GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. HELEN QUINN, born 1943. A native of Australia, Quinn was encouraged to pursue maths by a high school teacher, but faced obstacles as a maths-loving girl in an era with limited opportunities for women. "I once walked into the engineering school 1/7

at the University of Melbourne, and one guy said, 'Look what's got in here,' and the other one says, 'You think it's real?'" Graduate school admission was tricky since women students were thought to get married and fail to finish. She was denied by Princeton, but accepted at 2/7

Stanford. She earned her PhD in 1967 and picked up where Einstein left off, working on the "holy grail of physics," the Theory of Everything. Her primary contribution has been in the arena of unifying forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic). She's the Quinn half of the Peccei- 3/7

Quinn theory, which provides a piece of the Theory of Everything puzzle by explaining why the strong force does not break charge-parity symmetry. This leads to the axion, a candidate for dark matter. Her wide-ranging career has included teaching at both Harvard and Stanford. 4/7

She credits her success in part to being equipped as a child to pursue all her dreams. "My parents valued imagination and curiosity...they treated me no differently from my brothers...encouraged (me), while ensuring I also developed skills I would need as a wife and mother." 5/7

She is a passionate advocate for equipping children to learn how to think like a scientist and has devoted much time and energy to promoting better science standards in education, including re-vamping science standards as chair of the Board on Science Education at the NAS. 6/7

She and her husband have raised two children. Her many honors include the Order of Australia, Dirac Medal, Oskar Klein Medal, JJ Sakurai Prize, and Benjamin Franklin Medal. Special thanks to @EricRWeinstein for recommending her for the #GWOM series! 7/7