Women in science they mysteriously don't teach you about

[Recursion]

So, that's Hedy Lamarr. She was voted the "most beautiful woman in Europe", and frankly that seems justified. The problem is, if you google her, that's what comes up first. What's missing?

The fact that she invented the frequency-hopping protocol that was the most significant advancement in signals since Marconi (or possibly even Heaviside) is apparently secondary to the fact that looking at her was pleasant for men (and, again, I have to admit it is, but that should never be given priority to the importance of her scientific breakthrough).

This protocol:

1. Was among other things what the Allies used to win WWII, and
2. Is still used in cell phones today

There has been lip-service to women in science for years, and most of it has focused on Marie Curie. Yes: she was an exceptional scientist, and yes: she deserves all her accolades; nothing in this post is an attempt to deprive her of those. I'm simply annoyed that people act like she is unusual for being a female scientist.

So, just as a reminder, here are people who happen to be women who have earned their places as exceptional scientists and engineers (my own field is electrical and computer engineering, so it leans heavily towards that; please add women from the physical, earth, and life sciences you know of).

1. Ada Lovelace. I'm a sysadmin, so I have to go with her first. Lovelace (the daughter of the poet Byron) was the first digital computer programmer in human history. Furthermore, she stated what should probably be considered the Fundamental Theorem of Computer Science. When asked by Parliament why she used results alternately as arithmetical or logical, she said "there is no fundamental difference; the answers may be interpreted as arithmetic or logic as the need of the operation requires". That truly encapsulates Computer Science as a discipline. (Even Boole did not yet grasp that.)

2. Grace Murray Hopper. Continuing on the comp sci track, Admiral Hopper was frankly one of the greatest computer programmers ever. Most of her source code is now publicly available thanks to FOIA, but it's still largely understudied, ironically because of the revolution she inspired. She invented things like "the compiler" and "the linker" and "the parser"; if you don't know computers and programming that may not mean much to you, but trust me that those are crucially important to every piece of software written today. She is one of a vanishingly small number of historical women to have a US Navy ship named after her.

3. Mary Cartwright. She was the primary developer of chaos theory, the notion that underlies such diverse subjects now as economics, climatology, evolutionary biology, sociology, art history, and political science.

4. Jane Goodall. I hope I don't have to repeat her biography here. Although some of her results have been challenged by more recent research (that's how science works) she remains one of the most impressive primatologists in history.

5. Hertha Ayrton. She was the first woman to read a paper before the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and wow, was it a paper. Her work on electrical arcing directly influenced Einstein in his study of electrical phenomena that lead to the theory of relativity.

There have been more genius female scientists, mathematicians, and engineers than a single thread, let alone an OP, could hold, but I just wanted to get these seven (counting Curie and Lamarr) out there for a moment. Marie Curie was amazing, but she was hardly unique, and I think it only honors her memory to remind us of that.

[Xipe Totec]

1. No computer scientist worth his salt is unaware of Hedy Lamarr

Graduate level courses in CS cover her contribution to cryptography and wi-fi

Ada Lovelace is another goddess of computer science.

[Recursion]

2. I've known undergrads who hadn't heard of her

Obviously by grad school (once you've taken Signals) you have clearly heard of her.

[Xipe Totec]

3. I didn't say all computer scientists; only those that are worth their salt.

[Recursion]

4. Well, hell, that's a vanishing population. I've known "computer scientists" who don't know Knuth

That in itself speaks volumes...

[bemildred]

6. +1. nt

[malthaussen]

17. Ah, yes, Knuth Rockne.

"Win one for the Processor."

As for the admiral, didn't she have a punch-card holder named after her? You know, the Hopper.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

19. Yeah, Knuth is rather dry, but he is thorough.

A systematizer to the core.

Grace Hopper is another one (Edit: thinker of note)

Sometimes I think ideas never die, they just hang around forever waiting for someone to notice them.

[Recursion]

22. Bwah

Her attested "bug" pun makes me think she would like that joke...

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

53. Grace Hopper also coined the word "software".

[whistler162]

62. and brought the word bug into the

computer vernacular.

It was a real bug.

[winter is coming]

57. "And win it in nlogn time." n/t

[Spitfire of ATJ]

56. That's "Hedley"...

[calimary]

70. ROFL! I knew somebody'd throw that in!

[whistler162]

60. Or Admiral Hopper.

new everyone except the last.

