These adorable little girls grew up to be legends of science. They fought against oppression, violence and segregation, saved millions of lives, and completely transformed the world with their discoveries. All this was possible from their hard work but also because they had that one person in their lives who believed in their greatness when others didn’t. On this International Women’s day, which little girl will you inspire?

Sources: National Library of Medicine, NLM, NLM, NLM, Sophia Smith Collection - Smith College, Jesse De La Tour,

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Happy Birthday to one of the Legends of Computer Science!!

Source Dale & Weems

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molecularbiologistproblems:

Today (July 24, 2015) is the 101th birthday of pharmacologist, Dr. Frances Kelsey. She is renowned for her refusal to grant FDA approval of thalidomide in 1960, despite its widespread use in Europe at the time. Thalidomide had been considered a wonder drug for morning sickness in pregnant women, but it had yet to be discovered that thalidomide was actually a teratogen, or a chemical capable of crossing the placental barrier that causes birth defects. Thalidomide use resulted in children being born with limb deformations. 

Thalidomide is a classic example of chirality, occuring in a racemic mixture (equal parts of both the R and S enantiomers). Interestingly, due to the position of the chiral center, thalidomide is capable of racemizing in vivo, so separating the entantiomers for individual administration is futile, unfortunately. The same entantiomer that was responsible for binding to the protein cereblon, that prevented proper limb formation in children in the 1960s is now being used as a potent chemotherapeutic today!

Let’s take today to celebrate a pioneer female scientist who saved the US from thalidomide and made us reconsider how we address the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals!

Source: (x)

Image from Wikipedia.

Thanks to idristhetardisboardoffandom for bringing this to my attention!

(via dr-nicoletta)

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