The following questions were generated at the end of 2019.
If you have a correction, or better yet a new question, please contact me.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which Scottish scientist was instrumental in the discovery and isolation of insulin in 1922? | John James Macleod |
| Which canadian shared the Nobel prize for generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses? | Donna Strickland |
| Edward Bouchet was the first African-American to earn a PhD in Physics from an American university, in which year did he graduate from Yale? | 1876 |
| In 1856, which scientist first theorised that CO2 emissions may have a warming effect on the climate thus predicting the global heating that we see today? | Eunice Newton Foote |
| Which Hollywood star patented, with George Antheil, a frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology that was later adopted by the US Navy? | Hedy Lamarr |
| Who won the 2015 Nobel prize for medicine for their pioneering work on malaria? | Tu Youyou |
| Which WWI field radiographer went on to win the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the first artificially created radioactive atoms in 1935? | Irène Joliot-Curie |
| Who was the first woman to win the Nobel prize in Physiology or medicine in 1947? | Gerty Cori |
| Who's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws and was described by contemporaries as the most important woman in the history of mathematics? | Emmy Noether |
| Which British, first generation, 20th century physicist predicted the existence of anti-matter? | Paul Dirac |
| Carol Shaw was one of the first female game designers and programmers in the video game industry, her game River Raid (Activision) was made in 1982 for which games console? | Atari 2600 |
| What was the name of the woman who completed the Brooklyn Bridge? She took over duties as chief engineer. | Emily Roebling |
| Which American professor innovated the initial designs for the ‘curved cattle chute’? | Temple Grandin |
| Which mathematician, an asylum seeker from Iran, won a fields medal in 2018? | Caucher Birkar |
| Rosalind Franklin is one of our greatest and well known scientists. Can you estimate the number of photos of her that are free to use around the world? | One (Wikimedia Commons) |
| Newnham College for women opened in Cambridge in 1871. How many years was it before their students could obtain a University of Cambridge degree? | 1947 - 1871 = 76 years |
| Queen Victoria honoured Kate Marsden who travelled from the UK to Siberia by sledge to find a cure for leprosy. Why wasn't she allowed to attend the opening of Bexhill museum which she founded? | Homophobia |
| Mildred Dresselhaus is known as the "queen of _ science". What element is missing? | Carbon |
| Which schizophrenic mathematician won the nobel prize for economics for his work on game theory? | John Forbes Nash Jr. |
| Who is the only female mathematician to have won a Fields medal? | Maryam Mirzakhani |
| Jean Purdy, with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, developed what process? | In vitro Fertilisation (IVF) |
| Which clinic, based in Cambridgeshire, ignored Jean Purdy's scientific contributions for over 30 years? | Bourn Hall |
| Laura Serrant has been recognised as one of the most influential black people in the UK. What area of STEM does she work in? | Nursing (accept health research) |
| Stephanie Shirley ran a software company called Freelance Programmers in the 1970s for female coders, working flexibly and from home. More than 290 out of 300 programming staff were female. But why did this come to an end? | Introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 |
| George McJunkin was an African-American cowboy, and amateur archaeologist, who discovered ancient remains of which type of animal in 1908 near Folsom, New Mexico? | Bison |
| Muthayya Vanitha is the project director of which mission, described as the first Indian Space Research Organisation mission to be led by a woman? | Chandrayaan-2 |
| What type of cells are important for supporting neurons in the brain? Ben Barres, a transgender neuroscientist, worked on them. | Glial cells |
| Sally Ride flew in the Challenger (NASA) mission in what year? | 1983 |
| What mobile computer architecture was designed by transgender computer scientist Sophie Wilson? | ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) |
| Who is the first African American selected for and to complete the first two phases of the US Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS), the training program for NASA astronaut selection? | Ed Dwight |
| For which space mission did Frances 'Poppy' Northcut, work as NASA's first female engineer to work in Mission control? | Apollo 8 |
| What are the five criteria to assess the health of newborn babies according to Virginia Apgar's APGAR score? | Activity, Pulse, Grimace, Appearance, Respiration |
| Who invented Kevlar? | Stephanie Kwolek |
| During the 1960s, while working for the FDA, what medical drug did Frances Oldham refuse to approve in the US? This avoided a public health crisis. | Thalidomide |
| Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, in her 1925 doctoral thesis, correctly proposed that stars were composed primarily of what two elements? | Hydrogen and helium |
| In what year did Mary Anning discover the ichthyosaur skeleton? | 1811 |
| Who discovered the structure of insulin? | Dorothy Hodgkin |
| Edith Clarke was the first female professor of electrical engineering, what did she invent? | The graphical calculator |
| Ruth Gates was the director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. What marine animal was her research focused on? | Corals |
| Pierre Berthier was a French geologist who discovered bauxite and Berthierite. On what famous monument is his name enscribed? | The Eiffel Tower |
| Why is American seismologist Kate Hutton known as 'Earthquake Kate'? | Earthquake commentary |
| What famous scientist does Hozier mention in his song 'No Plan' in the line 'As [name] explained, there will be darkness again'? | Katie Mack |
| What question was YouTuber and scientist Sally LePage trying to answer when she bought 280 bananas? | How many sides does a banana have? |
| Maria Goeppert Mayer was the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. She also predicted two-photon absorption, a technique that is nowadays widely used in neuroscience research. The phenomenon was experimentally shown for the first time in 1961, what year did she predict it? | 1930 |
| The 1956 "Wu experiment" on the beta-decay of Cobalt-60 was conducted by Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu and changed the way physicists see the universe, though Wu was excluded from the 1957 Nobel prize recognising the discovery. What did her experiment demonstrate? | Parity non-conservation/violation (that it is possible to distinguish the universe from its mirror image). |