[Le Taz Hot]

5. The ENTIRE time I was in school,

(back in the Dark Ages), the only women we ever learned about in history was Betsy Ross and Madam Curie. The only African-American we ever studied was George Washington Carver. Hispanics? Nope. Asians? Nope. So, basically, in history, the only "significant" people were white males. I had an excellent education and went through the California schools system when we were #1 in the nation, but history is an area that was, obviously, sorely lacking in inclusion. I tried to make up for it later, of course, but it gave a young white girl a skewered idea of our place (and every one else's who wasn't a white male) in history.

[bemildred]

8. +1. It is pathetic how parochial our education system is these days.

"Teaching to the test" does not broaden one much. It reduces the world to a game of twenty questions. Another side effect of the gutting of the humanities in favor of "efficiency".

[kmlisle]

12. And the people who make the tests determine what is taught!

[bemildred]

20. Yeah, that's the part they like. nt

[whistler162]

63. Not sure of other schools

but at least one of the schools I work in spends some time on woman in history.

[bemildred]

69. This thread is more about the ones they don't teach about.

Tokenism, instead of equal credit where it is due.

[Warpy]

13. Yeah, that was the horsehit they tried to teach me, too

My advantage was that my own mother was a pioneer, having taken advantage of the opportunities that arose because of her dad's name. Yes, both my parents were engineers and I still can't pick things apart and put them together as fast as she could. I grew up knowing that men weren't always around to save damsels in distress and we'd better learn how to take care of ourselves when things conked out.

I think I disappointed her by hating engineering and ending up as a nurse, but she came to respect my ability to assess broken people and either help put them back together or set up conditions to ease their way out.

[mopinko]

26. aha she was an engineer.

now i can tune in to that voice i have heard you speak of.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. A few quibbles:

:- Goodall, but not Fossey or Galdikas?

:- It's probably not accurate to describe Cartwright as "the primary developer of Chaos theory", although she did play a major role its devolopment.

:- Emmy Noether - who I think most mathematicians would probably describe as the most accomplished female mathematician of the last 500 years - is conspicuous by her absense. She made major contributions to the development of both algebraic number theory and theoretical mechanics, and I think there was something else important she worked on as well, although I can't remember what. And far fewer people have heard of her than of Lovelace, Hopper or Goodall (possibly because "Look! Expert on chimpanzees" or "Look! Expert on computers" plays better with children than "Look! Expert on complicated theoretical mathematics you won't be able to understand unless you major in it at college!&quot .

:- Unlike Noether, Lise Meitner possibly doesn't belong on a list of women they don't teach you about, but she has at least as much claim to be there as Lovelace or Goodall, I think.

[bemildred]

10. You are correct about Emmy Noether:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

I was fond of abstract algebra myself.

[Recursion]

21. Noether and many other women are conspicuous for their absence

I picked the women I cited in my thesis, plus Jane Goodall. That was kind of my point. Please do add.

[lululu]

77. Lise Meitner

Oh, she absolutely does belong on the list. Another woman screwed by the Nobel committee.

How about Maria Goeppert-Mayer. This may be apocryphal, but the way I heard it when she won the Nobel was that up until then she had not been able to get a paying job in academia. She worked in a corner of her husband's lab.

[qx1789]

81. Emmy Noether-influential mathematician and Physicists

today i get a chance to read about Emmy Noether. Inspite of her great contributions to mathematics world, she is not remembered by anybody but her work being remembered.
Albert Einstein once said about her this
"In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of enormous importance... Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. ... In this effort toward logical beauty, spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for deeper penetration into the laws of nature."
She made a history....

[NutmegYankee]

9. Cosmos has been doing a nice job of highlighting some of the overlooked women in science.

I wish women did get more exposure and they could serve as role models so more women go into the STEM careers. I've run across quite a few brilliant woman in the engineering field, but also many others who have the "nack", but never went into it.

[jimlup]

11. I'll add some...

Emmy Noether - brilliant mathematician who was first to the symmetries of space, time lead directly to the conservation of momentum and energy.

Émilie du Châtelet - understood that kinetic energy went as the square the velocity in contrast to Newton who did not recognize this.

