To celebrate #AdaLovelaceDay , here's a thread of five of the most prolific female radio astronomers!

1. Elizabeth Alexander was a WWII radar scientist who discovered that her equipment was picking up radio waves from the Sun. She’s widely considered the first Australian radio astronomer.

2. Ruby Payne-Scott was a solar radio astronomer who designed and built a group of telescopes that could map solar radiation once every second. She was forced into retirement when she married, despite her colleagues’ schemes to keep her marriage secret.

3. Vera Rubin discovered dark matter by calculating that galaxies were rotating faster than they should be. Once, she found there were no ladies' bathrooms at Palomar Observatory, Rubin cut out a paper skirt and stuck it on the little man on the bathroom door-- Problem fixed.

Check out her 1994 Jansky lecture here: https://vimeo.com/173658775 

4. Jocelyn Bell-Burnell is best known for discovering the first four pulsars! Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that radiate out of their magnetic poles.

For more info on how she did it and a recording of her Jansky Lecture, see this thread: https://twitter.com/GreenBankObserv/status/1291384431396237312?s=20

5. Jill Tarter is a trailblazer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. She was a chair of the @SETIInstitute, and inspired the character of Ellie Arroway in the novel (and movie) Contact.

Ada Lovelace Day is a day to celebrate women in STEM everywhere! Who’s your favorite female scientist, technologist, engineer, or mathematician?