| According to UCL, Susan Brown is believed to have been the first female mathematics professor in the UK. She published many papers on triple-deck theory and boundary layers. What field of math did she work in? | Fluid mechanics/dynamics |
| In 1925, who became the first African-American mathematician to be awarded a PhD? He graduated from Cornell. | Elbert Frank Cox |
| Stephen Hawking first described this phenomenon. It relates to energy released by a black hole due to quantum effects. What is it called? | Hawking radiation |
| In 1990, Karen Uhlenbeck became the second woman to give a plenary speech at the International Congress of Mathematics. Who, in 1932, was the first? | Emmy Noether |
| Which mathematician and statistician was the first African-American to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1965? He worked on game theory and Bayesian statistics. | David Blackwell |
| Which African-American mathematician published a series of successful almanacs in the 18th century? They contained calculations about the motion of the planets and stars. | Benjamin Banneker |
| Which Brazilian mathematician became the first from Latin America to be awarded the Fields medal? It was in 2014, for his work on dynamical systems. | Artur Avila |
| Which mathematical institution launched the "Next Einstein Forum" in 2008, it is a programme to encourage investment in science research in Africa? | AIMS (African institute for mathematical sciences) |
| Which CPU instruction set architecture, subsequently implemented in over 150 billion microprocessors between 1985 and 2018, was originally designed in 1983/84 by Sophie Wilson, following her work developing the Acorn System 1, the BBC Microcomputer series, and BBC BASIC? | ARM (Advanced RISC Machine, originally Acorn RISC Machine) |
| At which university did Laura Bassi teach and in what era? | Location: University of Bologna Era: 1732 - 1776 |
| "The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars" was written by which best-selling science author? | Dava Sobel |
| Who penned "A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes"? | Adam Rutherford |
| Shirakawa shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with physicist Alan Jay Heeger and chemist Alan Graham MacDiarmid for discovering and developing polymers with what property? | Conductive |
| Who is known for the discovery of C−H···O hydrogen bonds? She later worked with Kathleen Lonsdale on the characterisation and prevention of urinary calculi. | June Sutor |
| The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind' is a 2019 British drama film written, directed by and starring which Black British actor? He also starred in 12 years a slave. | Chiwetel Ejiofor |
| Asha de Vos is a Sri Lankan marine biologist, ocean educator and pioneer of research of what marine mammal? This mammal is the largest to have ever existed. | Blue Whale |
| Hiranya V. Peiris is a British (Sri Lankan born) astrophysicist at University College London, and is best known for her work on what cosmological phenomenon? This phenomenon is evidence of the big bang. | Cosmic Microwave Backgroun Radiation |
| In 1979 Sir William Arthur Lewis, from Saint Lucia, won the Nobel memorial prize for what science? | Economics |
| How many Nobel prizes have been awarded to black people in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine? | 0 |
| Norbert Rillieux (1806-1894), widely considered to be one of the earliest chemical engineers, revolutionized the processing of what commodity? He did so with the invention of the multiple effect evaporator under vacuum. | Sugar |
| Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined what term that is now associated with a branch of feminism which identifies how different aspects of social and political discrimination overlap with gender? | Intersectionality |
| Christopher Gary Packham CBE is an English naturalist, nature photographer, television presenter and author, best known for his television work including what CBBC children's nature series (1986 to 1995)? | The Really Wild Show |
| In linguistics, what two word phrase is given to: the belief or impression that a word or language usage is of recent origin when it is long-established? The term was coined by Arnold Zwicky. | Recency illusion |
| Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson, and Emily Bovell formed a group known as what? They became the first group of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university. | Edinburgh Seven |
| In particle physics, Paul Dirac coined Bosons after which Calcutta born scientist? He worked on quantum mechanics and collaborated with Albert Einstein. | Satyendra Nath Bose |
| In 2001, Lene Vestergaard Hau led a Harvard University team who, by use of a Bose-Einstein condensate, succeeded in completely stopping what? | A beam of light |
| Whose dissertation, completed in 1954, concluded that galaxies clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed throughout the universe? | Vera Rubin |
| Who developed the first compiler, and was Director of the department that developed COBOL? She coined the term debugging, after a moth got stuck in a relay. | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper |
| Who, with Otto Hahn and Otto Robert Frisch, co-discovered Nuclear Fission? Albert Einstein referred to her as the "German Marie Curie". | Lise Meitner |
| Marie Curie and Pierre Curie received the Nobel prize in physics alongside whom in 1903? An SI unit is named after them. | Henri Becquerel |
| Ada Lovelace's note G on the Analytical Engine from 1842 describes an algorithm for generating what numbers? These numbers are named after a famous Italian family of 17th and 18th century Swiss mathematicians. | Bernoulli |
| In number theory, a prime number p is a Sophie Germain prime if 2p + 1 is also prime. The number 2p + 1 associated with a Sophie Germain prime is called a safe prime. If 23 is a safe prime, what is its corresponding Sophie Germain prime? | 11 |
| Celia Grillo Borromeo was an Italian mathematician known for her discovery of the Clélie curve in 1728. This gives the formula for the curves that could be drawn on what rotating geometric object? | Sphere |
| Who (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD) is considered the first woman mathematician? She lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. | Hypatia |
| Known for being reclusive, shy, and detached, which famous natural philosopher was conjectured to have Aspergers by Oliver Sacks? This well known scientist discovered hydrogen. | Henry Cavendish |
| In an interview with the BBC, David Lammy said "It's easy to say I'd like to see it scrapped," and "I'm comfortable with getting rid of it but the key question is what it would be replaced with?". What EDI term was he referring to? | BAME |
