Great Women Making History

And Yes!!! They are Canadians!!

Donna Strickland        Astrophysicists

Gina Parvaneh Cody          Engineer

Now, what's amazing Canadians making history, Women making history, and well this also goes to show, without Persia and immigration, where would we be? !!!!!!!!!!!

After having just dont a blog on Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, the astrophysicists, by complete coincidence yesterday I found out a Canadian woman has won the Nobel price this year for Physics, along with Athur Ashkin and Gerard Mourou.

"Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, on Tuesday became the first woman in 55 years and the third ever to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing it with an American scientist and another from France for their work in laser physics.

3rd female laureate in physics

Strickland is the first female Nobel laureate to be named in three years and is only the third woman winning in physics: Polish-French physicist Marie Curie earned the award in 1903 and German-born American theoretical physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963."

Quote from the CBC

More powerful lasers
Their research enabled new studies of matter by allowing scientists to produce more powerful bursts of laser light, said Michael Moloney, chief executive officer of the American Institute of Physics.

While laser eye surgery is the most familiar application of their work, Moloney?said, it has also let scientists probe fundamental forces acting within matter at very high temperatures and pressures.
"With the technique we have developed, laser power has been increased about a million times, maybe even a billion," Mourou said in a video statement released by Ecole Polytechnique.

Gina Parvaneh Cody - Engineer

Gina Parvaneh Cody came to Montreal from Iran in 1979 with $2,000 in her pocket and dreams of becoming an engineer.

Now for me this story has two wonderful sides to it, first is great to see more equality and Gina Parvaneh Cody is a leader advancing the sciences and engineering for woman, but also for education in general. She was also an immigrant to Canada, from Iran, and this shows how immigration is of such an immense benefit to Canada, and that being a more open and inclusive society helps us all!

Extract from the Montreal Gazette

After an hour-long interview with her brother's engineering professor at Concordia University, Cody was given a scholarship to help cover the cost of her master's degree.

Ten years later, she became the first woman in Concordia University's history to earn a Ph.D in building engineering.

After a highly successful career as an engineer and business leader in Canada, Cody announced on Monday that she is giving a $15-million gift to her alma mater.

"Concordia welcomed me and provided me with support that changed my life," she said. "My gift to the university is for the next generation, so that more people can succeed like I did."

In recognition of her generous donation, Concordia has named its faculty of engineering and computer science after Cody. The Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science is the first engineering faculty in Canada to be named after a woman.

Cody, 61, said she developed a love of building and engineering as a child growing up in Iran.

"I used to fix everything, if the chair was broken, I would fix it or change the bulbs in the television," she told the Montreal Gazette in an interview.

Her father, who owned a private boys high school in Iran, had the 17-year-old Cody teach math and science to students during the summer.

Cody said she believes that higher education is the best way for women and minorities to succeed and she hopes her donation will encourage them to study engineering.
Her mother always told her that the best way for a woman to become independent was to achieve higher education, she said.

She attributes her success as an engineer and businesswoman to hard work, perseverance and confidence.

The $15-million donation will fund graduate and undergraduate scholarships, as well as research on smart cities. It will also allow the university to create three new chairs  in data analytics and artificial intelligence; the internet of things; Industry 4.0 and advanced manufacturing.

A portion of the gift, which Concordia will match, will go toward a special fund for equity, diversity and inclusion programming.

At present, only 20 per cent of university engineering students are women and only 12.8 per cent of working engineers are women, according to Statistics Canada.
The small percentage of female engineers in the workforce could be due to a lack of role models, Cody said, but also because "girls are still told that engineering and computer science are for boys."

Parents and school administrators need to tell girls that they are just as capable as boys when it comes to math and science, she said.

"We are equal in our brain, equal in our abilities and we should be equal in numbers."
Concordia President Alan Shepard said Cody's generosity is "a watershed moment for engineering and computer science in Canada."

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