Mary the Jewess

The first named lab builder in Western history — and her instruments outlived the theory by a thousand years.

Working in Hellenistic Alexandria, Mary (Maria Hebraea) is credited with three instruments still recognizable today: the tribikos (a three-armed still for fractional distillation), the kerotakis (a sealed vessel for vapor reflux that became the modern reflux apparatus), and the bain-marie — the water-bath that French cooks still call by her name. Her stated goal was transmutation; her surviving contribution is glassware. The mystical writings attributed to her are mostly later forgeries. The hardware is real.