| What phrase describes a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud"? | Imposter Syndrome |
| Defined on Google as 'a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose', which word describes a person helping others to overcome barriers in STEMM? | Ally |
| Angela Saini appeared on Christmas university challenge with which woman materials expert? She is the co-founder and director of the Institute of Making at UCL. | Zoe Laughlin |
| Simon Singh wrote which book that became the first mathematics book to become a Number One seller in the United Kingdom? | Fermat's Last Theorem |
| Otis Boykin was an African-American Inventor and Engineer, best known for his work in the field of Electronics and his involvement in the improvement of what heart related device? | Pacemaker |
| John Edmonstone, born into slavery in Guyana, was an expert in what field? His skills were instrumental in facilitating the pioneering scientific research of Charles Darwin. | Taxidermy |
| In 2012, archaeologists examined skeletons found during the 19th Century. Analysis revealed one skeleton, named after the Eastbourne beauty spot where she was discovered, belonged to a woman of sub-Saharan African descent from around 125 AD. What was she named? | Beachy Head Lady |
| To the nearest ten, how tall is the shard in meters? | 310 m |
| Marie Neurath, born Marie Reidemeister (1898 – 1986), was a member of the team that developed the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics, which she later renamed ISOTYPE. What does ISOTYPE stand for? | International System of Typographic Picture Education |
| The Ramachandran plot, named after the Indian scientist Gopalasamudram Narayanan Ramachandran is used in Biochemistry to predict the structure of what type of macromolecule? | Protein |
| The Indian-British-American structural engineer, Roma Agrawal is famous for her work on which well-known London skyscraper? | The Shard |
| In the 2019 Marvel film, Black Panther, what is the name of the technological genius who designs the vibranium Black panther suit? | Shuri |
| The 2015 movie "The Man Who Knew Infinity" chronicles the life of which famous Indian mathematician? | Srinivasa Ramanujan |
| Which popular mathematician appeared on Channel 4's Countdown between 1982 and 2008? | Carol Vorderman |
| Who is the author of the popular book: 'Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine'? | Hannah Fry |
| What year was Angela Saini's book inferior published? | 2017 |
| What is the name of Angela Saini's 2019 book which discusses race and science? | Superior |
| Which 2005 American drama film, directed by John Madden, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal depicts a brilliant mathematician whose genius was undone by crippling mental illness? Paltrow plays his daughter. | Proof |
| Earning the nicknames of "Forger of Thunderbolts" and "The Wizard of Schenectady", which German-American mathematician and physicist made significant advances in alternating current in America? He has a power equation named after him. | Charles Steinmetz (or Karl Steinmetz) |
| Farida Nana Efua Bedwei is a Ghanaian software engineer and cofounder of Logiciel, a fin-tech company in Ghana. She created a comic character called 'Karmzah' who gets her power from her crutches that she has to use for which disorder? Bedwei herself was diagnosed with it a year after her birth. | Cerebral Palsy |
| Geerat J. Vermeij is a Dutch-born professor at the University Of California at Davis of what field of science? He became blind at the age of three. | Geology |
| Speech generating devices (SGDs) have their roots in early electronic communication aids. The first such aid was a sip-and-puff typewriter prototyped in the 1960s, but in which island nation? | United Kingdom (UK) |
| The acronym ALS stands for which condition? Stephen Hawking lived with ALS for 55 years. | Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis |
| What was the name given to the fictional country, located in Sub-Saharan Africa, that was technologically advanced and the home of Marvel's 'Black Panther'? It first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 (1966). | Wakanda |
| In 1898 Miller Reese Hutchison invented the 'Akouphone', what common name is given to this device today? | Hearing aids |
| Which UK gender balance campaign's name is synonymous with the word 'learned'? | WISE |
| On what hit TV show does Dr Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz play a former waitress at the Cheesecake Factory, that completes a PhD in microbiology and lands a lucrative job at the pharmaceutical company, Zangen? | The Big Bang Theory |
| Which Black British space scientist is a presenter on the BBC show "The Sky at Night"? | Maggie Aderin-Pocock |
| What is the name of the Cuban epidemiologist famous for determining that yellow fever was transmitted to healthy humans by a mosquito? | Carlos Juan Finlay |
| Which Indian physicist was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work in light scattering and discovery of the Raman effect, making him the first Asian person to win a Nobel Prize in Science? | Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman (C.V Ramen) |
| Who invented the home pregnancy test? | Margaret Crane |
| Which teenager discovered a novel method of inexpensively converting plastic waste into biofuel using a catalyst called aluminosilicate? | Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad |
| Who is the current Director-General of CERN? | Fabiola Gianotti |
| Which Serbian physicist and mathematician was the first wife of Albert Einstein? Historians of science still debate their collaboration. | Mileva Marić |
| Sophia Brahe (1156-1643) assisted which astronomer with his astronomical observations? | Tycho Brahe (her brother) |
| Which engineer, business magnate, and record-setting pilot suffered from OCD, chronic pain, and increasing deafness? He designed and then flew the worlds largest plane, which was dubbed the 'Spruce Goose'. | Howard Hughes |
| Which self-educated famous inventor had diabetes? | Thomas Edison |
| In May 2019 Penguin Books published 'No one is too small to make a difference', which is a collection of speeches from which climate activist? | Greta Thunberg |
| Harriet Brooks (1876) was a Canadian physicist who discovered the recoil of what? | Radioactive atom |
| Yewande Biala manufactures vaccines for a living, and used to work 60 hours a week as an oncology vaccine specialist. What popular TV program has she been a part of? | Love Island |
| Steve Silberman wrote which book that discusses autism? | Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity |
| Edwin Hubble used which American woman astronomers luminosity–period relation, together with the galactic spectral shifts first measured by Vesto Slipher at Lowell Observatory, in order to establish that the universe is expanding? | Henrietta Swan Leavitt |
