Lady Rita Cornforth
A talented Sydney Organic Chemist Rita Harradence had been drawn to chemistry by an inspirational teacher at St George Girls High School, Miss Lillian Whiteoak.
Rita Cornforth (nee Harradence) took her BSc Hons degree in 1936 from the University of Sydney, topping the list along with Arthur Birch (later Professor of Chemistry at Sydney and Manchester, and Founding Dean, Research School of Chemistry, ANU). She graduated MSc. in 1937 and in 1939 she won an 1851 Exhibition Overseas Scholarship. The other scholarship, of the two awarded annually among the six Australian Universities existing at that time, was won by her future husband (later Sir John Cornforth) who was one year behind her at Sydney. They both chose to work for their D. Phil. Degrees at the University of Oxford.
Rita Harradence and John Cornforth were married in 1941 and, while raising three children, worked together at the National Institute for Medical Research, United Kingdom and subsequently at the Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology (Shell Research Ltd). They published 41 papers in collaboration. Their first joint research, at Oxford as Medical Research Council scholars, was on the chemistry of penicillin; later, they addressed the biosynthesis of steroids from mavalonic acid and fundamental studies of enzyme stereochemistry, leading to the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1975 to Sir John (jointly with Vladimir Prelog). In his Nobel Lecture, Sir John paid tribute to his wife's pivotal contributions to their joint work: "...with patience and great experimental skill [she] executed much of the chemical synthesis on which the success of the work was founded."
Dr Rylie Green
Dr Rylie Green, from the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering UNSW, is part of the research team working on the bionic eye project at UNSW. She is developing new-generation conductive polymers that can carry electrical signals for use in implanted devices such as bionic eyes and ears.
Dr Green graduated with her PhD in conducting polymers for vision prosthesis electrodes in 2009 and has continued to work as a research associate at the University of New South Wales with an aim to establish her own group with prominence in this field
Dr Green was also recently awarded the Engineers Australia, 2010 Women in Biomedical Engineering Scholarship with an accompanying grant to attend an international conference. Dr Green will be presenting her latest research at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Dr. Green is gaining national attention for her work on conductive plastics for the bionic implants of the future, after winning a place in the national Fresh Science program. Dr Green was one of 16 early-career scientists who presented work at Fresh Science, a communication boot camp for early career scientists held at the Melbourne Museum