Obama White House

In the latest addition to the Being Biden series, the Vice President reflects on meeting with survivors of sexual assault -- and why it is so vital that every one of us take ownership of preventing it on college campuses and everywhere.

Ana Roque de Duprey nació en Puerto Rico en el año 1853. A los 13 años de edad comenzó una escuela en su casa y escribió un libro de geografía para sus estudiantes, que posteriormente fue adoptado por el Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico. Roqué sostenía una gran pasión por la astronomía y la educación, eventualmente fundo varias escuelas para mujeres, así como e

Ana Roqué de Duprey was born in Puerto Rico in 1853. She started a school in her home at age 13 and wrote a geography textbook for her students, which was later adopted by the Department of Education of Puerto Rico. Roqué had a passion for astronomy and education, founding several girls-only schools as well as the College of Mayagüez, which later became the Mayagüez Campus of t

Isolating enriched uranium was one of the most difficult aspects of the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear bombs during World War II. Wartime labor shortages led the Tennessee Eastman Company to recruit young women, who were mostly recent high school graduates, to operate the calutrons that used electromagnetic separation to isolate uranium. Despite being kept in t

In 1993, Dr. Ellen Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery. She has flown in space four times, logging nearly 1,000 hours in orbit. Prior to her astronaut career, she was a research engineer and inventor, with three patents for optical systems. Ochoa is also the first Hispanic (and second female)

Mollie Orshansky was a food economist and statistician whose work on poverty thresholds pioneered the way the U.S. Government defines poverty. By using the cost of the cheapest nutritionally adequate diet to calculate a cost of living expense for families of various sizes, Orshansky developed guidelines which eventually became the federal government’s official statistical definit

Mary Engle Pennington was an American chemist at the turn of the 20th century. At a time when few women attended college, Pennington completed her PhD and went on to work as a bacteriological chemist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shortly after arriving at the USDA, Pennington became chief of the newly established Food Research Laboratory. During her 40-year career at the U

Edith Clarke was a pioneering electrical engineer at the turn of the 20th century. She worked as a “computer,” someone who performed difficult mathematical calculations before modern-day computers and calculators were invented. Clarke struggled to find work as a female engineer instead of the ‘usual’ jobs allowed for women of her time, but became the first professionally e

Virginia H. Holsinger was an American chemist known for her research on dairy products and food security issues. Holsinger developed a nutritious and shelf-stable whey and soy drink mixture that is distributed internationally by food donation programs as a substitute for milk. She also created a grain blend that can be mixed with water to provide food for victims of famine, drought

Ruth Rogan Benerito was an American chemist and pioneer in bioproducts. Benerito is credited with saving the cotton industry in post-WWII America through her discovery of a process to produce wrinkle-free, stain-free, and flame-resistant cotton fabrics. In addition to this work, Benerito also developed a method to harvest fats from seeds for use in intravenous feeding of medical pa