Tapputi, also referred to as Tapputi-Belatekallim ("Belatekallim" refers to a female overseer of a palace), [1] is one of the world's first recorded chemists, a perfume-maker mentioned in a cuneiform tablet dated around 1200 BC in Babylonian Mesopotamia. [2] She used flowers, oil, and calamus along with cyperus, myrrh, and balsam. She added water or other solvents then distilled and filtered several times. [3] This is also the oldest referenced still.
She also was an overseer at the Royal Palace, and worked with a researcher named (—)-ninu (the first part of her name has been lost). [4]
Tapputi used the first recorded still and wrote the first known treatise on perfume making, which is preserved on a clay tablet. She developed a technique using solvents in order to make scents lighter and longer lasting. [5] [ better source needed ]
The word perfume is used today to describe scented mixtures and is derived from the Latin word per fumus. The word perfumery refers to the art of making perfumes. Perfume was refined by the Romans, the Persians and the Arabs. Although perfume and perfumery also existed in East Asia, much of its fragrances were incense based. The basic ingredients and methods of making perfumes are described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia.
Helen Cecilia De Silver Abbott Michael was an American chemist and a pioneer in phytochemistry. She documented the relationship between chemical composition and plant morphology and proposed a chemical taxonomy for plants. She was the first woman to lecture to students at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. She published several scientific papers and gave lectures to the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution. She received a medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine and transformed her house in Boston into a free hospital for the poor, however she died from influenza contracted from one of her patients. She was married to organic chemist Arthur Michael.
Hazel Alden Reason was an English chemist who became a schoolteacher. She was the author of a popular book for young people on the history of chemistry.
Ida Freund was the first woman to be a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom. She is known for her influence on science teaching, particularly the teaching of women and girls. She wrote two key chemistry textbooks and invented the idea of baking periodic table cupcakes, as well as inventing a gas measuring tube, which was named after her.
Grace Coleridge Frankland known as Mrs Percy FranklandnéeGrace Toynbee was an English microbiologist. She was one of the nineteen female scientists who wrote the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society to request that they should create some female fellows of the society.
Edith Ellen Humphrey was a British inorganic chemist who carried out pioneering work in co-ordination chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner. She is thought to be the first British woman to obtain a doctorate in chemistry and the first chemist to synthesize a chiral inorganic complex.
Ada Florence Remfry Hitchins was the principal research assistant of British chemist Frederick Soddy, who won the Nobel prize in 1921 for work on radioactive elements and the theory of isotopes. Hitchins isolated samples from uranium ores, taking precise and accurate measurements of atomic mass that provided the first experimental evidence for the existence of different isotopes. She also helped to discover the element protactinium, which Dmitri Mendeleev had predicted should occur in the periodic table between uranium and thorium.
Kathleen Culhane Lathbury was a British biochemist known for her work with insulin and vitamins. Lathbury worked as an overseer at British Drug Houses where she was responsible for supervising the manufacture of insulin to make sure it was effective. After her retirement she took up painting and was exhibited in the Royal Academy. She was still driving at the age of 90. She had three sisters, Norah, Rosalind, Christine and two brothers, Robert, and Michael who all had equally remarkable lives
Mildred May Gostling, also published under her married name Mildred Mills, was an English chemist who completed research in carbohydrate chemistry. She was one of the nineteen signatories on a letter from professional female chemists to the Chemical Society requesting that women be accepted as Fellows to the Society.
Emily Jane Lloyd was an English chemist and one of the first women to become an Associate member of the Royal Institute of Chemistry.
Margaret Seward MBE became the earliest Chemist on staff at the Women's College, from 1896 to 1915. She became the pioneer woman to obtain a first class in the honour school of Natural Science and later received an MBE for her work on nutrition during World War I.
Katharine Isabella Williams was a British chemist who became a student, aged 29, at University College Bristol. She was known for her collaboration in the 1880s with Nobel prize winning Scottish chemist, William Ramsay and was also one of the signatories of the 1904 petition for the admission of women to the Chemical Society.
Emily Comber Fortey was a British chemist and politician. She gained her B.Sc. in 1886 before working with Vladimir Markovnikov and Sydney Young on fractional distillation. In 1904, she was one of nineteen signatories on a petition to allow the admission of women to the Chemical Society.
Elizabeth Eleanor Field was a British chemist and the Head of Chemistry at Royal Holloway College for two decades. She is also noted as one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition which aimed to grant women the status of Fellows of the Chemical Society.
Katherine Alice Burke was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.
Alice Emily Smith was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.
Stefanie Horovitz (1887–1942) was a Polish-Jewish chemist known for experimental work proving the existence of isotopes. Between approximately 1914-1918, she worked with Otto Hönigschmid at the Radium Institute of Vienna using analytical methods to demonstrate the first and second credible cases of isotopes in lead and thorium. Later she co-founded a home for children and young adults in need of psychological therapy. She was killed by Nazis at Treblinka extermination camp in 1942.
Master Geng was a Chinese alchemist. She was the daughter of Geng Qian. Legend says that during her adolescence she already demonstrated her intelligence and curiosity, and developed skills in the alchemical arts. Eventually, her skills drew the attention of emperor Xuanzong, who invited her to the palace. Within the palace, rather than being counted as one of the palace women, she was honoured as a scholar, and given the title Master. Whenever she had an audience, she spoke confidently and eloquently, always wearing green robes. She is described as performing alchemical transformations, as well as dabbling in divination. Most of her alchemy focused on creating silver, and tales tell of her ability to use mercury to turn even snow into silver. This, some modern chemists have proposed, might be an example of a legitimate chemical process in which mercury is used to extra silver from ores. She may have also distilled perfumes, and utilized an early form of the Soxhlet process to extract camphor into alcohol. In her personal life, Geng was noted as enjoying wine, and romantic and sexual dalliances.
Dorothea Annie Hoffert was a scientist who worked on aircraft dope and later oils and fats at the Lister Institute.
Catherine Chamié was a French chemist. Along with Irène Joliot-Curie, she first measured the Half-life of radon. She also undertook extensive research on the photographic effect of groupings of atoms, an effect which bears her name, known as Chamié effect.