When I took some astronomy classes in the early 2000s, Jocelyn Bell was absolutely credited. In her own words:
It has been suggested that I should have had a part in the Nobel Prize awarded to Tony Hewish for the discovery of pulsars. There are several comments that I would like to make on this: First, demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve. Secondly, it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. We hear of cases where a supervisor blames his student for a failure, but we know that it is largely the fault of the supervisor. It seems only fair to me that he should benefit from the successes, too. Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it - after all, I am in good company, am I not!
That said, yeah, I think she absolutely should have been awarded the Nobel prize. But while she did not, she has the admiration — rightly so — of many a budding astronomer.
Who is downvoting this?
If we’re still honest here, didn’t these men just shield them from the burdens of fame and criticism?
So they could focus on their families
Have you met men on the internet lately? like a 1/3 chance of intense misogyny.
Sad
Lise Meitner went on to be forgotten? In my city, a big street bears her name, including the tram station there. Fittingly, it’s the tram to the University that stops there. Essentially, her name is hammered into all students’ heads here.
She also has an element named after her
Not to mention she’s been immortalized as Meitnerium
Agree. There’s a street, a monument, a research facility and two schools with her name in a 10km radius of me.
My reaction exactly. I studied there as well. Lise Meitner may be underappreciated but at least someone made sure she’s not forgotten.
Also she herself said that Otto Hahn deserved the Nobel prize. She and Otto Frisch (far kess known than she is!) did the theoretical work regarding the physics behind it.
But Pauli got the physics prize that year, and he sure deserves it. Maybe one of the later prices could have been awarded to her.
Right? In germany there is a lot named after her. e.g. The Institute for Nuclear Research in Berlin is the “Hahn-Meitner-Institut” (after her and Otto Hahn). There are severals Schools and streets named after her all over the country.
See also Rosalind Franklin who first discovered DNA’s double helix structure (three men later received the Nobel Prize for this finding).
And more examples here.
Franklin might have won the prize, had she not died 4 years before the prize was awarded. Rules forbid the Nobel being awarded to the deceased.
Some of the best evidence we discovered for tectonic plates was discovered by a woman. Marie Tharp discovered the Mid-Atlantic ridge and had her work stolen by her colleague.
Don’t forget Mary Anning!
Anning searched for fossils in the area’s Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods.
Anning struggled financially for much of her life. As a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London, and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions. However, her friend, geologist Henry De la Beche, who painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, based it largely on fossils Anning had found and sold prints of it for her benefit.
I’d love to meet whoever made this graphic. Shake his hand. Seems like a good dude.
Lol… what?
My attempt at a joke about casual sexism. I was a little high, and I’m not sure if it landed
A exhaled some air harder than usual, and gave you an Upvote. FWIW.
Actually, that Hertha Ayrton quote at the end? About the cats or whatever? That was actually me. I said that.
I want to upvote this so many times!!
Meitner at least got element out of this