LIza Meitner - theoretical physicist who worked out the details of nuclear fission

[Recursion]

23. I totally should have included Noether

This really gets to my point: I mentioned the women I cited in my thesis, plus Jane Goodall because she's (rightfully) really famous. I even left out Radia Perlman for her.

[Paulie]

66. Radia Perlman is one of my heros

I wouldn't have my networking career without her.

[kmlisle]

14. I have a science curriculum I developed on History of Science that includes women

and people of color. It was difficult to find the sources and of course history until very recently was only written about men and a very few women. Often there was a female relative who quietly did part of the work like Linnaeus' daughter and Hershel's sister (who did get some recognition).
The curriculum was shared with and taught by my school district science teachers. we did it in Middle school and divided it by discipline. It was project based with the kids producing videos, posters, dressing as their scientist for the day, etc. and we would do science timelines on paper and physically in the classroom. Lots of fun! And the kids remembered that experience.

I also learned how much chauvinism there was regarding women in science. Lisa Meitner hid under the risers in a lecture hall to learn chemistry because women were not allowed in the building. Mendeleev allowed women in his classes at a time where they were barred elsewhere. Even in the 60s the great genius on cell genetics and structure Barbara McClintock never held a tenured position as a biologist because of her sex. There is a feminist history to science just as there is a history of science outside Europe in China, India, Africa and the Middle East that is just being acknowledged.

[yardwork]

31. I was going to mention Barbara McClintock.

Great thread.

[sarge43]

15. Hypatia and the Alexandria Library - martyrs to fear, ignorance and bigotry

"It must not happen again."

[MisterP]

50. ix-nay on that one

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/05/hypatia-and-agora-redux.html
http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/05/agora-and-hypatia-hollywood-strikes.html
http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/05/general-addenda.html

[theHandpuppet]

16. Thanks very much for this thread

Fascinating. I did know about Hedy, although being an admitted Luddite couldn't really appreciate the scope of her contributions.

[WinkyDink]

18. Don't be dismayed. Today, the males aren't taught about, either. Too many "facts" to be "memorized."

I taught British lit to seniors back in the day. It seemed they heard of Copernicus first from me.

[bhikkhu]

24. My mom was a programmer with Honeywell

back in the bad old days of punchcards (I remember as a kid having piles of them around the house). Then she went on to work for the state helping build the programs and algorithms to computerize their retirement system - this while raising four kids.

She didn't have to be famous to impress me, and no one in my family ever believed for a minute the old saw about women being inferior in math and science.

[whistler162]

61. I still have nightmares about punch cards<shudder>.

When chewed up they were a pain to repunch.

[Skittles]

74. because of a shaky cardreader a six inch high stack of them slid to the floor

a programmer who was sweet on me came to work at midnight to help me put them back in order so I could continue processing

[sarge43]

25. Many women (historical and legendry) have had ships named for them

Only two USN women have -- Adm Hopper and Lenah Higbee, head of the Navy Nurse Corps, WWI

[Recursion]

30. sorry, thanks, I should have been more specific: female Navy personnel

Through those two were giants in their fields.

[sarge43]

36. They were and pioneers

The motto of the USS Hopper (DDG-70) is Amazing Grace's: Dare and Do.

Higbee was one of the first Navy Nurses. I didn't specify women nurses because until mid 1950's men weren't allowed in any of the Nurse Corps. Women aren't the only ones on the receiving end of gender bigotry.

[Recursion]

37. True, though that came and went: Whitman was a nurse. (not)

[csziggy]

41. My Mom was a Navy Nurse - she was recruited out of nursing school in 1942

According to her, the nurses were like head nurses are now and mostly administered the care rather than did the direct care. Corpsmen did all the hands on work. Now what the corpsmen did is work done by aides.

What is interesting is that as a Navy Nurse she mostly cared for Marines. She was among the first group of nurses sent to the brand new Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton and was the first nurse for the Communicative Disease Ward - when penicillin was very rarely seen or used.

[sarge43]

42. Another pioneer.

For your mother: and thank you

The Navy does a lot of the support services for the USMC

[csziggy]

45. Thank you

Her service is on my mind these days - I'm scanning the photos she collected while she was in service. She never showed us (her daughters) those pictures while Dad was alive because many had men she dated and Dad was not comfortable with that.

