In this first part, which covers the period of the 1600s, we can see how, in addition to their contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, some women worked collaboratively with their husbands and also spoke out against women not having access to education. This section reveals new fields in which women developed and how they also sought to share that knowledge with other women, so that more people could benefit. Another notable trend is how these women also expanded their areas of knowledge, including arts and social sciences and language study, which benefited their learning and their jobs.
Louise Bourgeois Boursier (1563 - 1636 AD)
She was a French midwife who worked for the royal court of her country and was the first woman to write a book on childbirth practices. In her 26-year career, she helped deliver many women's babies. Thanks to her medical methods based on common sense and her vast writings, she helped the work of midwives become an advanced science.
She was the first woman to write a book on obstetrics, which was complemented by more detailed works written by them, their colleagues and their descendants. These works were used by various medical professionals in several countries. Unlike other midwives who learned from other midwives, she did so through the work of the French surgeon Ambroise Pare, whom she studied for 5 years. As a complement to that education, she worked serving in middle and lower class communities. In 1598 she obtained her diploma and license to practice.
Anna Maria van Schurman (1607 - 1678 a.d.)
She was a Danish painter, printmaker, poet and academic. She was an advocate of female education. She had access to higher education and showed excellence in art, music, literature. She was also a polyglot, learning 14 languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Aramaic and Ethiopian, as well as contemporary European languages. She was the first to study unofficially at a Danish university.
He had an interest in philosophy and theology, he also showed skills in learning mathematics, geography and astronomy. On the other hand, he produced delicate engravings using diamond on glass, made sculpted works, wax modeling, wood carving and ivory carving. He also painted, especially portraits. He published several writings during his lifetime, in various editions, however, some of his writings were lost.
Martine Bertereau (1600 - 1642 a.d.)
She was also known as the Baroness de Beausoleil. She was the first woman to be registered as a mineralogist and mining engineer with her husband. She traveled extensively throughout Europe searching for mineral deposits and aquifers and was employed by various nobility and royalty. During her lifetime she produced several writings describing the use of artifacts to guess where aquifers might be and other renowned scientific ideas.
She was not open with the public about using various scientific ideas and preferred people to think it was magic or knowledge from antiquity. In reality, Martine was able to discern where there was mineral-rich water by following rich deposits on the way to a water source. Because of these works she was accused of witchcraft and consequently arrested, she died around 1642 while in jail.
She wrote two reports on the work with her husband, one listing the 150 mines the couple discovered in France. It also described French mineral deposits and how to find water sources, although the description was somewhat esoteric.
Maria Cunitz (1610 - 1664 A.D.)
She was an astronomer of Sinesia, the most notable of the early modern era. She was also knowledgeable in medicine, mathematics, history, ancient languages, poetry, painting and music. Unlike her parents, she had no formal education, she was married twice and it was her second husband who fulfilled a tutoring role and always motivated her to learn.
She is the author of Urania propitia, which included new tables to determine the longitude and latitude of each of the planets, along with other parameters. In this text she revised the complicated and erroneous calculations she found in Rudolphine's tables for the solution of Kepler's second law used to precisely determine the position of a planet in its elliptical orbit. His work did not have much impact on 16th century astronomy because of its very small and isolated printing.
Marie Meurdrac (1610 - 1680 A.D.)
She was a French chemist and alchemist known for writing a treatise on chemistry aimed at ordinary women and focused on providing affordable treatments for the poor. The book was called La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames, which was translated into German and Italian and was supported by the Faculty of Medicine in Paris.
This is the first work on chemistry written by a woman after that of Mary the Jewess(see Women in STEM Ancient Age - Part II article). She is described as the first woman to publish a book on early chemistry. She hesitated to write, worried about criticism from those who believed that women should not be educated, yet she believed that minds were sexless.
Meurdrac was self-taught, learning chemistry by using the works and experiments of other scientists and reading theoretical treatises on alchemy and chemistry. His studies covered everything from laboratory techniques, properties of medicines and cosmetics. He also had a table with the weights and 106 alchemical symbols used in medicine at the time.
She had her own laboratory where she conducted experiments with the aim of improving the lives of women, producing home remedies and beauty products. She also diligently kept a record of her recipes. She also gave classes in her laboratory to those women who did not dare to perform the experiments on their own. She had a high-temperature oven, which was unusual at the time, to conduct experiments.
Margaret Lucas Cavendish(1667 AD)
She was an English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and screenwriter. She published under her name something that at the time was unusual. The topics she dealt with ranged from gender, power, behaviors to writing about scientific method and philosophy. It was also unusual for her to publish widely on natural philosophy and early modern science, and she even wrote a novel that is considered to be one of the first in the science fiction genre.
She opposed animal testing and advocated for the education of women, for she believed that women were capable of learning and benefiting from education and insisted that her own jobs could be even better if she and her brothers had been able to attend school.