| When is LGBT STEM day? | 5th July |
| Which mathematician, teacher and writer appeared on University Challenge in 2017? Their first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers, was published in 2019. | Bobby Seagull |
| James Pollack, American astrophysicist specialising in atmospheric science, was a student of which famous physicist known for his book 'Cosmos'? | Carl Sagan |
| Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor is an orthopaedic surgeon and the first astronaut from which country in Asia? | Malaysia |
| Joan Higginbotham, American engineer and astronaut, became the third black woman in space in which year? Note that in this year Germany hosted the FIFA world cup. | 2006 |
| Svetlana Savitskaya became the second woman in , the first woman to fly to _ twice, and the first woman to perform a ____walk. What is the missing word? | Space |
| "The Gendered Brain" was authored by whom? | Gina Rippon |
| Which three colors make up the most commonly used Trans pride flag? | blue, pink, and white |
| Which South Korean physicist holds the position of Professor in the Department of Physics and Centre for Plastic Electronics at Imperial College London. She recently won the Descartes prize. | Ji-Seon Kim |
| A prize-winning biography titled “Black Apollo of Science: The Life of E___ E___ J___”, written by Kenneth R. Manning, is about which black scientist? | Ernest Everett Just |
| Caused by quantum effects on the event horizon, what is released by Black Holes? | Hawking Radiation |
| Marie Maynard Daly was a pioneer in the study of the effects of cholesterol and sugar on what human organ? | Heart |
| Percy Julian, with Josef Pikl, was the first to synthesize physostigmine, an alkaloid that occurs naturally in what bean? | Calabar |
| Which scientist led the development of an algorithm that led to an image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55 million light years from Earth, being captured for the first time? | Katie Bouman |
| Which LGBT scientist was the first american women in space? | Sally Ride |
| Which scientist discovered that insects can hear? He was born in 1867 to working-class parents in Cincinnati, Ohio, and became the first African-American to earn a doctorate in zoology from the University of Chicago. | Charles H. Turner |
| 90% of microphones are based on the invention of the electret microphone invented by G. M. Sessler and which black inventor? | James Edward Maceo West |
| Which female scientist has won a nobel prize more than once? | Marie Skłodowska Curie |
| How many women are science Nobel Prize laureates? | 19 |
| Which British Chemist used X ray crystallography to decipher the crystal structures of various molecules, which include, but not limited to, cholesterol, penicillin, and vitamin B12? | Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin |
| From taking a pocket watch apart to see how it worked, which black polymath invented America's first wooden clock that struck the hour? He also successfully predicted a solar eclipse in 1789. | Benjamin Banneker |
| Which African-American scientist pioneered a new treatment for Leprosy by extracting compounds from chaulmoogra tree oil? | Alice Ball |
| What is the name of the woman that the first immortalised cell line, Hela, was named after? | Henrietta Lacks |
| Who was the first African-American woman in Space? | Mae Jemison |
| Which African-American scientist invented the Laserphaco probe which improved cataract treatment and restored the eyesight of many patients? | Patricia Bath |
| In a 1941 article in TIME magazine, who was referred to as the 'Black Leornado'? His accomplishments include pioneering new uses for Southern agricultural products and discovering 285 new uses for the peanut. He was a professor at the Tuskegee Institute. | George Washington Carver |
| Which African-American engineer was responsible for inventing interchangeable video game cartridges that revolutionised the gaming industry? | Jerry Lawson |
| Who invented the first wheelchair lift? When he was 6 years old, doctors diagnosed him with muscular dystrophy. At the age of 15, he created a motorized wagon with his father to help him get around. | Ralph Braun |
| Who designed the experiment which vindicated Tsung-Dao Lee's and Chen-Ning Yang's prediction of the non-conservation of parity? She won the first Wolf Prize in physics. | Chien-Shiung Wu |
| Born in 1907 and educated in Vienna, Austria, which woman became one of two internationally known women scientists in the field of geodesy during the golden age of the Mercury and Apollo moon missions? | Irene Kaminka Fischer |
| Fay Ajzenberg-Selove (1926-2012) was an American nuclear physicist. She was known for her experimental work in nuclear spectroscopy of what type of elements? | Light |
| Who was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences? Her initials are the same as the post nominal title for a fellow of the Royal Society. | Florence R. Sabin |
| Nicola Rollock's 'Staying Power', a report on the experiences of black female professors, interviewed how many of the then 25 black female professors in the UK? | 20 |
| 'errofini' is an anagram for which well known book? | Inferior |
| "Black Man" a music track containing descriptions of a handful of black pioneers featured on which famous musician and songwriters 18th album? | Stevie Wonder |
| KSOG, developed by Fritz Klein, stands for what measurement tool? It was first described in his 1978 book 'The Bisexual Option'. | Klein Sexual Orientation Grid |
| Audrey Tang (born 1981) is a Taiwanese software programmer, in August 2016 she was invited to join the Taiwan Executive Yuan as a minister without portfolio, making her the first transgender official in the top executive cabinet. What programming language did she learn at age twelve? | Perl |
| Mathematician Philippa Fawcett became the first woman to obtain the highest score, "above the Senior Wrangler", in which famous set of examinations. | Cambridge Mathematical Tripos |
| Anandibai Joshee, Kei Okami, and Tabat Islambooly all were the first women from their respective countries to complete their studies in Western medicine in the US. Name their respective countries. | Joshee (India), Okami (Japan), and Islambooly (Syria) |
| Marie Curie discovered which two elements? | Polonium and Radium |
| From the Greek word meaning 'division of the Earth', what field of Earth science did Gladys Mae West, an African-American woman, make significant contributions to? | Geodesy |
| A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expressed this man's influence on mathematics: "Read , read , he is the master of us all." Which 18th century mathematician, who went blind in later life, does Laplace refer to? | Leonhard Euler |
| In a 1943 paper titled 'Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact', who initially described early infantile autism, now known as autism spectrum disorder? | Leo Kanner |
