Apart from Marie Curie or Hypatia of Alexandria, there are not many popular women in the history of Science. However, there are many cases of those who have been blatantly ignored, have had to fight against sexism, or work in miserable conditions so that in the end, after so much effort, their discoveries were attributed to their male colleagues and even to their husbands! The number of researchers awarded a Nobel since the awards began to be awarded in 1901 is around thirty and the reason is not only found in the fact that fewer women have access to scientific careers, but also the highly debatable criteria of the Swedish Academy throughout of the years.
Prejudice has a name, the “Matilda Effect,” the tendency to belittle scientific achievements if they have been carried out by women. Nettie Stevens, discoverer of the chromosomes that determine sex; Rosalind Franklin, whose contributions were essential for the discovery of the structure of DNA, or Lise Meitner, “mother” of nuclear fission, are some of those “Matildas” that still need to be done justice. Here we recall some of them, although there are more, on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Fortunately, times have changed (or are changing), but the blacklist may get longer. In the last edition of the Nobel, once again, no female name was mentioned in the announcements of the jury’s decision and no one can argue that it is due to a lack of candidates. Bad is forgetfulness.
NETTIE STEVENS, THE FORGOTTEN SEX
The American geneticist Nettie Stevens (1861-1912) carried out an exhaustive investigation with insects whose main conclusion would revolutionize the world of science: it is two types of chromosomes, the X and the Y, which determine the sex of a living being, something that at the beginning of the 20th century it was completely unknown. His work also provided evidence of how hereditary traits are obtained. But, too bad, Stevens published his work at the same time as his prestigious colleague Edmund B. Wilson and it’s easy to see who got the glory. Wilson acknowledged in the journal “Science” that his conclusions coincided with those of his partner, so he knew the study, but for a long time, it was he who appeared as the true discoverer. Nobody doubts now that Stevens is one of the great biologists and geneticists in history. Unfortunately, she died of breast cancer when she was only 50 years old.
ROSALIND FRANKLIN, THAT “POORLY DRESSED FEMINIST”
The wealthy father of Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), dedicated to banking in London, was not very happy that his daughter wanted to study chemistry, and even withdrew her assignment, but the young woman’s determination made him change his decision and bear the cost. A brilliant mind was thus formed, whose contributions were essential for the discovery of the structure of DNA together with James Watson and Francis Crick. But her male colleagues weren’t exactly very elegant with her. To begin with, in the “Nature” article in which they published their findings, Franklin is quoted in the last paragraph, thanking her for her unpublished experimental results and ideas, as if she were some kind of “fellow.” Years later, in the book ‘The Double Helix’, Watson referred to her saying that the best place for a feminist was someone else’s laboratory. And she added such unpresentable paragraphs as this: I was determined not to emphasize her feminine attributes. She could have been very pretty if she had shown the least interest in dressing well. But she didn’t. All her dresses showed the imagination of English teenage nerds. ‘ For his part, Crick admitted that Franklin could not have coffee in the King’s College staff lounge because it was reserved for men, a circumstance he considered simply “triviality.” It was a long time before both scientists recognized the extraordinary scientific quality of their colleagues and apologized. They were awarded the Nobel together with Maurice Wilkins when she had already died, and it is not awarded posthumously.
LISE MEITNER, THE SUFFERING OF THE ATOMIC WOMAN
That of the Austrian Lise Meitner (1878-1968) is a story of contempt and penalties for a double condition, that of being a woman and a Jew. “Mother” of nuclear fission (the breakdown of a heavy atom into less heavy and more stable ones) and received in the US as a celebrity after World War II, it is hardly known today. He did not share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his laboratory partner Otto Hahn for reasons difficult to understand. And on top of that, Hahn didn’t even mention it when he picked up the award in 1947 despite their 30 years of collaboration. That was possibly the peak of the many slights Meitner had to go through during his scientific career. For example, in her first job in Berlin, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1907, she was forced to work in a former carpentry workshop installed in the basement, as the laboratory did not allow women. Without pay, her work was financed by her father, so she lived in a room in a female residence without a bathroom. It would not be the last free or poorly paid collaboration they would offer you in your life. However, he loved his job to the point of putting his life in danger in Nazi Germany. Another piece of information to know the strong personality of Meitner: she was the only scientist who did not want to collaborate in the Manhattan project because she did not want to have anything to do with a bomb. At least, Meitner did receive other important accolades, such as the Max Planck medal in 1949, and an element on the periodic table is named in his honor: meitnerium.
