This is a wonderful addition to my famous scientists library at school. I absolutely love the condensed stories of famous women scientists. They were very well written. The stories were easy to understand and my middle school classes were very entertained when I read them to them as well.

Excellent summaries about interesting, hard-working, and under-publicized women of science. Amazingly, I was familiar with only two, Rachel Carson and Marie Curie, even though I taught science for 25 years. That is a failure both of my own education and my mentoring of young women. I SHOULD have known about these women. Carson and Curie made huge contributions to the fields of ecology and chemistry, of course. Virginia Apgar was a pioneering doctor who invented a way of quickly assessing a newborn baby’s condition and allowing aid to be given when necessary. i was familiar with the Apgar scale, but not the author of it. Gertrude Elion is a Nobel Prize winning chemist who developed life saving medicines. Dorothy Hodgkin was the first and only British woman to receive a Nobel prize in science, in the field of x-ray crystallography. Henrietta Leavitt was an astronomer who developed a way to compare the magnitude of stars, as well as a method of determining extragalactic distances. Rita Levi-Montalcini received the Nobel for discovering nerve growth factor, the first HGF to be discovered. Lise Meitner was the first to discover that the nucleus of a uranium atom could be split in two, releasing enormous amounts of energy. This discovery led of course to the development of the atomic bomb. Elsie Widdowson was a pioneer in the science of nutrition. She helped develop the Second World War ration diet, keeping Britains healthy even with the dearth of food. She is probably the reason that we eat enriched bread today! Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American who should have won a Nobel for her work that disproved the law of parity in Physics. Each of these women achieved wonderful contributions to science despite many obstacles to their work. They were disparaged, discredited, discriminated against, and unrecognized in their time, but all persevered to accomplish amazing things. I am so very glad I read this book! It should be in every school library and every science teacher's personal library!
Thanks to Netgalley and Diversion Books for an ARC.

Authors Catherine Whitlock and Rhodri Evans have brought together brief biographies of ten women who changed science forever and pushed humanity in the right direction. In their new book Ten Women Who Changed Science and the World features the following amazing women:

Virginia Apgar M.D.
Rachel Carson
Marie Curie

Gertrude Elion
Dorothy Hodgkin
Henrietta Leavitt
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Lise Meitner
Elsie Widdowson
Chien-Shiung Wu

These minibiographies cover Nobel Prize winners, and go through the sobering histories of having to fight through gender discrimination to move forward . In the end, it was the search for knowledge and the persistence of these women that pushed them through. From the discovery of radium, to the discovery of a test to see if a baby is in distress, these stories give readers a jumping off place to discover more about women in science. 

Ten Women Who Changed Science and the World is a fascinating book, but definitely for either older teens or adults due to the historical information. It is well-written and fascinating.  

Ten Women Who Changed Science and the World is available now from Diversion Books.

I loved this book! It teaches us A LOT more about these women than what we learned in school. A very informative book that is easy to read.

The title of this book explains this book well. I learned new facts and greatly admire these women. However, it was not very engaging. Great for a school report or a place to start research.

I am not at all a fan of the recent trend of lengthy introductions to nonfiction books. A few paragraphs is fine, but not pages and pages. A subtitle could have taken care of why the author chose these 10 women.

Regardless, recommended for libraries, classrooms and for those interested in the subject matter. (Might want to just skip to one of the chapters though.

I loved how educational this book was. Perfect for high school students and up. It was very well written, full of amazing information and engaging facts. I would like to have seen more pictures from each woman. The cover makes it seem like it will be more engaging and picturesque. The facts are great. The information was correct. It was a well researched book with language that is relatable.

Catherine Whitlock and Rhodri Evans collaborated to write this non-fiction work, Ten Women Who Changed Science and the World. If you are looking for a page-turning read with simple ideas, this will not work for you. If, however, you are interested in finding out more about the female scientists who laid the groundwork for the medical findings of today, then you will thoroughly enjoy this book. Each chapter can stand alone and the ground-breaking women are viewed through the lens of their academic contributions, but also their social choices. The women included in the book range from household names (Curie), to those you know you have heard of (Apgar, Carson), all the way to women you were not aware of before now (Elion, Leavitt). Also, their areas of study are varied, including physics, nutrition, environmentalism, chemistry, and more. This would be an excellent source of inspiration for young women interested in scientific or medial fields and could serve as a great source for research.

This is an excellent and much-needed book! I had never heard of many of these important women, and even those that I had heard of and admired, I'd only read about the early life of one of them -- Marie Curie. It is such a shame how Dorothy Hodgkin's Nobel Prize was minimized because she was a woman, wife, and mother. Every baby gets an Apgar score immediately after birth, but few people know that Virginia Apgar created it. These are important stories to be shared, especially to inspire the next generation of women scientists. My students would enjoy this book.

As a female scientist, I find it's important to learn about all of the famous - and/or forgotten - female scientists that have come before me to pave the way for future generations.

This book was really well-written and interesting; it was much more in-depth than I thought it would be, for which I'm glad. I really liked reading about these women, some of which I have heard of previously (e.g. Marie Curie) and others I had not. It's frustrating as a modern member of society reading about these women's contributions and subsequent snubbing as a majority of the awards went to their male counterparts, completing ignoring the groundbreaking, important work they did. However, in contrast, those moments where the broader scientific field recognized these women for their contributions was empowering.

This was a great collection.

The author's painstaking research and attention to detail is obvious in the writing of this book. There were many facts that I only discovered after reading this!

There is a theory postulating that the world would be considerably more advanced than it is currently, had the library of Alexandria never burned and all the knowledge ensconced within its walls remained with us. Possibly so. Now imagine how far we would have come as a civilization had we not systematically oppressed 50some percent of the population based on gender biases. If women were permitted to study and work alongside men throughout times and not just as maids and babymachines. The thing is, though, that despite the oppression and double standards and myriads of obstacles, some women nevertheless persevered and thrived in their chosen fields of study, improving the world immeasurably. This book is about them. Nobel Prize winners, recognized and otherwise, there are the stories of spectacular achievements and devastating disappointments, but generally these are success stories. Because the scientific contributions made were so monumental and significant, they eclipse most all other factors. It is, essentially, immortality by any other name. You’ll notice the recurring themes in this book, the difficulties in securing proper education, the difficulties in securing proper jobs, financial support, recognition. The frequent lack of personal life (marriage/kids/etc.), although frankly that just might be a byproduct of a more evolved mind. The lack of credit given, especially in the case of Lise Meitner. To this day, women constitute a fairly small percentage of Nobel Prize winners, back in the day it was nothing short of revolutionary. So these were really interesting, poignant stories that should be told and should be known. I’m not sure I loved the manner in which they were told, which was for one thing very, very science heavy and not very personable, but nevertheless it was a very educational read. I enjoyed the historical biographies much more than all of the chemistry and physics. But all the science was well explained and reasonably assessible. The book seemed to focus more of the achievements than the achievers in a way, but not overwhelmingly so. Or I don’t know, I don’t read a lot of biographies. It’s just an overall observation. It still made for very interesting, occasionally genuinely fascinating reading. And it’s guaranteed to make you think of yourself as an underachiever, no matter how driven you are. Unless, of course, you’re a genius also. But yeah, reading about genius is very humbling indeed. Informative as it may be. Thanks Netgalley.