My Science School

The first woman to travel into space was a Soviet cosmonaut named Valentina Tereshkova. She traveled around Earth 48 times while orbiting in the Vostok 6 spacecraft in 1963. The first American woman to travel into space was Sally Ride who rode onboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 and 1984.

Born in the village of Maslennikovo northeast of Moscow, Tereshkova volunteered for the Soviet cosmonaut program after Yuri Gagarin made history as the first man to fly in space on April 12, 1961. She was not a pilot, but had extensive parachuting experience, with 126 jumps under her belt. (Gagarin parachuted to Earth, ejecting from the Vostok capsule during descent as part of the landing sequence.)

Tereshkova was one of four women who received 18 months of training for Vostok 6, and was ultimately selected to pilot the flight. The mission launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome two days after Vostok 5, piloted by cosmonaut Valeriy Bykovsky, with the two spacecraft's coming within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of each other. 

Tereshkova spent 70 hours in space and orbited Earth 48 times during her mission. Though an icon of Soviet space exploration, she never flew in space again and became a test pilot and instructor.

Credit : Space.com

Picture Credit : Google

Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. His flight, on April 12, 1961, lasted 108 minutes as he circled the Earth for a little more than one orbit in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft. Following the flight, Gagarin became a cultural hero in the Soviet Union. Even today, more than six decades after the historic flight, Gagarin is widely celebrated in Russian space museums, with numerous artifacts, busts and statues displayed in his honor. His remains are buried at the Kremlin in Moscow, and part of his spacecraft is on display at the RKK Energiya museum.

Gagarin's flight came at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for technological supremacy in space. The Soviet Union had already sent the first artificial satellite, called Sputnik, into space in October 1957.

Before Gagarin's mission, the Soviets sent a test flight into space using a prototype of the Vostok spacecraft. During this flight, they sent a life-size dummy called Ivan Ivanovich and a dog named Zvezdochka into space. After the test flight, the Soviet's considered the vessel fit to take a human into space.

Credit : Space.com

Picture Credit : Google

The first talking doll was made by the acclaimed American inventor Thomas Alva Edison in 1890. It was embedded with a small phonograph enabling it to recite a nursery rhyme.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, and when he imagined the uses for his new machine, he speculated that, beyond serving as a means of preserving dictation, it might animate toys. His idea took form in a talking doll, manufactured briefly in 1890.

In 1887 Edison had licensed W. W. Jacques and Lowell C. Briggs of Boston to make and sell talking dolls as the Edison Toy Phonograph Company. The Edison Phonograph Works, in West Orange, N.J., manufactured the phonographs, inserted them into dolls, and packaged them for sale. The talking dolls work imperfectly, sold poorly, and proved a costly mistake for Edison. By 1896, all remaining unsold phonographs for dolls were reportedly destroyed.

Credit : Smithsonian

Picture Credit : Google

George Washington was elected first president of the United States in 1789. He was re-elected in 1793. But he refused to run for presidency for a third time, thereby setting a precedent that was observed by U.S. presidents till 1940. It was Washington who established the tradition of the presidential inaugural address.

From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Married to a widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, he devoted himself to a busy and happy life. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself exploited by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the mother country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his resistance to the restrictions.

When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six grueling years.

He realized early that the best strategy was to harass the British. He reported to Congress, “we should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn.” Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781 with the aid of French allies–he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he soon realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President.

He did not infringe upon the policy making powers that he felt the Constitution gave Congress. But the determination of foreign policy became preponderantly a Presidential concern. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of either his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-French, or his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the United States could grow stronger.

To his disappointment, two parties were developing by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances.

Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him.

Credit : The White House

Picture Credit : Google

Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish crystallographer and a pioneer in the use of X-rays to study crystals. Using X-ray diffraction, she proved that the benzene ring is flat.

