We should always add a mental asterisk to the names of male researchers who discovered things while women were oppressed.
That said, this meme is playing loose and fast with the specifics, which undermines that important message.
Just picking the first one:
Payne’s work was her Ph.D. thesis and Russell did not tell her not to publish it, her advisor did. The advisor told her not to rock the boat in her thesis. This is good advice that even Einstein was given. Payne, badass, declined.
When Russell later reproduced her research, he cited her thesis as the “most important research” he’d seen on the subject.
The real snub with Payne is that her title was “Technical Advisor” for 20 years despite being well regarded as a full time professor. It wasn’t until the 50’s she was recognized as a professor, when she was also made chair of the department.
Source: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/cecilia-payne-profile
They’re all like that. For some reason trying to make the men out as bad people… When nothing really happened. Wish people could try to appreciate women’s contributions without trying to diminish men’s contributions or create a false narrative.
Everything has to be a Hollywood production. It’s brainrot.
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.
True. But it’s still three men named in the list of Nobel Prize winners, when a woman first made the actual discoveries. So even if there was no foulplay, it’s important to shine a light on women like Franklin.
Fuck Watson and Crick, all my homies hate Watson and Crick
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.
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.
My reaction exactly. I studied there as well. Lise Meitner may be underappreciated but at least someone made sure she’s not forgotten.
Not to mention she’s been immortalized as Meitnerium
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.
Otto Frisch is better known these days because he went on to work on the Manhatten Project. He appeared as a character in Oppenheimer.
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.
Agree. There’s a street, a monument, a research facility and two schools with her name in a 10km radius of me.
She also has an element named after her
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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.
Shout out to the bad bitch Margaret Hamilton who was a coder for the Apollo 11 mission. She was a huge inspiration to me as a kid and they made a Lego set that included her.
My former best friend one day out of the blue told me he thought that women are on average smarter than men but are not capable of rising to the very top level of human intellect. His “proof” of this was the fact that nearly all major scientific discoveries have been made by men. Needless to say, he thought of himself as being at the highest level of human intellect - despite having made no major scientific discoveries himself (or even minor ones for that matter). This was the beginning of the end of our friendship, and I’m only embarrassed that it wasn’t instantly the end of our friendship.
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At least Lise Meitner is not forgotten, I currently work in a building on Lise-Meitner Street!
I always take posts like this with a big grain of salt. Yes, women were oppressed and in many places still are, but posts like these tend to stretch and exaggerate the truth because they WANT to find oppression of women. They WANT the fight, and they want the fight to still be here and burning brightly today to justify actions many would find questionable at best.
EDIT: Fun fact for you, in the USA in 1970 8% of stem workers were female. Today, its 27%.
Okay, how was the truth stretched here?
EDIT: Fun fact for you, in the USA in 1970 8% of stem workers were female. Today, its 27%.
It should be 50%.
Okay, how was the truth stretched here?
Payne was credited by Russel, who is not the one who told her not to publish, and she became a Department Chair later in life.
Josselyn Bell actually argued against the point of this meme in her own words decades ago.
Lisa Meitner said Otto deserved that Nobel Prize. Meitner is heavily immortalized.
Franklin might have recieved the prize in person if she were alive at the time (dead people do not qualify to recieve it).
It should be 50%
Then ask women to enter stem, you and I do not have the authority to force them to do anything they don’t want to do.
And btw you’re fucking lucky I took the time to write this up for you, since its easier to manufacture bullshit than refute it most educated people don’t even waste time doing it.
bullshit will fly around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots
Why should it be 50%?
Where is my fucking lady Rosalind Franklin at?
TBF the male researchers involved in Franklin’s case are/were straight-up assholes across the board, not just sexist appropriators.
First thing I thought too!!
Actually, that Hertha Ayrton quote at the end? About the cats or whatever? That was actually me. I said that.
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.
That’s honestly all I wanted
Took me a while to get it but very much appreciated
Who is downvoting this?
Probably people who have heard of these scientists being recently credited for their work.
The phrase “all the credit” is a bit sensationalist, and it’s too easy to poke holes in, although I do concede that “Most of the credit” is vague and “All of the Nobel Prize recognition and prize money / peer accolades” is a bit too wordy.
It’s important that we don’t weaken the cause by easily disprovable exaggeration. These scientists did not get nearly enough credit; true.
So, how about you go ahead and do the math on how long it took for that to finally happen for each of these women? And when you’re done not bothering to do that, go ahead and admit that you wouldn’t be pissed at all if your hard work and lifetime of research and sacrifice was credited to someone else- and not corrected until you’re long dead.
Because I’ll be waiting here to call you a liar.
Do you have quotes on these women being infuriated? Jocelyn Bell shut down tabloids who insinuated she wasn’t credited, and Payne was cited by Russel as “the most important research” after a different person, her advisor, told her not to rock the boat on her thesis project. Payne became a department chairwoman some years later.
I agree, it’s infuriating.
Have you met men on the internet lately? like a 1/3 chance of intense misogyny.
Lmao what
If you think ONE THIRD of men are not just misogynistic, which would be laughable enough, but “intensely” so, you are absolutely the problem, not them
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Half this list is nobel prizes going to supervisors when the woman in question was either a student or dead, neither of which qualify for a nobel prize.
It’s good to stand against discrimination, but there is no need to embellish the truth.
