Celebrating the Women Breaking Barriers in the Sciences

Nobel Media Partners with Microsoft to Launch Cutting-Edge Storytelling Platform

(March 8, 2019) In anticipation of Women’s History Month, Nobel Media has partnered with Microsoft to highlight the achievements of women who broke new ground in physics, chemistry, and medicine. The result, Women Who Changed Science, is a unique web experience that trains a lens on the inspiring journeys and contributions of female Nobel Prize winners. In a world where 64% of American girls and women can’t name another woman in the sciences*, Nobel Media and Microsoft aim to inspire young women across the world to be the groundbreakers of tomorrow.

Women who changed science launches Friday, March 8 on International Women’s Day. Engage with luminaries like Marie Curie, who harnessed the promise of radioactivity, Rita Levi-Montalcini, who redefined how our bodies work, and Tu Youyou, whose breakthrough malaria treatment has saved millions throughout the world. The web experience brings to life the unique contributions of each laureate while exploring the interconnecting lineage of women in the sciences. Raising awareness of their tremendous impact, the collaboration aims to empower the next generation of scientists.

This unique collaboration with Nobel Media is one of Microsoft’s ongoing initiatives to build inclusion in STEM fields. Microsoft believes that nurturing diverse viewpoints and creating opportunities for everyone to experiment with technology incites innovation and sparks breakthroughs. Women who changed science transforms not only how we experience the odds-defying stories of grit behind the prizewinning discoveries of these laureates, but also emboldens the next generation of young women to change our world.

To engage with these laureates, visit the Women Who Changed Science web experience:

To learn more about Microsoft’s movement to build inclusion in STEM fields, see microsoft.com/inculture/social-good/inclusion

For all press inquiries, please contact VocalNYC.com.

*Research conducted by Microsoft in partnership with KRC Research. Survey included more than 6,000 girls and women between the ages of 10 and 30 from across the U.S. (read more)

Women Who Changed Science: Uncover the Discoveries

Launching March 8 on International Women’s Day, a unique AI-assisted multimedia platform within NobelPrize.org will let you explore the stories and accomplishments of the female greats in science.

The identification of role models is fundamental to female involvement in the sciences. Adopting this challenge, Microsoft has partnered with Nobel Media to develop a cutting-edge web experience that will engage and inspire young aspirants to pursue their dreams with confidence. To further break down engagement barriers, Microsoft AI technologies enhance an immersive journey in the footsteps that lead to some of sciences greatest achievements. The result is an accessible and entertaining discovery that hopes to embolden the next generation of young women to become the visionaries that change our world.

When is the Women Who Changed Science platform going live?

March 8, 2019: International Women’s Day

Continuing through March: Women’s History Month

Visit: www.nobelprize.org

URL: www.nobelprize.org/women-who-changed-science

What is the mission behind this partnership between Microsoft and Nobel Media?

To inspire young women and girls to see themselves in the laureates’ stories and pursue education and careers in science.

Microsoft and Nobel Media have a shared mission to encourage more women and girls to pursue passions and careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). To raise awareness and empower the next generation of women in science, Microsoft and Nobel Media have teamed up to highlight past female laureates through an AI-assisted multimedia web experience  — nearly 70% of young girls and women in America cannot name a woman in the scientific fields. 

What will the Women Who Changed Science web experience entail?

Women Who Changed Science brings to life the unique contributions of each laureate while exploring the interconnecting lineage of women in the sciences. Using Microsoft AI technology to surface deep connections between the intricate stories of these women, the digital site weaves together the biographies of these pioneers through images, archival video footage, and their own words.

What is the Microsoft AI technology?

Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs empower digital platforms with intelligent algorithms that let the audience see, hear, speak, understand and interpret their needs through natural methods of communication. For more information, visit Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft is dedicated to using technology as a tool for social good, with Cognitive Services enabling the creation of a novel web experience that brings female laureates’ accomplishments to life and draws together extensive materials from the Nobel archive in compelling new ways. 

Which laureates will be spotlighted?

Ada Yonath (Chemistry), Barbara McClintock (Physiology / Medicine), Carol Greider (Physiology / Medicine), Christiane Nьsslein-Volhard (Physiology / Medicine), Donna Strickland (Physics), Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (Chemistry), Elizabeth Blackburn (Physiology / Medicine), Frances Arnold (Chemistry), Franзoise Barrй-Sinoussi (Physiology / Medicine), Gertrude Elion (Physiology / Medicine), Gerry Cori (Physiology / Medicine), Irene Joliot-Curie (Chemistry), Linda Buck (Physiology / Medicine), Maria Goeppert-Mayer (Physics), Marie Sklodowska Curie (Physics), May-Britt Moser (Physiology / Medicine), Rita Levi-Montalcini (Physiology / Medicine), Rosalyn Yalow (Physiology / Medicine), Youyou Tu (Physiology / Medicine)

What are some example stories from the Women Who Changed Science platform?

Frances Arnold was a free thinker long before pioneering the use of directed evolution to design new enzymes. At age 17, she embarked on a journey of personal discovery: hitchhiking to D.C. to protest the Vietnam War, waiting tables at a jazz club, driving a cab. Decades later, she earned a 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a discovery that changed medicine, agriculture, and energy forever. 

Starting out as a part-time secretary, Rosalyn Yalow eventually became the only woman on the 400-member faculty of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Later, her revolutionary methodology for measuring concentrations of hormones in the blood, radioimmunoassay (RIA), launched a new era of medical research — and earned her a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977. 

In 1903, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for her outstanding research in "radiation phenomena." The Nobel Committee had initially intended to award only her husband   and Henri Becquerel, but Pierre Curie insisted that his wife share the honor. In 1911 she won another Nobel Prize for the isolation of radium, by which time she had become world famous and was the director of the Curie Laboratory at the newly established Radium Institute — now known as the Curie Institute.