page_title: Timeline of women in science
section_title: 1950s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of women in science / Late 20th century / 1950s
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Rosalind Franklin vor dem Mikroskop im Jahr 1955.English: Rosalind Franklin with microscope in 1955.Français&#160;: Rosalind Franklin au microscope en 1955.
context_page_description: This is a timeline of women in science, spanning from ancient history up to the 21st century. While the timeline primarily focuses on women involved with natural sciences such as astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics, it also includes women from the social sciences and the formal sciences, as well as notable science educators and medical scientists. The chronological events listed in the timeline relate to both scientific achievements and gender equality within the sciences.
context_section_description: 1950s: Chinese-American medical scientist Tsai-Fan Yu co-founded a clinic at Mount Sinai Medical Center for the study and treatment of gout. Working with Alexander B. Gutman, Yu established that levels of uric acid were a factor in the pain experienced by gout patients, and subsequently developed multiple effective drugs for the treatment of gout.
  1950: Ghanaian, Matilda J. Clerk became the first woman in Ghana and West Africa to attend graduate school, earning a postgraduate diploma at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
  1950: Isabella Abbott became the first Native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in any science; hers was in botany.
  1950: American microbiologist Esther Lederberg became the first to isolate lambda bacteriophage, a DNA virus, from Escherichia coli K-12.
  1951: Ghana's Esther Afua Ocloo became the first person of African ancestry to obtain a cooking diploma from the Good Housekeeping Institute in London and to take the post-graduate Food Preservation Course at Long Ashton Research Station, Department of Horticulture, Bristol University.
  1952: American computer scientist Grace Hopper completed what is considered to be the first compiler, a program that allows a computer user to use a human-readable high-level programming language instead of machine code. It was known as the A-0 compiler.
  1952: Photograph 51, an X-ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA, was taken by Raymond Gosling in May 1952, working as a PhD student under the supervision of British chemist and biophysicist Rosalind Franklin; it was critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA.
  1952: Canadian agriculturalist Mary MacArthur became the first female Fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada for her contributions to the science of food dehydration and freezing.
  1953: Canadian-British radiobiologist Alma Howard co-authored a paper proposing that cellular life transitions through four distinct periods. This became the first concept of the cell cycle.
  1954: Lucy Cranwell was the first female recipient of the Hector Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand. She was recognized for her pioneering work with pollen in the emerging field of palynology.
  1955: Moira Dunbar became the first female glaciologist to study sea ice from a Canadian icebreaker ship.
  1955: Japanese geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi published her research on measuring carbonic acid levels in seawater. The paper included "Saruhashi's Table", a tool of measurement she had developed that focused on using water temperature, pH level, and chlorinity to determine carbonic acid levels. Her work contributed to global understanding of climate change, and Saruhashi's Table was used by oceanographers for the next 30 years.
  1955–1956: Soviet marine biologist Maria Klenova became the first woman scientist to work in the Antarctic, conducting research and assisting in the establishment of the Mirny Antarctic station.
  1956: Canadian zoologist and feminist Anne Innis Dagg began pioneering behavioural research on wild giraffes in South Africa in Kruger National Park. She researched and published on feminism and anti-nepotism laws at academic institutions in North America.
  1956: Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu conducted a nuclear physics experiment in collaboration with the Low Temperature Group of the US National Bureau of Standards. The experiment, becoming known as the Wu experiment, showed that parity could be violated in weak interaction.
  1956: Dorothy Hill became the first Australian woman elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
  1956: English zoologist and geneticist Margaret Bastock published the first evidence that a single gene could change behavior.
  1957–1958: Chinese scientist Lanying Lin produced China's first germanium and silicon mono-crystals, subsequently pioneering new techniques in semiconductor development.
  1959: Chinese astronomer Ye Shuhua led the development of the Joint Chinese Universal Time System, which became the Chinese national standard for measuring universal time.
  1959: Susan Ofori-Atta, the first Ghanaian woman ph
caption: British chemist Rosalind Franklin
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