If you had to name an inventor, would it be a woman? Or did you first think of a man like Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell? Women haven’t always had equal opportunities to be inventors, or received as much recognition. But women with diverse backgrounds and interests have always been essential to invention. Meet some of them in Picturing Women Inventors. For more like this, visit the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.

Tara Astigarraga, a member of the Choctaw Nation, studied Spanish linguistics and communications in college, but an internship at IBM sparked a passion for software engineering. She has invented storage, networking, security, and blockchain solutions, and holds more than 75 patents. For her inventions and mentorship of Native Americans and women pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, she was named an IBM Master Inventor.

Enabling the blind to see was the greatest joy of Dr. Patricia Bath (1942–2019), eye surgeon, ophthalmology professor, inventor, and founder of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. She was a trailblazer for women and African Americans in the medical profession. In 1981, she invented the Laserphaco, a tool for removing cataracts using a laser. Bath made cataract surgery faster, easier, more accurate, and less invasive.

As a child in Lebanon, Ayah Bdeir dissected her family’s electronics to understand how they worked. She earned an engineering degree and moved to the US to study at MIT. Wanting to “make engineering and inventing more fun,” she created littleBits. These color-coded, magnetic, electronic building blocks blur the line between a toy and a tool, so makers of all ages can explore art and engineering through invention. littleBits are part of MoMA’s permanent collection.

Cynthia Breazeal discovered robots in the 3rd grade. Inspired by Star Trek, she wrote a story about a Klingon robot that stole pies. Her robot showed human emotions, marking the beginning of her goal to invent social robots that interact with and learn from people. Beginning in the 1990s, she applied child development theory to her robots Kismet and Leonardo, giving them expressive faces and voices, encouraging natural communication between people and machines.

Theresa Dankovich invented inexpensive, reusable, sustainable water filters as a graduate student and co-founded Folia Water in 2016 to scale up production. Folia Filters are made of thick paper embedded with silver nanoparticles, which kill bacteria and viruses. Field tests in Africa, South Asia, and Central America ensured “designs that fit with the culture.” Dankovich has also applied her paper technology to antiviral face masks and microwave food packaging.

Marion O’Brien Donovan (1917–1998), a college-educated Connecticut homemaker, spent too many nights changing her baby’s soaked cloth diapers, clothing, and bedding. With a piece of a shower curtain, she prototyped a leak-proof diaper cover. Her experiment became the “Boater,” a reusable diaper cover that went on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1949. She sold her rights to the Boater for $1 million in 1951 and went on to invent numerous products intended to make everyday tasks easier.

After a hang gliding accident in 1978, Marilyn Hamilton vowed to continue her athletic lifestyle. But her “stainless steel dinosaur” wheelchair was too heavy and slow. Inspired by hang glider materials, she and two friends invented a lightweight, responsive wheelchair and founded Motion Designs in 1979 to manufacture them; their Quickie wheelchairs are now sold by Sunrise Medical. Hamilton’s many athletic accomplishments include two women’s wheelchair tennis singles titles in the US Open.

Sophia Hayden was MIT’s first woman graduate in architecture. She designed the Woman’s Building for the Chicago 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, where a record number of inventions by women were displayed. But traditional ideas about women’s roles prevailed. Most of the women’s invention prizes were given to domestic technologies, and the press described Hayden’s building as “feminine” and “delicate.” The Museum of Science and Industry is the only Exposition building still standing.

When WWII began, Grace Murray Hopper was a PhD mathematician teaching at Vassar College. She joined the Navy in 1943 and became one of the first computer programmers, writing code for the Mark I electromechanical calculator at Harvard’s Cruft Laboratory. In 1952, she invented pioneering “compiler” software that translated the instructions of human programmers into computer code, making communication between people and computers more user-friendly.