Born in 1815, Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron. A gifted mathematician, she is said to have written instructions for the first computer program in the mid-1800s. She is considered the first person to realize that computers, still not a reality, had potential beyond mere calculation. Lovelace is known chiefly for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed "Analytical Engine."

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Not only that, she was the first person to win one twice. Born in Warsaw in 1867, she became a naturalized French citizen. Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics - for research on radiation phenomena - with husband Pierre and physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering radium and polonium.

Rosalind Franklin never received a Nobel Prize, although many believe she should have. Biophysicist Franklin was an X-ray crystallographer whose practical work was heavily relied upon by James Watson and Francis Crick in their discovery of the DNA double helix, which won the Nobel prize for medicine. By the time the prize was awarded, Franklin had died of ovarian cancer.

British biochemist Dorothy Hodgkin was a contemporary of Franklin, and the two shared their expertise with one another. Hodgkin developed crystallography techniques to give an insight into the structures of biomolecules and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964, becoming the third woman to do so. Five years after winning, Hodgkin was the first person to decipher the structure of insulin.

Australian-American Elizabeth Blackburn won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 2009 for her work on telomeres - the protective tips that lie at the end of our chromosomes. Blackburn co-discovered the enzyme telomerase, which allows telomeres to be replenished. Telomerase allows cells to go on dividing, so it appears to influence aging and could have implications in cancer research.

British primatologist Jane Goodall is considered the world's leading expert on chimpanzees and has spent decades studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She came up with names for many of the animals, drawing criticism from some who accused her of anthropomorphizing.

Born in Italy in 1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini had her career cut short by Benito Mussolini's laws banning Jews from academia. Undeterred, she set up a lab in her bedroom and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. After the war, she worked in St. Louis, where she isolated Nerve Growth Factor from cancer tissues. She shared a 1986 Nobel Prize for that with colleague Stanley Cohen.

In 1967, Northern Irish physicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered a signal that pulsed at a regular rate. The signal, detected by radio telescope, was dubbed the "little green man." It turned out not to be alien communication, but a rapidly spinning neutron star - the first "pulsar" to be detected. In 1974, her supervisor jointly won a Nobel Prize for pulsar work. Bell Burnell was not a recipient.

Early on this year, chancellor Angela Merkel pressed the button to start up the Wendelstein 7-X device. A small amount of hydrogen was injected into the device that was then heated up by microwave into a plasma of between 10 and 100 million degrees Celsius. The creation and manipulation of plasmas would be a step on the road to harnessing nuclear fusion as a safe and clean source of energy.

There was no nuclear fusion this time around. The goal was instead to put test out the institute's "stellerator." Such devices are used to hold superheated plasmas, and manipulate them using magnetic fields. In December, scientists reported that they had been successful in doing so to a high level of precision.

Also up-and-running earlier this year was a high performance computer center at the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. It's job will be to churn over all the data produced that the new particle accelerator FAIR will produce in years to come.

There was a sensational success for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in February, when its scientists recorded a chirping sound - the sound of gravitational waves. Such ripples in the fabric of space-time were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago. It was only the second time they had ever been heard.

On July 26th, the solar airplane Solar Impulse II ended its journey of more than a year, reaching Abu Dhabi. The plane took off from there in March the previous year, flying around the globe in an eastern direction. The flight wasn't without problems, solar-charged batteries had to be completely replaced during the plane's crossing of the Pacific.

A fatal accident involving a Tesla car in Florida in May overshadowed the rapid advance of autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles. The deceased "driver" had apparently put his car into autopilot mode and was watching a Harry Potter movie. The car's systems had failed to spot a large white 18-wheel truck crossing the highway.

The Olympic games in Brazil appeared to be under threat with the spread of the Zika virus, which is linked with microcephaly, a syndrome that leads to an underdeveloped cranium in newborns. The virus is transmitted by mosquito and expanded across the tropics with unexpected speed. The World Health Organization called a global emergency and, by November, things appeared to be calming down.

Tübingen researchers announced in July that they had isolated an active substance called lugdunin from bacteria that normally settle in the nose. The chemical appears to stop disease-causing bacteria from growing there. It's though that lugdunin might even be of use against the hospital superbug MRSA.

Australian researchers looked closely at the milk produced by Tasmanian devil mothers and discovered highly effective proteins that also act against multi-resistant bacteria. Marsupials need such defenses because their babies grow in pouches that are often full of bacteria. Might it also be of use to humans?

It was in March, when researchers discovered this small octopus off the coast of Hawaii. They christened him Casper - after the ghost cartoon character. By December, marine biologists had found out more. The octopod lays its eggs on mineral nodules on the deep sea floor. Too bad, then, that manganese and other substances present in the nodules are becoming increasingly important for industry.

Cows burp out methane gas, and it's become common knowledge that this is one of the most substantial contributors to global warming. One molecule - 3-nitrooxypropanol - can help curb that, according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology. The substance prevents a buildup of methane in cows' stomachs and also improves the uptake of nutrients.

This falcon, who goes by the name Socrates, was allowed to prove his skills in a wind tunnel at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Munich. High-speed cameras filmed his movements, and researchers scrutinized the images. It's probably a long way off, but might our aircraft one day fly with feathered wings?

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for the discovery of an important self-healing mechanism in our cells. Without autophagy - "self-eating" - cells could not renew themselves. Yoshinori Ohsumi, from Japan, discovered the mechanism.

Three theoretical physicists share this year's Nobel Prize. They investigated strange phenomena that occur in the atomic world and which may make quantum computing possible one day. The concepts involved are quite abstract, and are concerned with how many holes objects have. Or something like that. We're not entirely sure.

Even if you're a fan of small cars, this may be going too far. The scientists Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa have made possible nanocars that operate on a molecular level. They can use light as fuel. The three received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their efforts.