Top Ten Women Scientists in Movies

The Grace Hopper Conference is a for-profit, women-only event. It gives women an alternative to technology conferences that only have solid tech content. Example of a GH talk last year: “Five Ways to Tap Into Your Power: Take The Lead!” According to the Web site, one of the goals is to highlight the contributions of women and foster role models. In honor of 2018 GH, I did some Internet queries on women role model scientists in movies. Here are ten of the most commonly cited examples. Note: I haven’t seen most of these films.

1. Dr. Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) – Croft is a professor of archaeology and has all kinds of adventures in several films, including “Tomb Raider” (2001). She is by far the most frequently mentioned woman scientist in film.

2. Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) – Jones is a nuclear physicist in the James Bond movie “The World is not Enough” (1999). She helps Bond uncover a sinister plot involving M’s daughter Elektra.

3. Dr. Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) – Storm’s scientific background varies a bit according to whether she’s in a movie or comic book but she’s usually an astrophysicist and definitely a scientist. She appeared in “Fantastic Four” (2005) and gained the ability to turn invisible.

4. Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch) – Peterson is a scientist who gets shrunk along with several colleagues to microscopic size in “Fantastic Voyage” (1966). The tiny team, along with their tiny submarine, are injected into a sick man to operate on his brain.

5. Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) – Marcus is a medical doctor who helps McCoy in “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013). She is the daughter of Admiral Marcus who turns out to be a bad guy.

6. Dr. Sydney Fox (Tia Carrere) – Fox is a professor of ancient history at a fictitious Trinity College in the TV series “Relic Hunter” (1999-2002). Fox plays a Croft-like character. I’ve seen a few episodes, and the show is surprisingly good.

7. Dr. Sheila Gamble (Eva Mendes) – Gamble is a doctor/wife of the character played by comedian Will Ferrell in “The Other Guys” (2010). She is twice as likeable as other characters in the film.

8. Alex Munday (Lucy Liu) – Munday impersonates a scientist while infiltrating Redstar Technologies in “Charlie’s Angels” (2000). She delivers a talk to a room full of software engineers and gains their cooperation on her mission.

9. Dr. Anne Babish (Carmen Electra) – Electra is a professor of marine biology in “Two-Headed Shark Attack” (2012). The movie title says it all. Where the shark comes from is never explained.

10. Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford) – Harris is a mad scientist who studies bees, and if you’re a man, best avoided in “Invasion of the Bee Girls” (1973). This is an obscure, bad movie so I really don’t know why it appears in so many Internet search results for women scientists.

11. Dr. Tracy Baxter (Dawn Dunlap) and Dr. Barbara Glaser (June Chadwick) – These two women scientists from “Forbidden World” (1982) are geneticists. They appear in a surprising number of Internet search results, relative to such a mediocre movie.

12. Dr. Scarpelli (Nia Peeples) – Scarpelli is a marine biologist in “DeepStar Six” (1989). An undersea scientific lab plus missle base is attacked by a giant sea scorpion. This movie got terrible reviews but I thought it was OK. Three other sci-fi undersea movies of 1989 were “The Rift”, “Leviathan”, and the Abyss”.

13. Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) – This is a strange movie — “From Beyond” (1986) which I didn’t like very much but Crampton appears in a lot of best-women-scientists lists.

14. Dr. Alex (Farrah Fawcett) – Dr. Alex and Dr. Adam (Kirk Douglas) are scientists on a space station in “Saturn 3” (1980). They are menaced by an 8-foot tall robot that has run amok.