Women Scientists - Mathilda Effect

You probably heard something like " Men did more contribution to science " eventhough it is quite absurd . The most likely reason for such a perception to occur is that it may be a regular "stealing" situation of women scientists work.

mathilda effect, owning women's scientific work by male colleagues. This term is created by science historist Margearet Rossiter in 1993 with the inspiration from an academic paper written by Matilda Gage

Lets check some of the biggest unfairnesses happened in the history of Science.

Cecillia Payne

When she found out the stars formed from Hydrogen and Helium her research partner Henry Russell denied the result after reading her work. According to Henry Cecilia's work and her result was contrary to the general assumptions and the nature of the time , therefore he didn't let cecilia publish her article.

When he realized how accurate her work was after 4 years , he didn't even mention name of her in his discovery article. It is quite ironic that in the future years she got a Henry Norris Russel award . It might be quite disturbing to get an award from the guy who stole your work. In spacetime odyssey it mentions about the discovery of cecilia payne but it never talks about this side of the story.

Lise Meitner

She left Germany because of the pressure created by National Socialist party and she was helping her colleague Otto Hahn with letters. One day Otto collided uranium atoms with neutrons and when he couldn't interprete the outcome he wanted help from her. Lise calculated the coming energy and she discovered the mechanicsm that creates nuclear fusion. Eventhough this discovery prepared a ground for developing an Atom Bomb , Lise denied to work in this project and Otto claimed all the work she discovered. After many years later when Otto got the Nobel Reward he didn't mention about Lise. However after some more years later they gave named 109th element Meitneryum.

Susan Bell

She builded a giant radio telescope and one day she discovers some anomaly in the radio signals she received. She reported this periodic signal to her thesis academic but the reply she got was " There is probably a mistake ". When she convinced her academics to accuracy of this signal , this time her academics started to think this signal is coming from aliens and called it LGM1 (Little Green Men) . Susan continues to investigate the data she gathered in the other days and she discovered a second signal similar to other one. She succesfully convinced her academics that this signal is not alien sourced or nothing human made. Eventually her teachers started to beleive her , the source of these signals were the stars turning in a fast speed and it called Pulsar

In the following year they discover 2 more signals and they published an article about this discovery. Among the authors of the article, there were Susan's teachers. After 6 years Susans's teachers got a Nobel Physic Reward according to their contribution in the discovery of Pulsars. The girl who created the telescope and the one who discoverred the signals didn't find worthy for price and they sweept her under the carpet with purpose. One of the most famous astronom Fred Hoyle thinks that was the ** One of the biggest injustices on Science** but what is done was already done.

Eventhough there are tons of examples related to this topic. I want to keep it short as you can clearly see if organizations or individuals didn't steal women's scientific work for fame there wouldn't be misperception like "Men Did More Contribution to Science" I'm pretty sure it is still happening even in 2017 but at least people need to conduct scientific work in more visible way.

Sources

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Images : 1 , 2 , 3

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

Thanks for Reading & Hasta La Vista