She was stationed at Virginia Beach, Camp Pendleton (though the pictures are labeled as Santa Margarita Ranch!), and at Aiea Hospital in Hawaii. Quite a few of the young men she treated for injuries in Camp Pendleton she saw when they returned from battles with injuries. She said they were happy to see a familiar face.

Mom provided some of the information used in the book "In and Out of Harm's Way: A History of the Navy Nurse Corps" by Doris Sterner (http://www.amazon.com/In-Out-Harms-Way-History/dp/0897167066). It's a good read, especially for those interested in the work those women (and men) did.

[mopinko]

27. posters in this thread should consider becoming wiki editors.

gotta work on that myself, as i know a couple women artists whose bio is woefully inadequate.
but only something like 15% of wiki editors are female, and this sort os skew is pretty common there.
(and yes, i read about this on du the other day. )

[toby jo]

28. When I was a kid mom went to the library with me and told me I would learn to read about

topics other than horses and dogs. I was to start getting books from every genre. (She was a teacher.)

So I learned, went on to biographies, which I loved. Hit up the woman - Clara Barton, Molly Pitcher, Florence Nightengale, Nancy Hanks, Amelia Earhart, Elizabeth Blackwell, Annie Oakley, Marie Curie, on up through Golda Meir. I threw in the occasional guy - Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone. Curie was the only scientist, as I recall, Blackwell being the first female doctor.

Great thread, Recursion, many thanks.

[heaven05]

29. wow!

smart and a woman? Impossible.

[smallcat88]

32. Beauty fades

but intellectual contributions live on long after you're gone.

And Cosmos deserves another mention. Neil deGrasse Tyson has done an excellent job of reviving the old Sagan series. He's already taught me about a number of women in science I never heard of in school. Anyone not watching it can catch up with the first season on Hulu.

[valerief]

33. And thanks to Seth MacFarlane for producing the series. nt

[redqueen]

43. Congrats on finding an excuse to mention his name in this thread.

The man who reduced actresses to body parts on national TV, in a sad demonstration ofsexual objectification.

[valerief]

44. I thought that Oscar's skit was really funny. He was mocking Hollywood's

requirement that female actors show their boobies, something not required by male actors.

[Brainstormy]

34. Beat me to it, but

very germane to this thread. I'd never heard of the women brought to light in the last Cosmos episode.

[mountain grammy]

35. Wow, never knew that about Hedy Lamarr. Thank you for this thread..

I'll never stop learning.

[maced666]

38. I love these types of posts...

Enlightening!

[calimary]

72. Welcome to DU, maced666!

Good to have you with us! I love these posts and threads, too! Makes one proud to be female.

Remember - even GOD couldn't do that One Big Job without a woman!

[Gemini Cat]

39. Rosalind Franklin (DNA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

[Recursion]

40. Another great example

I hope nobody thinks my list was trying to be exhaustive...

[AverageJoe90]

49. Yes, this. Times a million.

[quakerboy]

73. Beat me to it

I was just about to post when I noticed yours.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

46. 'they' don't teach you about them?

huh... strange then that I have heard of all of them.

sP

[Recursion]

47. Totally strange, bro

Who could have imagined it?

[ProdigalJunkMail]

48. obviously not you...

but then again, the agenda is clear.

sP

[Blue Owl]

51. K&R

[cemaphonic]

52. I would have thought that these days, she is more well known for her scientific contributions

since her movies are old, and not nearly as popular as some of the enduring classics from that era. As for the frequency hopping, one thing that I always thought was neat was that her co-inventor was avant-garde composer George Antheil, and their implementation of the technology involved player piano rolls.

Another amazing female scientist is Katherine Johnson. Despite the hurdles of being an African-American woman in the early 20th century, she entered college early, and was a wizard at analytic geometry. After some time as an elementary schoolteacher, she went to work for NASA's precursor, where she initially helped to perform arithmetic calculations on experimental data (pre-computer days). Thanks to her talent and assertiveness, she was able to move from that into the research group where she calculated the trajectory for many of the high-profile missions of the 60s space program, including the moon landing. When NASA began moving to calculating with computers, they ran the computer's numbers against hers to make sure that the computers were programmed correctly.

[Jamastiene]

54. K&R

[hughee99]

55. Not really a mystery why they don't teach you about them,

they don't teach you much about most of the people who are responsible for scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Why should anyone be surprised that people don't know about Hedy Lamarr's contribution to mobile communications when most don't even know who invented the cellphone at all.