| Dame Maria Matilda Ogilvie Gordon (1864-1939) was one of the first professional women in her field. In 1893 she obtained the London D.Sc., becoming the first woman to do so. In 1932 she was awarded the Lyell medal. What field did she primarily work in? | Geology |
| Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893 –1972) was an Indian Bengali scientist and applied statistician. When he went to Cambridge his Mathematics tutor asked: “Have you met your wonderful countryman Ramanujan?”. Which college did he attend? | King’s (College Cambridge) |
| LGBTQIA+ stands for what? | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexuality, + (Other) |
| To the nearest percent, what percentage of articles on wikipedia are of women? | 18% |
| Who was born on January 8th, 1942, on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death? They died on March 14th, 2018, on the anniversary of Albert Einstein's birth. | Stephen Hawking |
| James Sylvester Gates Jr. is an American theoretical physicist who works on symmetry, __gravity, and _string theory. What is the missing word? | Super |
| Who was the first African-American woman to receive a United States patent? Her patent was issued for the invention of the folding cabinet bed. A STEM academy was opened in her honor on the south side of Chicago. | Sarah Elisabeth Goode (1855 - 1905) |
| A copy of ‘Conversations on Chemistry’ (1805) was left at the bookbinder where Faraday was an apprentice, he credited the author of the book with the start of his interest in chemistry. Who was the author? | Jane Marcet |
| Who am I? From 1974-92 I directed the Medical Research Council’s Mammalian development unit in London. I mainly worked in developmental biology and in 1991 I became the Royal Society’s Foreign Secretary. | Anne McLaren |
| Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) was a US plant geneticist who discovered transposons which are DNA sequences that have the ability to change their position within a genome. Based on this ability what other name are they commonly referred to as? | Jumping Genes |
| E. Latunde Odeku was the first African neurosurgeon trained in the US, which African nation is he from? | Nigeria |
| In physics, Noether's theorem states what? | For every differentiable symmetry there is a corresponding conservation law. |
| In Dragon Ball Z (anime) who is the Daughter of Dr. Briefs, the founder of the Capsule Corporation? She is a scientific genius, inventor, and engineer. She invented the Dragon radar, a device that detects Dragon balls. | Bulma |
| Alan Turing published "The Chemical Basis of ____ (19_2)". What is the missing word and decade? | Morphogenesis. 5th decade i.e. 1952 |
| An experiment to test a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour was named after which British mathematician? | Alan Turing |
| In March 2019 (March) Emma Haruka Iwao calculated the most accurate value of which mathematical constant? | Pi (31.4 trillion digits) |
| Trailblazing: The True Story of America's First Openly Gay Track Coach (2000) was an autobiography of which American Sociologist? He currently is a professor at the University of Winchester. | Eric Anderson |
| What nickname was given to Sara Josephine Baker (1873 - 1945), an American physician notable for making contributions to public health in New York, when she worked for the Department of Health? She frequently wore masculine-tailored suits. | Dr. Joe |
| Ben A. Barres (1954 - 2017) was an American neurobiologist at what American university? In 2013 he became the first openly transgender scientist in the National Academy of Sciences | Stanford University |
| Maria Gaetana Agnesi was an 18th century Italian mathematician and scholar. The cubic curve was named in her honour, what famous name was given to this curve? | Witch of Agnesi |
| Which Indian physicist, through an equation that bears his name, demonstrated that the elements in stars are ionised in proportion to their temperature? | Meghnad Saha (Saha will do) |
| The Hungarian mathematician Vera Sos has an Erdos number of what? | ONE |
| In which century and decade did Émilie du Châtelet translate Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica? It still remains the standard version. | 18th century, 4th decade |
| Which book warned the world of the dangers of modern synthetic pesticides? It was written by US naturalist Rachel Carson. | Silent Spring |
| Finding her first comet on 1st August 1786, then going on to discover 7 more, who was Britains first professional female scientist? In 1787 she received her first pension from the king (£50). | Caroline Hershel |
| Described on a marble monument at Westminster Abbey as ‘This Dutches was a wise wittie & learned lady, which her many Bookes do well testifie’. She was the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society in 1667? | Margaret Cavendish |
| In 1945 the Royal Society elected the first two female fellows. With three letters: first being their scientific field and the other two their initials work out who they were and what they did. ‘CKL’ ‘BMS’ | "Crystallography Kathleen Lonsdale" and "Biochemistry Marjory Stephenson" |
| Ramanujan, when the G. H. Hardy exited a taxi, noted that XXXX is the smallest positive integer that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. What number was it? | 1729 |
| In 2019, who was the first black woman to receive a PhD in physics from the University of Glasgow? | Dr. Monifa Phillips |
| Which scientist and polymath wrote 'On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences' published in 1835? | Mary Sommerville |
| Alhazen (c.965-1038) was a physicist who made major advances in optics. He rejected the older idea that light was emitted from what human organ? | The eye |
| Al-Khwarizmi (c.800 - 850) discovered what area of mathematics? | Algebra |
| Al-Khwarizmi's solution is a general method for finding the two roots of a quadratic equation: ax^2 + bx + c = 0. In terms of a, b, and c what is the general fomula to find these roots? | x = (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac))/2a |
| Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) was the first woman in Britain to qualify in what field of science? | Medicine (accept surgery) |
| Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) was mayor of which English town on the North Sea coast in the county of Suffolk? She was the first woman mayor in England. | Aldeburgh |
| Who first discovered the skeletons of the dinosaurs 'Plesiosaurus' and 'Pterodactylus macronyx'? | Mary Anning |
| Agnes Arber (1879-1960) spent 50 years researching the anatomy and morphology of monocotyledonous plants. What are monocotyledonous plants? | Flowering plants with seeds that typically contain only one embryonic leaf, or cotyledon |
