A sticker of my favourite historical figure from antiquity - Mary the Proto Chemist! Also known as Miriam the Jewess (Maria Hebraea), or Mary the Prophetess (Maria Prophetissa), and Maria the Copt (Arabic: مارية القبطية, romanized: Māriyya al-Qibṭiyya)! Arabs knew her as the "Daughter of Plato"!

This North African woman operated a woman-only school of alchemy in Alexandria Egypt in the first century C.E. How do we know she was real? Well, no man would have mentioned her in their lofty alchemical treatise if they did not have to!

We have Miriam to thank for washing soda, the "Bain Marie" doubler boiler technique, the vertical still, and lots of lab equipment in use to this day! Even my Al-Ambiq copper still was designed by her - and it's in household use today in Portugal.

Carl Jung used her axiom as a metaphor for wholeness and individuation. She is said to have spoken of the union of opposites:
"Join the male and the female, and you will find what is sought."

Did she look like this? Heck no! No one today knows what she looked like. But she was a North African Jew and this is an illustration based on an engraving depicting Maria Prophetissima from Michael Maier's book Symbola Aurea Mensae Duodecim Nationum (1617).