40 over 40

Early in her career, Lim sat with young women living with cervical cancer; their stories never left her. Some did not get smear tests because of embarrassment, others fear of discomfort or simply never finding the time. Her YouScreen research answered all three with a kit women can use at home. In August it became NHS policy, offered to almost four million women in England who are overdue. It is predicted her work could bring around 400,000 more women into screening every year, a change she calls the proudest moment of her career.

Fry is the face of maths that a generation of girls can see themselves in. This year she became the first woman to win the Leelavati Prize, the global award for bringing maths to the public, given only once every four years. At 42, she turned that same clarity on AI. Her BBC Two series sat with people whose lives had been upended by an algorithm’s decision and became the ethical voice the debate needs, asking who stays in control when the machines get it wrong.

The daughter of Barbadian parents, a nurse and a bus driver who retrained as a welder, she was the only Black child in her class and the first in her family to go to university. Maynard rose to run Avanade, launching more than 300 university scholarships for women in STEM along the way. Now she leads AI transformation across Microsoft’s customer and partner business, proving what the technology can do inside one of the world’s biggest companies, and she is determined that women help build what comes next.

Oesophageal cancer is usually found too late, so Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald has spent twenty years working to change that. Her capsule sponge, swallowed on a string and drawn back up to collect cells, can spot the warning signs years before cancer takes hold. In August it moved out of hospitals and on to the high street, offered in pharmacies in London and the East Midlands, so that the British public can be checked in the time it takes to collect a prescription. Caught at its earliest stage, almost two in three people survive oesophageal cancer for at least five years, proving the importance of Professor Fitzgerald’s work.

The film director who brought Bridget Jones back to the big screen became one of Big Tech’s most formidable opponents. When the government planned to let AI firms train on artists’ work unless they opted out, Baroness Kidron rallied the creative industries against it, and in March ministers dropped the plan. By September her fight for artists went global, as she warned Australia’s prime minister not to hand creators’ work to AI firms the way Britain nearly had. Also, this year, the Lords backed Kidron’s amendment to make it a crime to build chatbots that produce harmful content for children, a change supported by the NSPCC.

Growing up dyslexic but determined to reach space, Aderin has spent her career making sure other children believe they can too. Last Christmas she became the face of the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures in its 200th year, asking a national television audience whether there is life beyond Earth. Her memoir Starchild shares her own truths about the girl nobody expected to become a space scientist. When the lectures were announced, she said:

This year, the Mayor of London asked Lane Fox to assess what AI really means for the capital’s jobs, with more than two million of them likely to change and the lowest rungs of the career ladder most at risk. Her taskforce reported in under three months, every recommendation was accepted, and £30m followed, including support for 6,000 young Londoners who are out of work or training. Announcing the groundbreaking plan, she said:

Dame Wendy Hall is still the voice in the room asking the questions the AI industry would rather avoid. This year she published AI Explained, a plain-English guide democratising the technological changes affecting us all. In September she took the stage in her home city of Southampton as the new President of the British Science Association, calling for an independent authority to hold AI companies to account before the technology outruns its makers. Also, this year, the Royal Academy of Engineering awarded her the Sir Frank Whittle Medal, making Hall only the third woman to win it in 25 years.