Women have been in science since 2700 BCE!
We're not rookies when it comes to ground-breaking discoveries and saving lives. In fact, one of the first female scientists we know of practiced medicine in ancient Egypt around 2700 BCE. Her name was Merit Ptah and she was a rockstar.
Not only was Merit Ptah arguably the first name female physician, but she may well be the very first named physician in the history of medicine. Her image and title, "chief physician", were painted on her tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
Moreover, there was a revered medical school with female professors around the same time in Saïs, a town in the western Nile Delta, which specialized in gynecology and obstetrics.
Because Merit Ptah was such an incredible pioneer, they named a 17 km wide impact crater on Venus after her!
Hurd-Mead, K. Campbell. (1938). A history of women in medicine: from the earliest times to the beginning of the nineteenth century. (p. 16) Haddam, Conn.: The Haddam Press.
Merit Ptah. (2015). Lunar and Planetary Institute. Retreived August 23, 2015. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/vc/vcinfo/?refnum=401
