Quick, how many female scientists can you name? Yeah, besides Marie Curie. When Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology at Brown University, was still a student, most of the people she spoke to—even in science departments—couldn’t name very many.
Five years ago, Fausto-Sterling and her former student, Maia Weinstock (now the News Director at BrainPOP) created the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-Thon to focus more attention on women’s involvement in science, right where the scientists of tomorrow will see it—on Wikipedia. Our friends at The Mary Sue highlighted the project, and we’re excited to share it with you!
This October 15th marks the Fifth Annual Ada Lovelace Edit-a-Thon, and Drs. Fausto-Sterling and Weinstock would like you to join them! Each year the participants edit Wiki entries to reflect women’s involvement in scientific history, which rarely get the same fanfare as the acheivements of male scientists. They also hope to get closer to gender equality on Wikipedia itself, since, as The Mary Sue reported, when the site’s editors were analyzed last year, only one of 3,000 randomly selected articles had a majority of female contributors. So join the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-Thon, and help ensure that women’s contributions to science are remembered!
Off the top of my head – Irene Joliot-Curie, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, Emmy Noether (she might count as a physicist, though), Jane Goodall, Jocelyn Bell, Mary Leakey.
Women physicists that participated in the Manhattan project:
Chien-Shiung Wu (aka First Lady of Physics, Madame Wu, the Chinese Marie Curie) and Leona Woods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ada_Lovelace&diff=235042069&oldid=234366679
I created the page as it is and am the reason why there is anything of substance and credibility there. I am not a woman, nor have I been credited in much of the push about Ada on Wikipedia. My work and effort was basically stolen and used by a handful of people who have no ability to create encyclopedic pages. Disgraceful.
I have a small crush on astro-physicist Amy Mainzer.
My aunt. Barbara McClintock. Rosalind Franklin. Feh.
Never mind. I suspect this is merely proof that (1) young people are being robbed education-wise by their soi-disant liberal education and (2) your average academic is sexist. Doesn’t mean the rest of us are.