Kathleen Lonsdale was born in 1903 in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. She studied at Woodford County High School for Girls. She excelled in mathematics and science. However, she had to attend classes in physics, chemistry and mathematics at the boys' high school because the girls school didn't offer these subjects. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Bedford College for Women in 1922, graduating in physics with an M.Sc. from University College London in 1924. In 1924, she joined the crystallography research team headed by William Henry Bragg at the Royal Institution. Bragg was a pioneer of X-ray diffraction. After her marriage, she moved to the University of Leeds Department of Physics, where she continued to work on X-ray diffraction and studied the structure of benzene. In 1929, her results showed that the benzene ring was flat, something that chemists had been arguing about for 60 years. She developed an X-ray technique to obtain the accurate measurement (to seven figures) of the distance between carbon atoms in diamond. She also applied crystallographic techniques to medical problems.

She became professor of chemistry at University College, London, in 1949. In 1956, she was made Dame of the British Empire

During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945 (along with bacterial chemist Marjory Stephenson), first woman tenured professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Picture Credit : Google

Dr Swati Mohan was the first to confirm that the rover had successfully touched down on the Martian surface after surviving a particularly tricky plunge through the atmosphere of the Red Planet.

“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking signs of past life,” flight controller Swati Mohan announced as US made the historic landing on Mars, prompting her colleagues at Nasa fist-bump and break into celebrations.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Perseverance rover successfully touched down on the surface of Mars after surviving a blazing seven-minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere.

Swati Mohan has been associated with the Perseverance Mars mission since its inception and has been working on the project for over seven years. She has also worked on Nasa’s Cassini mission to the Saturn.

As the world watched Perseverance make a dramatic and difficult landing on the Martian surface, Swati Mohan steered through the operations in her calm and composed self. The bindi-clad Swati Mohan communicated and coordinating between the GN&C subsystem and others teams of the milestone project.

Credit : India Today

Picture Credit : Google

Sunita Williams is an Indian American astronaut and US Navy officer, who formerly held the record for the most space walks (7) and the most space walk time for a woman at 50 hrs and 40 minutes.

She was also assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expeditions 14 & 15. In 2012 she served as the flight engineer of Expedition 32 and then Commander of Expedition. In 2007, she ran the first marathon by a person orbit. She finished the Boston Marathon in 4 hours and 24 minutes.

She was born in Ohio and graduated from US Naval Academy with a bachelors degree in Physical Science. Sunita obtained her Master’s degree in Engineering Management from Florida Institute of Technology.
She lives in Texas with her husband.

Credit : National Indo-American Museum 

Picture Credit : Google

Kalpana Chawla spent her whole life chasing her dreams of being an astronaut. In 1997, she made history as the first woman of Indian origin to go to Space. Kalpana Chawla created opportunities, shattered glass ceilings, and spearheaded groundbreaking research for NASA.

It’s the 1960s, and it’s uncommon for women and girls in Karnal, India to receive an education. But from her earliest years, Kalpana Chawla shows an obsession with flying and space. Her mother advocates for her to go to school, and she excels.

The youngest of four children, Kalpana is an all-star student, committed to academics–science particular–above all else. She finishes high school then studies aeronautics at Punjab Engineering college. When she can’t advance any further in India’s education system, she emigrates to the US, knowing she’ll stop at nothing to become an astronaut.

It’s 1981, Kalpana is 20 years old and new to America. She earns her Master’s Degree in Texas, then her Doctorate in Colorado, and by the time she’s 26, she’s recruited to NASA as a research scientist.  3 years later, Kalpana naturalizes as a US citizen so she can apply to the NASA Astronaut Corps.

While training in the rigorous space mission program, Kalpana remains committed to education and creating opportunities. Kalpana starts a program providing two students from her former school in India with a visit to NASA each year. Meanwhile, her research is published in technical journals and increasingly cited in conference publications. Kalpana becomes increasingly vital to the aeronautical field and by the time she’s 32 years old, Kalpana has completed her training and is selected for her first flight.

