Can you name five important women in science?
On March 8, 2008, The_Urban_Scientist posted a question: Can you name 5 Women Scientist? I have been mulling this question and its implications over for a while.
Recently, someone sent me an obituary of a famous woman biochemist in UK named Patricia Clark, whom I have never heard of. My work is on the border line between biochemistry and molecular biology. I read widely, having developed the habit while writing a text book back in the 1980's. And, as you would suspect, I have good antennae for women's achievements. But I had never heard of Patricia Clark's work, even though in recent years I've been in microbiology and she worked largely on bacterial metabolism. It got me thinking about how names of scientists become known and recognized.
So, I'm wondering, can you quickly name 5 women scientists? And then, (it's a control!) can you quickly name 5 men scientists? For me, I'm sad to say, it was no contest, men were far easier to recall. I'd love to hear your lists if you try this.
But also: what should be done, if anything, to increase visibility of women scientists?
A. Nothing. They are as visible as they deserve and are comfortable with.
B. That assertive approach you've mentioned before - don't be passive and wiat to get noticed, make it happen yourself. Try to get nominated for awards, always look for ways to make women more visible.
C. Write more biographies of women in science. (Disclaimer: I am an author who is beginning to do this, so I have somewhat of a conflict of interest. I feel it's a must to provide more of these, as suggested by Donna Shalala on McNeil-Lehrer in 2006, in a discussion following the release of Beyond Bias and Barriers.)
D. I have a better idea. (Please explain below!)
Dear Curious,
Ada Yonath was born June 22, 1933 and is affiliated with the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovoth, Israel. Her work that was recognized by the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2009 was on the structure of ribosomes. She made creative choices in both the organisms she studied and the methods she used, being one of the first in the ribosome community to use cryo-crystallography (very low temperatures).
You can read her Nobel lecture on the web site for the Nobel prizes. She shows crystals made by a seventh grader, labels exciting results with "eureka!", and concludes with a photograph of a chocolate cake in the shape of a ribosome.
cheers,
Laura
Does anyone know something about Ada Yonath, the Israeli biochemist who won the Nobel prize in 2009 along with two men for ribosome structure? How old is she? Is she married, does she have children? Has she always worked on ribosomes?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Curie's daughter, who also won a Nobel prize, or Dorothy Hodgkin, ditto. But for the other three, I have to fall back on Rosalind Franklin and this year's telomerase winners, Carol Grieder and Elizabeth Blackburn. I admire Blackburn for standing up to Bush on his bioethics advisory committee (until he fired her).
Men, too many. Sanger, Crick, Watson, Klug, Nirenberg to cite some classic molecular biology Nobel laureates.
What would make women more visible? More, with more ovaries (assertive!).
Debra Wolgemuth, Lydia Villa Komarov, Rita Colwell, Zena Werb, Jeannie Lee. For men, James Spudich, James Thomson, S. Yamanaka, Roger Pederson, Ian Wilmut.
Too bad it's so hard to think of the women compared to the men.
Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Ursula Goodenough, Mary Lou Pardue, Joan Steitz (5 minutes, some pauses to rack my brain). James Watson, Francis Crick, Aaron Klug, Tom Cech, Andrew Fire (2 minutes, had to select among several people a couple of times), I hate to say it but this sucks. We must make women more visible. I argued before that I didn't care about awards, but I'm beginning to reconsider.
Hi Helen,
I'm glad to hear that having biographies of the women made it easier to recall them. I certainly think that biographies made both Rosalind Franklin and Barbara McClintock more visible than they had been before. This works even for men: I know about Paul Farmer (Haiti, Partners in Health) because of Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains.
cheers,
Laura
Here are my lists:
Barbara McClintock, Harriet Creighton, Lise Meitner, Marie Curie, Zena Werb
James Watson, Francis Crick, Fred Sanger, Severo Ochoa, Marshall Nirenberg
It's disappointing that it is so much harder to think of the women. It took me 8 minutes for the five women, only 3 minutes for the five men.
I made lists of 10 women and 10 men, and spent approximately the same time on each list.
Famous Women in Science: Marie Curie, Irene Joliot-Curie, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Katherine Briggs, Isabel Briggs Myers, Barbara McClintock, Anna Freud, Florence Nightingale, Rosalind Franklin.
Famous Men in Science: Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Gregor Mendel, Archimedes, Copernicus, James Watson, Frances Crick, Frances Collins, Isaac Newton, Carl Sagan.
I think I would see a difference in time if my list had to be longer than 20 per list. Men have the advantage of having more recognizable names because a larger number of men have been involved in science for a longer time than woman. Regarding visibility, it's a combination of A, B, and C. Some scientists would prefer not to be visible while others do. Biographies and news articles could certainly improve the visibility of women in science. This topic has nice timing as I just started reading a new biography of Marie Curie yesterday.
Naming the women took me much longer and I have to say that I ended up naming the ones that either I had read a biography for: Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock, Rosalind Franklin or knew through the scientific community, Nusslein-Volhard and Nancy Hopkins. The men were super easy as there are so darned many of them! It took me only a couple of minutes to rattle off about 10 of them.
Why so tough? I think there are few women period, thus there are fewer famous women. I concur with FBP that I sorted through the men to name, but the women were "pings" I grasped at and wrote down as they came to me.
Obviously for me having biographies of famous women helped me come up with names.
I'll share mine too. I'll make a new list today, see if it's easier:
Women: Carol Greider (Nobel 2009) telomerase.
Elizabeth Blackburn (Nobel 2009) telomerase.
Ada Yonath (Nobel 2010) ribosome structure.
Nancy Hopkins (MIT women's fairness, genes in Zebrafish development).
Sarah Elgin (chromosome structure, epigenetics).
Men:
Tom Cech (Nobel, catalytic RNA).
Andrew Fire (Nobel, miRNA).
Craig Mello (Nobel, miRNA).
Tom Steitz (Nobel, ribosome structure).
James Watson (Nobel, DNA structure).
reflection: Maybe it's easier after mulling it over in the back of my mind for a day. Also, Nobel laureates are easier for me to recall for some reason.
Okay, I am going to include historical as well as current ones.
Also, I'm limiting this to biologists.
Women (took me 4 minutes)
Barbara McClintock (mobile genetic elements)
Rita Levi-Montalcini (nerve growth factor)
Marianne Grunberg-Manago (polyncleotide phosphorylase, enabled deciphering of genetic code)
Rita Colwell (methods for third world water purification to reduce microbial illness, first woman head of NSF)
Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn (telomerase)
Men (took me four minutes too)
Thomas Hunt Morgan (gene definition)
James Watson/Francis Crick (DNA structure)
Sydney Brenner (C. elegans cell/fate connection)
Joseph Gall (telomeres, ribosomal RNA structures)
Tom Cech & Sydney Altman (catalytic RNA)
Strange, it was a struggle to think up the women but with the men, I was conscious of selecting between possiblities. FBP
