A thousand doors first denied to them,
Since wisdom wore only a man’s disguise,
And dreams like theirs were muted then,
Still buried under silent skies
Born to dream in a common cage
Born to turn down ambition as it was improper
Two women rose to rewrite destiny on a blank page,
Marie Curie and Grace Hopper.
Curie touched the dark with a glowing heart,
And named the fire that slept in stone.
The radium she discovered, fine art.
Revolutionising radioactivity, unveiling a milestone
The elements, they whispered low,
With radium’s ghost upon her skin,
Where danger bloomed, she chose to go
And dared to draw the power within.
No throne she claimed, no extravagant bed.
But science knelt, in the presence of she
Through war, she rode with the X-Ray prepared
A healer she was, a tending hand through tragedy.
Through walls and wars she engraved her name,
Science bowed, though late to see.
And carved in the core of the Earth, a woman’s flame.
The power born in Madame C.
One spoke in code where no one dared,
A sailor with a coder’s grace.
A brilliant mind, specialised in naval warfare
Grace Hopper communicated to technology for the human race
“COBOL” they all whispered, “lines of light”
She built the code, she wrote the lore
And programs rose from endless night
In rooms where cables snaked the floor.
She joked of bugs and clocks and loops
Her vision was ahead of time.
Yet lead with solidity through doubting troops,
Those who scoffed soon fell in line.
For she had seen what few could guess:
Not cogs, not clerks, but minds set free.
That women too could code success,
The future shaped in circuitry.
And so from lab to circuit board,
They broke the rules, they bent the bars.
Their legacies could not be stored,
As they etched their names among the stars.
Now daughters dream in circuits wide,
In labs where once they watched, unknown.
They walk where Curie’s light still guides,
And build where Hopper laid the stone.
So raise the torch they left behind,
Let Curie’s flame and Hopper’s spark,
Ignite the future’s daring mind,
A beacon blazing through the dark.
Where once stood walls, now pathways grow,
Built not with gravel, but code and light.
Their names still whisper through the flow
Of every girl who dares the fight.