Kalpana Chawla goes to space in December 1997, the first Indian-born woman to do so. While on a 15-day mission, orbiting the earth 252 times, Kalpana records videos documenting her work. She describes, “every once in a while, city lights peep through the clouds. It’s very much like a storybook.”

Upon return to Earth, Kalpana is one of seven people selected for another mission: the STS-107 on the Columbia Space Shuttle. they launch in early 2003, and Kalpana and the crew conduct 80 experiments over 16 days. After a successful mission, the shuttle returns to Earth on a February morning, set to land at the Kennedy Space Center. But just moments before landing in Texas, the shuttle malfunctions and breaks apart. All seven crew members–Kalpana Chawla, William McCool, Laurel Clark, David Brown, Ilan Ramon (the first Israeli astronaut), Michael P. Anderson, and Rick Husband–are tragically killed in the accident. Kalpana is 41 years old.

Over the course of Kalpana Chawla’s two missions, she logged 30 days, 14 hours, and 54 minutes in space. After her death, Kalpana Chawla was award the Congressional Medal of Honor for her history-shaping contributions to the field of aeronautics. Today, there are university buildings, scholarship funds, and even a NASA supercomputer named after her.

Credit : Inside Out Tours

Picture Credit : Google

Rakesh Sharma, Indian military pilot and cosmonaut, the first Indian citizen in space.

In 1970 Sharma joined the Indian Air Force as a pilot. He flew 21 combat missions in a MiG-21 in the Bangladesh war of 1971. In 1982 he was selected as a cosmonaut for a joint Soviet-Indian spaceflight. On April 3, 1984, he flew on board Soyuz T-11 with two Soviet cosmonauts, commander Yury Malyshev and flight engineer Gennady Strekalov, to the space station Salyut 7. There Sharma performed experiments that included photography of India from space and exercises to study the effects of yoga on the body during weightlessness. The mission lasted nearly eight days, and Sharma and his crewmates landed in Kazakhstan on April 11. In 1987 he joined the Indian company Hindustan Aeronautics as its chief test pilot. He left Hindustan Aeronautics in 2001 and became chairman of the board of Automated Workflow, a process-management company based in Bangalore (Bengaluru).

One of the most memorable experiences of the first India reaching space in 1984 was Sharma’s conversation with then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who asked how India looked from up there. To this, Sharma replied, "Saare Jahaan Se Achcha" before adding that the most beautiful moments from space were sunrises and sunsets. Further, apart from being the first Indian to stay in space, Sharma is also the first Indian to receive the honour of the ‘Hero of Soviet Union’ award. He also received Ashok Chakra along with his Russian co astronauts.

Credit : Britannica 

Picture Credit : Google

Sirisha Bandla, a 34-year-old aeronautical engineer, is set to become the third Indian-origin woman to head to space when she flies as part of Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed flight test on Sunday.

Bandla, who was born in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh and brought up in Houston, Texas, will join Sir Richard Branson, the company's billionaire founder, and five others on board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Unity to make a journey to the edge of space from New Mexico.

Bandla, a Purdue University alumna, will be evaluating the human-tended research experience, using an experiment from the University of Florida that requires several handheld fixation tubes that will be activated at various points in the flight profile, a statement on the Galactic website said.

 Bandla started in her role as the Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic in January 2021, the university said in a statement.

Bandla grew up in Houston, near NASA's Johnson Space Center, and always wanted to become an astronaut. But poor eyesight meant she could not meet the requirements to become a pilot or an astronaut, derailing her high-school plan to go the Air Force-to-NASA route, she said in the statement.

Credit : The Economic Times 

Picture Credit : Google

NASA astronaut Mae C. Jemison was the first African-American woman in space. She flew into space on space shuttle Endeavour in September 1992. On her first flight, she was the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J. Jemison was a co-investigator on the bone cell research experiment flown on the mission and she spent eight days in space.

When Jemison finally flew into space on September 12, 1992, with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, she became the first African American woman in space.

During her eight days in space, Jemison conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew and herself. In all, she spent more than 190 hours in space before returning to Earth on September 20, 1992. Following her historic flight, Jemison noted that society should recognize how much both women and members of other minority groups can contribute if given the opportunity.

