth Ella Moore was a true microbiology pioneer. An African-American bacteriologist, Moore was the first African-American to receive a PhD in a natural science (her doctorate was in bacteriology) in 1933 and first African-American to join American Society for Microbiology in 1936.
Moore’s dissertation research contributed to eventually treating Tuberculosis, which was the second leading cause of death in the U.S. at that time. She has also published work on immunology, dental caries, and blood types in African-Americans. She lectured in bacteriology at variety of universities, including teaching at and being the head of the Department of Bacteriology at Howard University.
Moore took an active role in the community of scholars in her field and was awarded Teacher of the Year 1952 by her students and awarded the life achievement award by the ASM Minority Committee in 1986 for her years of service as a mentor, leader, and activist in microbiology.
Source: http://blog.eoscu.com/blog/american-medical-hero-dr.-ruth-e.-moore
Ruth Gates (1962-2018)
Ruth Gates was an American marine biologist who conducted seminal research on the health and stability of coral reef ecosystems. Specifically, she studied the symbiodinium of corals - microscopic algae that live within coral tissues, provide them with energy and food, and are lost when corals undergo coral bleaching. She showed that the choice of symbiotic algae was crucial to how tropical coral reefs survive environmental stress.
Gates was the first female to be elected as president of the International Society for Reef Studies and was also the Director of the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology. Gates was also featured on the Netflix Documentary, Chasing Coral.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/optimist-who-believed-saving-corals/574240/
Suniti Solomon (1939-2015)
Suniti Solomon was an Indian microbiologist and physician who pioneered AIDS research and prevention in India after documenting India’s first AIDS cases among sex workers in 1986.
She founded the Y R Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education (now YRG CARE) in Chennai, one of India's initial places for voluntary HIV counselling and testing.
Solomon received several awards including the National Women Bio-scientist Award from the Indian Government, and the Padma Shri award in medicine for her contributions towards diagnosis and treatment of HIV.
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00772-2/fulltext
Viviana Alder (1957 - )
Viviana Alder is an Argentinian marine microbiologist currently undertaking research in the coldest place on earth, in Antarctica. She is in fact one of the first Argentinian female scientists to work there!
She focuses her research on planktonic marine microbial communities in the Antarctic and how wood webs are impacted by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (in simple terms ocean current), El Nino (climate pattern of unusual warm ocean water) and La Nina (complex weather pattern because of variation of ocean temperatures).
Source: https://www.todociencia.com.ar/mujeres-de-ciencia-viviana-alder/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viviana_Alder