Awards Season, How Will Women Fare?
Hi Friends of Women in Science,
The fall is the season for some major science awards. The Lasker and Waterman Awards have been announced and the Nobel Prizes will be announced soon. As you probably recall, I always notice if any women were selected and try to keep an eye on long-term trends re awards to women. I'm sorry to say, this year no women were selected to receive the Lasker award (often viewed as a Nobel Prize precursor) or the Waterman Award (recognizing a relatively junior scientist of outstanding ability). Soon we'll hear about the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Medicine. I'll discuss more about this topic then.
As you may recall, last spring a bumper crop of women were elected to the National Academy of Sciences after a number of lean years for women. Whether this sort of boom-and-bust pattern sends a message that the women selected were chosen for gender more than ability is debatable, and I know a number of distinguished men of science who feel too much pressure has now been applied to increase women in this body. We can discuss and debate these issues again as soon as we've heard the new Nobel Prizes. But feel free to comment now if you like.
cheers,
Laura
Dear Laura,
I think selecting CS when it's known to be so man-rich is asking to avoid selecting women. NSF could have picked any field and given women a better chance to win. Why choose a field where there are so few women?
ACR
Hi Laura,
I think all of these recipients are worthy. But I also think there are many cell movement breakthroughs women have made, particularly by Mary Osborn, that are ignored here. I'm sure this is part of the same problem: Men think first of Men.
MRP
And here is the Waterman award annoucement: " Scott Aaronson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (left) and Robert Wood of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (right) will each receive the National Science Foundation's 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award [images courtesy Scott Aaronson, MIT, and Eliza Grinnell, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, via NSF].For the first time in the 37-year history of the distinguished honor, the National Science Foundation (NSF) today named two individuals — both computer scientists — as joint recipients of the 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award. Scott Aaronson of MIT and Robert Wood of Harvard were honored with the award, recognizing “an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering” supported by NSF. Also for the first time, both Aaronson and Wood will receive $1 million grants over a five-year period to further their research, up from $500,000 awards in recent years."
cheers,
Laura
Here are the Lasker winners sent to me by Susan Forsburg: The Lasker Foundation has announced its 2012 awards:
+The Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award goes to Michael Sheetz (Columbia), James Spudich (Stanford) and Ronald Vale (UCSF), "For discoveries concerning cytoskeletal motor proteins, machines that move cargoes within cells, contract muscles, and enable cell movements."
+The Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award goes to Roy Calne (Cambridge) and Thomas E. Starzl (Pittsburgh), "For the development of liver transplantation, which has restored normal life to thousands of patients with end-stage liver disease."
+The Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award goes to Donald D. Brown (Carnegie Institution) and Tom Maniatis (Columbia), "For exceptional leadership and citizenship in biomedical science — exemplified by fundamental discoveries concerning the nature of genes; by selfless commitment to young scientists; and by disseminating revolutionary technologies to the scientific community."
http://www.laskerfoundation.org/
cheers,
Laura Hoopes