In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison received a number of accolades, including several honorary doctorates, the 1988 Essence Science and Technology Award, the Ebony Black Achievement Award in 1992 and a Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College in 1993. She was also named Gamma Sigma Gamma Woman of the Year in 1990. In 1992, the Mae C. Jemison Academy, an alternative public school in Detroit, Michigan, was named after her.

Jemison has been a member of several prominent organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she served on the board of directors of the World Sickle Cell Foundation from 1990 to 1992. She has also served as an advisory committee member of the American Express Geography Competition and an honorary board member of the Center for the Prevention of Childhood Malnutrition.

After leaving the astronaut corps in March 1993, Jemison accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth. She also established the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop and market advanced technologies.

Credit : The Monroe News 

Picture Credit : Google

Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits by climbing the highest peak on every continent. She led an all-female Japanese expedition and reached the top of Mount Everest on May 16, 1975. She died in October 2016, aged 77.

During 1990–91, Tabei reached the summit of Mt. Vinson, Antarctica’s highest mountain. On June 28, 1992, she ascended the Puncak Jaya in Indonesia to become the first woman to complete the Seven Summits — that include the highest peak in every continent. She also worked on the ecological front and in 2000, completed post-graduation at the Kyushu University in the environmental degradation of Everest. She became the director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, which works globally to preserve mountain environments.

Tabei was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer in 2012 but continued many of her mountaineering activities. She passed away at a hospital in Kawagoe on October 20, 2016.

In the wake of her historic Everest ascent, Junko Tabei’s statements revealed that she was not just a passionate mountaineer but also a self- effacing person. She was quoted as saying in the Telegraph that rather than being known as the first woman to climb Everest, she wanted to be remembered as the 36th person to achieve the feat. “I did not intend to be the first woman on Everest,” she said.

In November 2019, a mountain range on Pluto was named in honour of Tabei’s achievements. She was honoured on the theme “Historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in the exploration of the Earth, sea and sky”.

Tabei was quoted as having said that she had founded the Ladies Climbing Club prompted by the manner in which some male mountaineers of the time looked down women mountaineers, their capabilities and seriousness towards the adventure activity. Later, when she tried to find sponsors for the Everest expedition, Tabei said that she was frequently told that the women “should be raising children instead.”

Credit : Hindustan Times

Picture Credit : Google

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, nuclear research was consolidated to some degree. Fermi had built a series of “piles,” as he called them, at Columbia. Now he moved to the University of Chicago, where he continued to construct piles in a space under the stands of the football field. The final structure, a flattened sphere about 7.5 metres (25 feet) in diameter, contained 380 tons of graphite blocks as the moderator and 6 tons of uranium metal and 40 tons of uranium oxide as the fuel, distributed in a careful pattern. The pile went “critical” on December 2, 1942, proving that a nuclear reaction could be initiated, controlled, and stopped. Chicago Pile-1, as it was called, was the first prototype for several large nuclear reactors constructed at Hanford, Washington, where plutonium, a man-made element heavier than uranium, was produced. Plutonium also could fission and thus was another route to the atomic bomb.

Since the war, science had been recognized in the United States as highly important to national security. Fermi largely avoided politics, but he did agree to serve on the General Advisory Committee (GAC), which counseled the five commissioners of the Atomic Energy Commission. In response to the revelation in September 1949 that the Soviet Union had detonated an atomic bomb, many Americans urged the government to try to construct a thermonuclear bomb, which can be orders of magnitude more powerful. GAC was publicly unanimous in opposing this step, mostly on technical grounds, with Fermi and Isidor Rabi going further by introducing an ethical question into so-called “objective” advice. Such a bomb, they wrote, “becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide…. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.” U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman decided otherwise, and a loyal Fermi went for a time back to Los Alamos to assist in the development of fusion weapons, however with the hope that they might prove impossible to construct.

