founding mother (of something)

A woman who was instrumental in the creation or pioneering of something. The founding mother of what we now call child psychology, she believed that studying the patterns of children's thoughts and behaviors could provide insight into their motivations and determine how they develop into adults. The founding mother of the corporation is one of the few female billionaires in the world. I always see Rosalind Franklin as the founding mother of DNA, given her crucial contributions with X-ray crystallography.