[burrowowl]

58. K&R!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blanks]

59. The bends (also known as decompression sickness)...

That's what happened to the son (of the father son team that designed the Brooklyn bridge). The father died early on in the project. When Washington Roebling got the bends he was too sick (or afraid) to return to the site.

His wife, Emily Warren Roebling became the construction engineer for the remainder of the project. She was probably the first American female civil engineer.

Under her husband's guidance, Emily studied higher mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction.[16][17][18] She spent the next 11 years assisting Washington Roebling, helping to supervise the bridge's construction.

Before the end of the 19th century. Pretty impressive IMHO. The Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on May 24, 1883.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Warren_Roebling

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Bridge

[arikara]

64. Rachel Carson

a marine biologist and conservationist who wrote the book "Silent Spring". Brought awareness to the problems caused by the use of synthetic pesticides resulting in the ban of DDT; and is credited for starting the environmental movement.

[Curmudgeoness]

65. My hero....Rachel Carson.

Set out to be an English major in college, but lucky for us all, she had a science teacher who encouraged her. She changed majors and became a marine biologist....and still kept her love of writing and the talent to do it well.

I see that someone else mentioned Rosalind Franklin. Without stealing her x-ray photos, Watson and Crick would not have discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. She should have been right up there with them as a part of the team, but she was given no credit.

[murielm99]

67. I did not know about Hedy Lamarr.

Thank you.

[Crash2Parties]

68. A few others...

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Emilie du Chatelte
Esther Lederberg
Chien-Shiung Wu
Nettie Stevens
Mary Anning
Mileva Marić (Alberts 1st wife and mathematician)
Vera Rubin

...and as I was trying to find the correct spelling for Emilie's last name, I found this:
http://www.factmonster.com/spot/whmbios2.html
so I just stopped.

Luckily, our daughter is fascinated with math and science and her school teaches as much about the accomplishments of women in history (and LGBT people, and non-white people, and...) as the successes of their Euro-centric male counterparts. Then again, we homeschool.

About Hopper though...I met her once, shortly before her death. We talked about plants & the local micro-climate, of all things. At the time all I knew of her was that she'd written COBOL...or so I thought. I later learned she was actually much more of a manager than a programmer. She headed the committee that oversaw the temporary group that did the programming (their work became permanent as such things often do), and she was instrumental in the government insisting that US Gov't computers run COBOL. But she didn't write a line of it. She also did not coin the term, "bug". It was used in that exact sense by Edison, among others.


And I'd be remiss if I didn't plug Adafruit (Ada as in Lovelace), the awesome arduino-&-other-microcontrollers web site & woman founded company. Their educational content is what sets them apart and will encourage the next generation of computer experts regardless of sex or gender. No connection, just happy customers but they are one reason my daughter is beginning to learn programming.

[calimary]

71. Welcome to DU, Crash2Parties!

Glad you're here! Tons of interesting reading here on DU. I learn something every day I come here. My husband the computer programmer told me about Ada, and I knew about Hedy Lamarr. Beauty AND brains - sort of an incomprehensible combination to far too many, unfortunately.

[SunSeeker]

75. Wow. I did not know that.

Great post. Thanks, Recursion. More, please!

[OldEurope]

76. Some from old Europe:

Princess Therese of Bavaria was a zoologist and ethnologist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therese_of_Bavaria

Also, there was this amazing woman, leading entomologist of her time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Sibylla_Merian

[Frank Cannon]

78. Lamarr's invention wasn't used in WW II.

It was viewed as a bit unwieldy and impractical at the time, as it involved what essentially amounted to synced-up player piano rolls in both the torpedo and the ship-based guidance system. (The guy that co-developed it with her was a Hollywood composer friend.) It wasn't until much later that technology could catch up with her basic idea.

[Chemisse]

79. This is great!

I am a chemistry teacher who gets tired of going through the list of men who contributed over the years. Always men.

[brooklynite]

80. UNREC

I don't dispute that Ms. Lamar deserve honor for her scientific accomplishments. But maybe the fact that she was also an actress for 50 years has something to with what people know most about her? Add to that, use of "mysteriously" implies without evidence that there's a concerted effort to hide her (and other women's) scientific skills.