“Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them.” — Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist

As October ushers in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are inspired to look back over the decades to the female doctors, chemists, biologists, and researchers who devoted their educations and careers to research and discoveries that have advanced medical understanding and treatments. This week, learn about 10 of these phenomenal women.

Anita Roberts: molecular biologist

Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig: Lasker Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient

Eva Vertes: microbiologist

Alice Ball: chemist

Gerty Cori: biochemist and first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Dr. Esther Zimmer Lederberg: pioneer of bacterial genetics

Dr. Elizabeth Wayne: biomedical engineer

Mina Bissell: biologist

In Alabama: Dr. Hadiyah Green, cancer survivor and Alabama A&M University graduate, “is determined to beat cancer — with lasers.”