ISABELLA KARLE, GLORY TO HER HUSBAND
American Isabella Helen Lugski (1921-2017), better known as Isabella Karle, her married name, developed a series of techniques to determine the three-dimensional structure of molecules by X-ray crystallography. But the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded. They gave it to her husband, fellow chemist Jerome Karle, and his collaborator, Herbert A. Hauptman. She did not count on the committee for these awards, which have only given 3% of the awards to women. As her daughter explained to the media after Lugski’s death from a brain tumor, this scientist was inspired by another great woman for her career: Marie Curie, this winner of a Nobel Prize, who, like her family, was born in what now it is Poland. Of course, she had to overcome the discouragement of a teacher, who at a very young age told her that chemistry was not an appropriate field for young ladies.
GERTY CORI, TOGETHER EVEN AT THE NOBEL
For the members of the Swedish Academy of 1947 a marriage had to be something like an indivisible organic entity, to the point that when Gerty and Carl Cori were awarded the Nobel for their discovery of the process of the catalytic conversion of glycogen, shared with the Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, the prize money was not divided between the three winners, but was divided into two: one part for the couple and another for Houssay. At least Gerty Cori (1896-1957) became the first woman in the world to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine. It was not easy for him, he had to deal with sexism throughout his professional life. Some universities employed her husband but refused to hire her or offered ridiculous salaries.
JOCELYN BELL BURNELL, REPORTING TO THE BOSS
Signs of interplanetary intelligent life? No, they are pulsars. They were discovered by the Northern Irish Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) while doing her doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge (England). After analyzing a huge amount of data obtained by a radio telescope that she helped build, she found the signals of these stellar corpses that rotate on themselves at high speed. However, the Nobel Prize for that discovery went to his thesis supervisor, Anthony Hewish, and Martin Ryle, also an astronomer at Cambridge. Bell Burnell herself explained to National Geographic in 2013 that “the image that people had at that time of how science was done was that of an older man who had under his command a lot of subordinates, who were expected to do what he said.
CHIEN-SHIUNG WU, THE CHINESE MARIE CURIE
Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1977), also known as the Chinese Marie Curie or “Madame Wu” is one of the great experimental physicists of the 20th century, which is quite an achievement considering that she was born in a small town near Shanghai at a time when girls were out of school and still had their feet bandaged. Thanks to the support of his family, Wu not only studied but reached the highest academic levels. Recruited from Columbia University in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project, she researched radiation detection and uranium enrichment. He refuted the physical law of conservation of parity together with his colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, a study that won the Nobel Prize in 1957. But once again the Academy rewarded men and forgot women. The decision was considered scandalous by many.
AGNES POCKETS, THE HOUSEWIFE WHO DID PHYSICS IN THE WASHING WATER
When Agnes Pockels (1862-1935) finished her studies, German universities did not admit women, and when they did, her parents did not let her enroll. So this young woman born in Venice dedicated herself to taking care of her loved ones and had no other job than that of a housewife. However, he managed to study physics with his brother’s books, the knowledge that he applied to what was closest to him: the water from washing dishes. In this way, Pockels developed a device to measure the surface tension in substances such as oils, fats, soaps, and detergents. His studies were published in “Nature,” but the world completely forgot about him and it was Irving Langmuir who won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for perfecting Pockels’ original idea.