| Charlotte Auerbach, a German-British geneticist discovered what process? This process changes the genetic information of an organism. | Mutagenesis |
| Laura Bassi (Maria Catarina) was an Italian academic and the first female professor, at any European university, of what science? | Physics |
| Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) was a US anthropologist who produced 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword' (1946), an account of the culture of which East Asian country? | Japan |
| What was named after Mary Adela Blagg, a British amateur astronomer, who prepared the 'Named Lunar Formations' with Karl Muller? | Crater on the moon (Blagg) |
| Between 1902-03, in a letter to Rutherford, Harriet Brooks refers to the radioactivity of radon-220 decreasing to one-half of its value in about a minute. In 6 minutes what fraction remains? | (1/2)^6 = 1/64 or ~ 1.6% |
| In 2012, the Royal Society of Chemistry held a competition calling for papers offering explanations to the Mpemba effect. What is the effect? | The Mpemba effect is a process in which hot water can freeze faster than cold water. |
| What name is given to the single common ancestor of all living humans? This ancester was found through studying Mitochondrial DNA, which is only inherited through the female line. | African (or Mitochondrial) Eve |
| Katherine McAlpine wrote the lyrics of which song performed at the inauguration of CERN in 2008? | Large Hadron Collider Rap |
| Margaret Cavendish was formerly maid of honour to which 17th century Queen? Cavendish accompanied this queen into exile in Paris in 1644. | Queen Henrietta Maria |
| Aganice of Thessaly was an ancient Greek (2nd or 1st century BC) astronomer who was known for predicting the dissapearance of what? | Moon |
| "Did you know that ___ proposed a heliocentric universe 300 years before Copernicus? That she wrote of universal gravitation 500 years before Newton? But who would listen to her? She was just a nun, a woman." These lines from a 1986 poem by Siv Cedering describe who? | Hildegard of Bingen |
| Barbara S. Askins (born 1939) is an American chemist. She is best known for her invention of a method to enhance what underexposed photographic image? | Negative |
| Magaret Thatcher is a notable student of which scientist? This scientist won the nobel prize in chemistry in 1964. | Dorothy Hodgkin |
| Who is the current president of the Royal Society? | Venkatraman "Venki" Ramakrishnan |
| Elke Mackenzie (born Ivan Mackenzie Lamb) botanist and explorer is famous for her part in Operation Tabarin, a WWII secret mission instigated by Churchill, which entailed an expedition to where? | Antartic |
| Name this British computer scientist. She is currently serving as a director at the technology conglomerate Broadcom Inc. She was listed in 2011 as 8th in 'The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History' in Maximum PC. | Sophie Wilson |
| Sean Whelan, born in Leeds, is a British-American virologist. He is known for identifying the cellular protein used as a receptor by which virus? | Ebola |
| Who is the Assistant Curator and Schlinger Chair of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences? She is the co-founder of the 500 Queer Scientists network. | Lauren Esposito |
| A computer programming language is said to adhere to the off-side rule if blocks in that language are expressed by their indentation. The term was coined by Peter J. Landin, inspired by which sport? | Football |
| Alonzo Church was the doctoral supervisor of which British computer scientist? | Alan Turing |
| Pío del Río Hortega (1882 – 1945) discovered what type of cell located in the brain and spinal cord? | Microglia and oligodendrocytes (OLGs) |
| Abdus Salam, with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg, was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the unification of what two interactions between elementary particles? | Weak and electromagnetic |
| James Andrew Harris was a Black nuclear chemist who was involved in the discovery of elements with atomic numbers 104 and 105, what are the names of the elements? | rutherfordium (104) and dubnium (105) |
| At the Institute of Advanced Study Albert Einstein is known to have worked with Bruria Kaufman on which of his theories? | General Relativity |
| Charles Bolden has travelled to space how many times? | 4 |
| CHAPS is a partnership of UK gay men's health promotion organisations. What did the acronym stand for? | Community HIV/AIDS Prevention Strategy |
| In Northern Ireland, what is the main aim of The Rainbow Project? | Promoting the Health and well-being of LGBT people |
| The Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is a health care provider for which group of underrepresented persons? | LGBTQ+ |
| Which professor of chemistry at York was described as "one of the most visible out gay scientists"? | David K. Smith |
| While still a high school student Jack Thomas Andraka won the grand prize at the 2012 Intel Science for proposing a detector for which disease? | Pancreatic Cancer and other cancers |
| Jacob Appelbaum was a core developer and member of which open-source project? This project enables anonymous communication on the web. | Tor |
| Which non-binary and New Zealand based astophysicist had 'Progenitors of Core-Collapse Supernovae' as a doctoral thesis title? | JJ Eldridge |
| Uzi Even, physical chemist, is a former politician and well known for being the first openly gay member of which country's parliament? | Israel |
| Ruth Gates and Madeleine Van Oppen improved which underwater ecosystem's resilience to environmental stress? | Coral reef |
| What is dendrochronology? Lisa Graumlich pioneered the use of it to understand the impacts of climate change on mountain ecosystems. | Scientific method of dating tree rings |
| Depending upon the host, TBSV causes stunting of growth, leaf mottling, and deformed or absent fruit. TBSV was found in what fruit in 1935? Give the full name of the virus. | Tomatoes and Tomato bushy stunt virus |
| Stephen C. Harrison, Steven Chu, Joan Steitz, and Chunli Bai all became foreign fellows of the Royal Society in what year in the 21st century? | 2014 |
| Laser cooling is where atoms or molecules are cooled close to what temperature? | Absolute 0 (accept 0 K, -273.15 Deg Cel) |
| Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, and William Daniel Phillips won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for what process? | Laser cooling |
| Who founded the Warwick Manufacturing Group and in 2004 was made a 'Life Peer' and a member of the House of Lords? He died this year in March. | Sushanta Kumar Bhattacharyya |
| Who wrote: "Let us not mince words: Animal welfare involves the subjective feelings of animals"? She also wrote an essay called 'Living with the Selfish Gene'. | Marian Stamp Dawkins |
