As a Ph.D. student, Jocelyn Bell Burnell analyzed radio telescope data when she noticed radio pulses from one point in the sky. She had discovered pulsars: rotating neutron stars that emit beams of radiation, like cosmic lighthouses. The work earned her graduate supervisor a Nobel and launched an outstanding career.
Maryam Mirzakhani
Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry.