This article is part of The Gazelle’s Faculty’s Choice series. This week, in recognition of International Women's Day last Sunday, we've asked faculty from different disciplines for their picks of admirable women throughout history, science and sport.
Kirsten Sadler Edepli, Associate Professor of Biology

Rosalyn Yalow
“She developed a mechanism to detect hormones in the blood; one that lays the foundation for understanding how the endocrine system works and is the basis for many routine clinical tests that save lives. Plus, she is a New Yorker and even took some classes at NYU.”

Nancy Hopkins “An accomplished virologist and tumor biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, she undertook fearless and pioneering work that revealed unconscious gender bias against women in science at MIT, initiating prestigious institutions worldwide to examine their own practices on hiring, promoting and evaluating women faculty. This practice was adopted by NYU and she is also a New Yorker.”

Rosalind Franklin “She made fundamental discoveries on the double helical structure of DNA, and was a biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer in the UK who worked with the famed Watson and Crick in solving the structure of DNA. She was not recognized in the Nobel Prize awarded for this to Watson, Crick and Wilkons in 1962, but is commemorated in a society established to honor her: The Rosalind Franklin Society.”

Christmas Abbott “A 30-something CrossFit athlete, and the first female to join a NASCAR pit crew. Her experiences following her mom to an Iraqi war zone working in a military laundry center inspired her to pursue mental and physical feats like joining CrossFit, becoming a sponsored CrossFit athlete and the head coach of her own boxing center, Invoke, in North Carolina.”

Ronda Rousey “The first female UFC champion, who nearly died at birth, impeding her ability to speak until age six. She also lost her father to suicide at age eight. While struggling in school, competitive judo became an outlet for her, ultimately leading to her earning a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics. In the wake of her judo career, she joined a fighting club, became a Bantamweight champion and defended the title within the UFC.”
Erin Pettigrew, Assistant Professor History and Arab Crossroads Studies:

Beatriz Kimpa Vita “As a young Catholic in Central Africa [1684-1706], she claimed to have visions that led her to launch a movement against the Portuguese incursions into the Kingdom of Kongo. Accused of heresy and of sorcery, she was burned to death by the local ruler at the time with the consent of Catholic clergy.”

Sihem Ben Sedrine “A Tunisian journalist and human rights activist, she was persecuted and arrested for her criticism of the corruption and repression of the Ben Ali regime.”
Masha Kirasirova, Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow of History

Clara Zetkin “She developed the social-democratic women's movement in Germany, organized the first International Women's Day in 1911 and helped to set up a centralized organization to manage the international women’s movement in the early 1920s.”

Nawal El Saadawi “A controversial Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist who has written widely about the subject of women in Islam and the practice of female circumcision in Egypt. She is the president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights.”
Justin Blau, Professor of Biology and Director of NYU Biology PhD program

Barbara McClintock “An American scientist who was awarded the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983. She is still the only woman to win this particular prize singly – there have been others who won a share of the prize. The discoveries McClintock made were in the 1950s studying maize, where she discovered transposons, which are also known as jumping genes, since they can move around the genome. This discovery has allowed researchers to manipulate the genomes of many different organisms to understand their basic biology. The human genome contains over 4 million transposon copies, which occupy almost half of the human genome, although most of these have lost the ability to jump. McClintock was the third woman to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences and she was the first female president of the Genetics Society of America.”