| Inspired by the military cryptography of Charles Barbier, who constructed a system of tactile code that allows visually impaired people to read? | Louis Braille |
| Nicknamed the "The Diderot of China", Song Yingxing was a chinese scientist and encyclopedist who lived during the end of which dynasty? | Ming Dynasty |
| Name any two of the 'Four Great Inventions' from ancient China. | Compass, Gunpowder, Papermaking, and Printing |
| Qin Jiushao (c. 1202-1261) was the first to introduce what symbol into Chinese mathematics? | 0 (Zero) |
| Two Bombs, One Satellite' was an early nuclear and space project of which country? | China |
| China tested its first atomic and hydrogen bombs in which century and decade? | 19th, 6th decade (1964-1967) |
| Steven Shih Chen is one of the co-founders of which video-sharing website? | YouTube |
| Kawarabayashi, Suzuki, Riazuddin, and Fayyazuddin all have their names included in an equation in which science? | Physics |
| Actroid is a lifelike humanoid robot developed where? State the country and university. | Japan, Osaka University |
| In what year did Yi So-yeon become the first Korean to fly in space? | 2008 |
| Al-Urdi was part of a group of Islamic astronomers of the 13th and 14th centuries who were active in the criticism of the astronomical model presented in which treatise by Ptolemy? | Almagest |
| Aziz Sancar shared the 2015 Nobel prize in Chemistry for working on which DNA process? | DNA repair |
| Tikvah Alper was among the first to find evidence that the infectious agent in Scrapie, a disease found in sheep and goat, does not contain which important biopolymer? | Nucleic acid (DNA and RNA) |
| The genus name Latimeria commemorates Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer who, in a fish market, discovered the specimen of what fish? | Coelacanth |
| Who discovered and developed 'Directed Evolution'? A process in protein engineering that mimics natural selection. | Frances Arnold |
| 1911, 1935, 1964, 2009, and 2018 are the years of women winning which prize? State the area of science. | Chemistry (The Nobel Prize in Chemistry) |
| 1903,1963, and 2018 are the years of women winning which prize? State the area of science. | Physics (The Nobel Prize in Physics) |
| Only one woman, Elinor Ostrom has received the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, when was it awarded? | 2009 |
| JoAnne Stubbe, Jacqueline Barton, Darleane C. Hoffman, and Mary L. Good are the only women to have won which prize from the American Chemical Society? | Priestley Medal |
| Which BBC science series, screened in 2001 and 2002, featured Marty Jopson, Jem Stansfield, Sim Oakley, Janet Sumner and Alom Shaha? | Science Shack |
| Kimberly Bryant, technologist and electrical engineer, founded which not for profit organization? | Black Girls Code |
| The Wellcome Trust recently renamed their boardnames in honour of three remarkable women, who are they? | Dorothy Hodgkin, Henrietta Lacks, and Rosalind Franklin |
| The software for NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer was developed by a team led by who? | Margaret Hamilton |
| Valerie Thomas, an African american inventor and NASA engineer, invented a device that produces optical 3D images using concave mirrors. What was the name of this device? | Illusion Transmitter |
| In 1984, George Edward Alcorn Jr. was named on a patent for what device? It is used to determine the surface composition of planets. | Imaging X-ray spectrometer |
| Who wrote 'Hypatia's heritage'? The work reaffirms women's substantial contributions to science throughout the ages. | Margaret Alic |
| Complete this book title by Alice Roberts: 'The Incredible of Being: and the Making of Us'. | Unlikeliness, Evolution |
| The popular BBC podcast 'The Life Scientific', was created by whom? | Jim Al-Khalili |
| Alexandra Elbakyan created what website that provides access to millions of research papers and books, without regard to copyright? | Sci-hub |
| Christiana Figueres, Gabriela Gonzalez, and Barbara Rae-Venter have all been featured in who's top ten of "people who mattered" in science? | Nature |
| Views From The Ridge", by Zoologist, Julian Kenny, is a book exploring the natural history of which southernmost island country in the Caribbean? | Trinidad and Tobago |
| Super Bainite, discovered by Harry Bhadeshia and Francisca Caballero, is formed from slowly cooling a high-temperature phase of steel known as? | Austenite |
| Maggie Aderin-Pocock attributed which British stop-motion Children's tv series, first aired in 1969, as instilling her interest in space? | The Clangers |
| What does TERF stand for? | Trans-exclusionary radical feminism |
| Hideki Yukawa was a Japanese theoretical Physicist who predicted what fundamental particle? | Pi meson (pion) |
| What term in Biology describes a cell's ability to differentiate into the three primary germ cell layers of the early embryo? Shinya Yamanaka co-discovered that mature cells can be reprogrammed to do this. | Pluripotency |
| Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, with Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger, made significant contributions to which physical theory? | Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) |
| Ellen O. Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman to go to Space in 1993. She was also a former director of what space center named after a U.S. president? | Lyndon B. Johnson Center |
| Marine Biologist Idelisa Bonnelly de Calventi founded the Institute of Marine Biology in which Caribbean country? | Dominican Republic |
| Mayly Sánchez is known for her experimental work with what particle? | Neutrinos |
| What type of Bat was rediscovered in 2006 by Aideé Vargas and Kathrin Barboza Marquez? It had previously been thought to be extinct in Bolivia for 72 years. | Common (or Tomes's) sword-nosed bat |
| Kelu-1 is a system of two brown dwarfs located in what constellation at ~ 61 light years from Earth? It was discovered by María Teresa Ruiz. | Hydra |
| Aditi Pant is an Indian Oceanographer and was the first Indian woman to visit, along with geologist Sudipta Sengupta, what continent? | Antartica |
| Marie Maynard Daly became the first Black woman to earn a PhD in chemistry in what century and decade? | 20th, 4th decade (1947) |
| Which gay biologist helped lead the fight against AIDS? He was the co-founder of the National Gay Task Force (now National LGBTQ Task Force). | Bruce Raymond Voeller |
| In 2012 who was awarded the Rosalind Franklin Award and the Corday-Morgan Prize? She has made outstanding contributions to Synthetic Chemistry and is currently a Professor at the University of Edinburgh. | Polly Louise Arnold |
| Hirschfeld established the world's first gender identity clinic whose clients included Einar Wegener, who was a protagonist of which 2015 film? | The Danish Girl |
| In 1476 which Italian polymath was accused, with three other young men, of sodomy? | Leonardo Da Vinci |
