The GAIM 2024 Women 

Every year, Girls’ Adventures in Math honors four exemplary women from history. For GAIM 2024, meet Eunice Newton Foote, Sarojini Naidu, Mary Golda Ross, and Lyudmila Rudenko! Our competition problems will be based on the lives and adventures of these women.

Eunice Newton Foote, Discoverer of GREENHOUSE EFFECT

Hello!  You may have heard of the Greenhouse Effect, but you may not have realized that it was discovered in 1856 by a woman, and that woman was me!  

I was an amateur scientist who loved to do my own research at home.  I set up a controlled experiment by laying out glass cylinders containing a different gas in each - such as oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide - and observing their temperatures when warmed by sunlight.  The heating effect of the sun turned out to be greater in moist air than in dry air, and the highest in a cylinder containing carbon dioxide!  I concluded that “an atmosphere of that gas (CO2) would give our earth a high temperature” - predicting global warming.  

A male colleague, Joseph Henry, presented my paper at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Being a woman, I was not permitted to.  I chafed against the injustice of this restriction, as well as the underlying assumption that women couldn’t do science.  Earlier, in 1848, I attended the first Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, and signed a manifesto demanding a woman’s equal rights and status with men.  Fighting for equality in these spheres was important to me!

I continued to do scientific experiments and filed a number of patents in my lifetime.  The significance of my Greenhouse Effect research would not be known for many more years, but now it is the basis of climate change science!

SAROJINI NAIDU, POET, ACTIVIST, and governor

Greetings from ‘the Nightingale of India’, a nickname Mahatma Gandhi gave me to honor my lyric poetry!  I wrote and published many poems on the themes of patriotism, romance, and tragedy. But I was also famous as a political activist and feminist - in fact, that’s how I met Gandhi.

I was born into a family of a Bengali Brahman (the highest Hindu caste) who was a college principal. I went to school in Madras, then London and Cambridge. In England I fought for women’s rights as a suffragette, and then returned to India where I joined the Indian National Congress’ movement for independence from British rule. I became President of the Congress in 1925.

I was inspired by Gandhi and his idea of swaraj, or Indian self-rule. When I participated in his 1930 Salt March against the British salt monopoly, I was arrested, along with Gandhi and other leaders.  I faced repeated arrests by the British authorities during the Civil Disobedience Movement and spent over 21 months in jail. Nevertheless I was fierce in my devotion to my homeland, so in 1947 after we achieved independence I was elected the Governor of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), becoming the first woman to hold the office of Governor in India.

My creed is this: “When there is oppression, the only self-respecting thing is to rise and say this shall cease today because my right is justice. If you are stronger, you have to help the weaker boy or girl both in play and in work.”

Mary Golda Ross, Aerospace engineer

Do you love math?  I do!  Even before I became the first Native American female engineer and the first female engineer at Lockheed Corporation, I was a math teacher.  My parents were both Cherokee and I grew up near the capital of the Cherokee nation.  It was important to me that my high school math teacher was a Cherokee.  It was true (and unfair) that teaching was one of the only professions available to women with math degrees, but I also felt called to math education, especially to Native American girls.

But things can change! In 1942, due to World War II, a position opened up for me as a math research assistant at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.  I helped redesign the P38-Lightning, a US Air Force fighter plane.  In addition to my master’s degree in math, I also obtained one in aerospace engineering.  In 1949 I became registered as a professional engineer, making me the first known Native American woman engineer.  I moved over to Lockheed’s Missiles and Space Company and made many impactful contributions to both their missiles and space launch vehicles.  I also contributed to NASA’s Interplanetary Flight Handbook.

All my life I was committed to service and education, and advocated for women and Native Americans in engineering.  I firmly believe that “the world is so technical, if you plan to work in it, a math background will let you go farther and faster.”

LYUDMILA RUDENKO, CHAMPION CHESS PLAYER AND SWIMMER

Swimming or chess?  I was awesome at both!  My dad taught me how to play chess when I was 10, but you know how it is when your parent pushes you toward something - I preferred swimming. I placed first in the 400 meter breaststroke in Odesa, and later second place in all of Ukraine.  Swimming made me feel powerful and free!

I earned my college degree in economics, and moved to Moscow to start a career as an economic planner in 1925.  It was only then that I played my first chess tournament.  People were impressed by how creatively I played.  By 1928 I had won the Moscow Women’s Championship by winning all 12 of my games!  Then I moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), got married, and entered a community of strong women chess players.  There I continued my winning ways.

In 1941 as World War II raged on, the front line drew closer and closer to Leningrad.  The factory where I worked ordered an evacuation to a town 2000 km away called Chernyakhovsk.  I was asked to organize a train to evacuate several dozen children of factory workers.  I narrowly managed to get them out before the German blockade trap killed over a million people by starvation in the Siege of Leningrad.  I consider this dangerous journey the single greatest achievement in my life - I saved the lives of those children.

After the war, in 1950, I won the Women’s World Chess Championship - the second woman ever to do so.  I was grateful for all the ways life prepared me for every challenge that came my way!