10 Women Microbiologists You Don’t Know About, But Should
10 Unsung Heroines of Microbiology
Throughout history, women microbiologists have been conducting groundbreaking research in the shadows of revered male scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. Women microbiologists have had to overcome significant obstacles in their fields to achieve the opportunities that came easy to their male counterparts because of their gender, while some women microbiologists never received credit for their work. These obstacles were even greater for Black and women of color microbiologists, who were faced with the intersectionality of both gender and racial discrimination in and out of the lab.
While the strides made by women microbiologists have changed our world for the better, their contributions have mostly gone unrecognized – both in their time, and in our history books.
So, for this International Microorganism Day, we are honoring the accomplishments of women and women of color microbiologists who’ve advanced their fields and our world.
Here are 10 unsung heroines of microbiology that you probably don’t know about, but should:
1. Ruth Ella Moore (1903 – 1994)
Portrait of Ruth Ella Moore., Image Source: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/moore-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
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2. Fanny Hesse (1850 – 1934)
Portrait of Fanny Hesse., Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hesse#/media/File:Fanny_Eilshemius_Hesse.jpg
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/
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3. Jessie Isabelle Price (1930 – 2015)
Jessie Price holding a Pekin Duck., Image Source: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JaT6tBKGK3sC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q&f=false
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/
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4. Marjory Stephenson (1885 – 1948)
Portrait of Marjory Stephenson., Image Source: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?email=&form=cc&mkey=mw163918
Marjory Stephenson was a pioneering biochemist in the early 20th century. Born in 1885 near Cambridge, England, Stephenson advanced studies on bacterial metabolisms – the processes that allow bacteria to live and reproduce. She was also the first scientist to isolate a bacterial enzyme from the cell in 1928, the enzyme being lactic dehydrogenase from Escherichia coli.
In 1930, Stephenson authored her seminal book Bacterial Metabolism, which was an essential reading for biologists and biochemists alike.
Stephenson was also one of the founders of Society for General Microbiology, and actively promoted training in microbial scientists for younger generations.
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5. Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel (1892 – 1985)
Portrait of Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel, Image Source: https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/docserver/fulltext/jmm/22/2/medmicro-22-2-183.pdf?expires=1597433320&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=FB606BAFE62F56D8BE188AD18D09676A
Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel was a German-Jewish bacteriologist. Due to her pioneering advances in mycoplasma bacterial studies, Klieneberger-Nobel is regarded as one of the founders of mycoplasma research. In 1922, Klieneberger-Nobel began as a bacteriologist at the Hygiene Institute of the University of Frankfurt, later becoming the first female lecturer at the university. However, she was forced to leave Germany as the Nazi Party rose to power. After leaving Germany for England, Klieneberger-Nobel became a researcher at Lister Institute in London in 1934 and remained at the institute until her retirement.
Among her accomplishments, Klieneberger-Nobel developed a unique nutrient agar blend and culturing technique that allowed the bacteria that caused bronchopneumonia in rats and mice to be grown in lab for first time. Using this technique, she later isolated and identified several pathogenic species of mycoplasma – Mycoplasma arthritidis and Mycoplasma pneumoniae – which are still subjects of rigorous study today.
Klieneberger-Nobel became an honorary life member of the newly founded International Organization for Mycoplasmology in 1976 and had an award named after her by the organization in 1980.
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6. Ann Bishop (1899 – 1990)
Portrait of Ann Bishop, Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Bishop_(biologist)
Ann Bishop was a British parasitologist and protozoologist. She began her scientific career at Cambridge University in 1922 and continued to carry out her work there for most of her life. Bishop was a member of the Molteno Institute, which was one of the first labs to study malaria and its treatment, and eventually becoming the Institute’s director. She worked on chemotherapies for treating parasitic diseases and studied the drug resistance of the malaria parasite Plasmodium.
Bishop was elected to the Royal Society in 1959, and in 1962, founded the British Society for Parasitology. She also served on the World Health Organization’s Malaria Committee. Bishop’s science not only improved malaria therapy in the 1950’s and during World War II, her work also advanced our understanding of parasitic disease.
Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1992.0002
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7. Elizabeth Bugie (1920 – 2001)
Portrait of Elizabeth Bugie in a lab, Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61321615
Elizabeth Bugie was an American microbiologist and biochemist – and an invisible scientist behind the breakthrough discovery of streptomycin. In 1944, a team of researchers at Rutgers University identified the antibiotic streptomycin, which is active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (the bacteria that causes tuberculosis) and isn’t toxic to humans, in a culture of soil microorganisms. Among those scientists was Elizabeth Bugie.
However, the other male scientists – including Professor Selman A. Waksan, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery – excluded Bugie’s name on the antibiotic’s patent.
Their reasoning? That one day, Bugie would “get married and have a family”, so it wouldn’t be important for her to get the recognition she deserved.
While history books left out the contributions of Bugie and other women on the frontlines of antibiotic research, Bugie continued to uncover more antimicrobial substances, and helped establish early antibiotic studies.
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8. Esther Lederberg (1922 – 2006)
Portrait of Esther Lederberg in a lab., Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esther_Lab.jpg
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.
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9. June Almeida (1930 – 2007)
Portrait of Abigail Salyers with a microscope, Image Courtesy of: Joyce Almeida
It’s safe to assume that most of us have seen images of a coronavirus by now: the menacing round sphere with tiny spokes blemished across its surface. But imagine being the first person to see a coronavirus in real life under a microscope. That was June Almeida.
While she didn’t see the strain wreaking havoc across the world today (i.e. SARS-COV2), She was the first person to see and identify the family of viruses that would later be known as coronavirus using an electron microscope in 1964. The Scottish virologist went on to image, identify, and diagnose many more virus structures using microscopy techniques that she developed. Almeida developed a technique using antibodies with electron microscopes to visualize viral structures with better resolution. This aided in visualizing rubella and hepatitis A in the 1970s.
While Almeida had no formal education, she was a skilled technician at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, Canada, and published papers describing the structures of viruses that were previously invisible to the world.
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10. Abigail A. Salyers (1942 – 2013)
Portrait of Abigail Salyers in the lab, Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64244593
Abigail Salyers was an American microbiologist who is considered by many to be the mother of microbiome research. With a focus on the gut microbiome, Salyers’s research advanced the understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. Salyers became the first female tenured professor at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1983, and authored 5 books and more than 200 scientific publications, including her most famous book Revenge of the Microbes about the rise of antibiotic resistance.
She co-directed the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Microbial Diversity course for some time. She also served as the President of American Society for Microbiology during US anthrax epidemic of 2001, where she advised postal workers about bioterrorism agents and safety measures, and developed public policies to protect the public.