Fermi primarily investigated subatomic particles, particularly pi mesons and muons, after returning to Chicago. He was also known as a superb teacher, and many of his lectures are still in print. During his later years he raised a question now known as the Fermi paradox: “Where is everybody?” He was asking why no extraterrestrial civilizations seemed to be around to be detected, despite the great size and age of the universe. He pessimistically thought that the answer might involve nuclear annihilation.

Credit : Britannica 

Picture Credit : Google

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, nuclear research was consolidated to some degree. Fermi had built a series of “piles,” as he called them, at Columbia. Now he moved to the University of Chicago, where he continued to construct piles in a space under the stands of the football field. The final structure, a flattened sphere about 7.5 metres (25 feet) in diameter, contained 380 tons of graphite blocks as the moderator and 6 tons of uranium metal and 40 tons of uranium oxide as the fuel, distributed in a careful pattern. The pile went “critical” on December 2, 1942, proving that a nuclear reaction could be initiated, controlled, and stopped. Chicago Pile-1, as it was called, was the first prototype for several large nuclear reactors constructed at Hanford, Washington, where plutonium, a man-made element heavier than uranium, was produced. Plutonium also could fission and thus was another route to the atomic bomb.

In 1944 Fermi became an American citizen and moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where physicist J. Robert Oppenheimerled the Manhattan Project’s laboratory, whose mission was to fashion weapons out of the rare uranium-235 isotope and plutonium. Fermi was an associate director of the lab and headed one of its divisions. When the first plutonium bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, Fermi ingeniously made a rough calculation of its explosive energy by noting how far slips of paper were blown from the vertical.

After the war ended, Fermi accepted a permanent position at the University of Chicago, where he influenced another distinguished group of physicists, including Harold Agnew, Owen Chamberlin, Geoffrey Chew, James Cronin, Jerome Friedman, Richard Garwin, Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin Goldberger, Tsung-Dao Lee, Jack Steinberger, and Chen Ning Yang. As in Rome, Fermi recognized that his current pursuits, now in nuclear physics, were approaching a condition of maturity. He thus redirected his sights on reactions at higher energies, a field called elementary particle physics, or high-energy physics.

Credit :  Britannica 

Picture Credit : Google

Enrico Fermi was an Italian physicist, a pioneer of the nuclear age and one of the developers of the atomic bomb. He also created the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for “his discovery of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for the discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.” Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy in 1901. He was scientifically inclined from a very young age. His father’s friend encouraged his interest in science by giving him books on physics and mathematics to read. He also motivated Enrico Fermi to apply to the Scuola Normale Superiore, a top university in Pisa. In 1918, Fermi made it to the Scuola Normale Superiore and became one of the brightest students. Even professors benefitted from his lectures on general relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic physics. He gained a Ph.D. in physics in 1922.

From 1927 to 1938, Fermi served as the professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome, where he carried out experiments on elements. He bombarded a variety of elements with neutrons and in 1934, discovered that slow moving neutrons were particularly effective in producing radioactive atoms. His experiments led to the discovery of nuclear fission and the creation of elements beyond uranium. These contributions won him a Nobel in 1938. In 1935, Fermi discovered the quantum mechanics statistical laws, better known as the Fermi statistics, giving a statistical model of the atom and nucleus.

Fermi became an American citizen in 1944 and accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago in 1946. He held this position till his death in 1954. Fermi continued to conduct nuclear fission experiments at Columbia University.

In 1942, Fermi's team proved that a nuclear reaction could be initiated, controlled, and stopped. He developed the Chicago Pile-1, the first prototype of nuclear reactor at Hanford, Washington, where plutonium, a man-made element heavier than uranium, was produced. Plutonium also could fission and thus was another route to the atomic bomb. During the Second World War, Fermi was a key member of the Manhattan Project, working at the Los Alamos project in New Mexico on developing an atomic bomb.

In his later years, Fermi investigated subatomic particles - pi mesons and muons.

Picture Credit : Google