April 1, 1939 - Birth of Mary K. Gaillard

Mary K. Gaillard was born in New Brunswich (USA) in 1939. Specializing in particle physics, she was the first woman to join the Faculty of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently a professor at this same University, a member of the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, and a visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Among her research achievements, we can highlight the pioneering works (together with Benjamin W. Lee) on the evaluation of strong interaction corrections in weak transitions, including the successful prediction of the mass of the c quark (charm). She has also worked, along with John Ellis and other researchers, in the analysis of final states in electron-positron collisions and studies of unified gauge theories, including the prediction of the mass of the b (bottom) quark. She has conducted studies with Michael Chanowitz of signals measured in proton-proton colliders. Her work in recent years has focused on effective superstring-based theories of supergravity and its implications for phenomena that can be detected both in accelerator experiments and in cosmological observations.

As a result of this trajectory, she obtained the J. J. Sakurai prize for theoretical particle physics from the American Physical Society in 1993, becoming the first woman to receive this prize.

She was a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) from 1964 to 1981, and a research associate at CERN's Theoretical Division.

In 2015 she published her autobiography under the title "A Singularly Unfeminine Profession: One Woman ’s Journey in Physics,".

If you want to know more click on the following link: Mary K. Gaillard