| Which woman wrote 'The Invention of Nature'? It is an account of the life of Alexander Von Humboldt. | Andrea Wulf |
| Wang Zhenyi (1787-1797) was a Chinese astronomer who once created a famous scientific exhibit designed to accurately simulate a lunar eclipse using a lamp, a table, and what other object? | Mirror |
| Who organized care for wounded soldiers during the Cimean War? She was the founder of modern nursing. | Florence Nightingale |
| In 1900, out of 836 participants, how many women attended the first International Congress of Physics in Paris? | 2 |
| In 1905 Nettie Stevens, following the rediscovery of Mendel's paper on genetics, discovered what? | Sex chromosomes |
| What metaphor is often used to describe the continual loss of under-represented groups as they climb the career ladder? | leaky pipeline |
| In 2018, Nature named which woman biologist as its new editor-in-chief? She is the first woman to hold the post. | Magdalena Skipper |
| Walter Hawkins is best known for inventing a plastic coating for the wires of what communications device? He is a recipient of the National Medal of Technology and an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. | Telephone |
| Annie Easley worked at NASA under what two word job title? She performed numerical calculations and programmed. | Human Computer |
| To the nearest decimal place, how many solar masses defines the Chandrasekhar limit? Any star with a mass greater than this limit will not evolve into a white dwarf. | 1.4 |
| What unit is defined as the decay rate of exactly 3.7x10^7 disintegrations per second? | The curie (ci) |
| Searching for the element 75, German inorganic chemist Ida Noddack, with her husband and O Berg, discovered rhenium. What is the element named after? | The Rhine |
| Abdus Salam held positions at which two British universities? | Cambridge and Imperial College |
| Priscilla Bell Wakefield (1751-1832) wrote an 'Introduction to Botany' as letters from one sister to another, explaining which system of classification? | The Linnaean System |
| Gerty Theresa Cori, Rosalyn Yalow, and Gertrude Belle Elion all won which nobel prize? | Physiology or medicine |
| What killed Alan Turing? | Potassium Cyanide (poisoned apple) |
| Chongzhi Zu computed the fraction 355/113 which was the best approximation to which mathematical constant? It was not bettered for 1000 years. | Pi |
| Which Chinese astronomer and geophysicist invented the earthquake seismograph? | Zhang Heng |
| Mendelayev describes the periodic table. Marsh founds American palaeontology. University of Paris (Sorbonne) admits women. To the nearest decade, all these occured in which year? | 1870 |
| In 1881 Cambridge universities admitted women to do what? | Examinations |
| In 1928 Raman made one of his major contributions in science. This year also saw the discovery of which common drug? | Penicillin |
| Yoko Ogawa wrote what novel depicting a young mother employed to look after a mathematician who suffered a head injury years earlier? | The Housekeeper and The Professor |
| The experimental heart', by Jennifer Rohn, is a novel focusing on two laboratory-based scientists and the external pressure to acheive results. What two word genre does it fall into? | Romantic Thriller |
| Between 2000 and 2009 which book of Dava Sobel's sold 100,845 copies? | Galileo's Daughter |
| Who is the current CEO of Google? | Sundar Pichai |
| Mary T. Barra is CEO of which vehicle manufacturing company? | General Motors |
| Who is the current CEO of Microsoft? | Satya Nadella |
| When YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki took up the video sharing behemoth in 2014, the company’s female presence stood at 24%; by 2017, it had risen to what percentage? | 30% |
| A single game of Go, an ancient chinese game, has more possible moves than the estimated number of what? | Atoms in the universe |
| Who is the current chair, president, and CEO of IBM, and the first woman to head the company? | Ginni Rometty |
| Caucher Birkar means 'migrant mathematician' in what group of languages? | Kurdish |
| The RAPT programming language, developed by Pat Ambler and Robin Popplestone, was initially designed for what? | Robots (object oriented) |
| Artur Avila and Manjul Bhargava became the first South American and Indian, respectively, to win what? | Fields Medal |
| Stephanie Shirley adopted what name to help her in the male dominated business world? | Steve |
| The Folsom point is a form of what? | Tool making |
| Ed Dwight, as a hobby, created over 100 pieces of which artistic object? | Sculpture |
| Elbert Coxe's transcript from Indiana University had what word stamped across it? He acheived an 'A' in every class. | COLORED' |
| Henry Blair was the second African American inventor to receive what? | A patent |
| What was founded in 2009 by Suw Charman-Anderson? It is held every year on the second Tuesday of October | Ada Lovelace day |
| Esther Lederberg was an American microbiologist who, in 1951, discovered a virus that infects bacteria known as what? | Lambda phage |
| Whose research delved into the effects of vitamins and into the nutritive values of pulses, paddy, and groups of food items consumed by some of the poorest sections of the Indian population? | Kamala Sohonie |
| C. V. Raman rejected Kamala Sohonie's application to the Indian Institute of Science because she was a woman. She responded by holding a 'satyagraha' outside his office. What is satyagraha? | Non-violent Protest |
| In May 2013, senior engineering students at Rice University in Texas developed the SMART belt to detect signs of what? | Seizures |
| The Lucy 4 is a computer accessory to help with what? | Typing |
| Coblis is a website that helps users view an image as if they were? Scientists use it to make publication figures more accessible. | Color blind |
| Dorothy Maud Wrinch, British-American mathematician and chemist, studied logic with Bertrand Russell before discovering the 'cyclol' structure, the cyclol is a precursor to what? | DNA double helix |
| Who became the first black American woman to gain a PhD in mathematics? She was active in abolishing laws that discriminated against women and people of colour. | Euphemia Lofton Haynes |
| H,G, and B represent the first letters of the surnames of the first three Black American women to gain PhDs in mathematics. Name two of them. | Haynes, Browne, Granville |
| Which climatologist, who recently passed away, was an expert in regional climate change projections due to global warming? Her primary scientific focus was Australia. | Penelope (Penny) Whetton |
| Helen Patricia Sharman is a chemist who became the first British what? She was chosen ahead of nearly 13,000 candidates live on ITV on 25th November 1989. | Cosmonaut/Astronaut |
| Sir Geoff Palmer discovered and patented which brewing process? | Barley abrasion process |