The Matilda Effect
Well, the Nobel season is over! Many congratulations to the incredibly talented and brilliant recipients of this year’s prize. The 2019 Nobel Prize awards are as follows:
Physics
- James Peebles, “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.”
- Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.”
Chemistry
- John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino, “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.”
Physiology or Medicine
- William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza, “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”
Literature
- Peter Handke, “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
Peace
- Abiy Ahmed Ali, the Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. He is the first Ethiopian to receive a Nobel Prize.
Economics Sveriges Riksbank Prize
- Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”
However, this year’s prize in Physics astounds me. Dark matter won the Nobel Prize. It should have won many years ago. And the recipient should have been Vera Rubin.
However, three years ago, on December 25, 2016, Vera Rubin passed away. She left a tremendous legacy and brilliant insight behind for science to unravel. In 1965, she discovered a halo of a dark mass that makes up a large part of the galaxies that exist within the universe. It is hidden and currently cannot be seen, but the mass is there. It is dark matter. In 1965, Vera Rubin discovered dark matter.
Every year, up until her passing, I always wondered when she would receive the Nobel Prize for her discovery of dark matter. She should have received it. She deserved it. She earned it. Furthermore, with no disrespect to Peebles’s incredible work, if it were not for Dr. Rubin’s discovery, Dr. Jeremiah Ostriker and Peebles would not have had a foundation for their computer simulations that showed that if it were not for dark matter, spiral galaxies would fall apart.
And so, once again, women remain underrepresented.
This common effect is called the Matilda Effect, named after Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Matilda Joslyn Gage was born in 1826 and died in 1899 in Chicago, Illinois. She was a suffragist, an activist, and an organizer of the Women’s National Liberal Union. Gage was one of the many incredible female activists in the 19th century to speak out against the injustice that society imposes on women. In 1870, Gage published a tract called “Woman as Inventor.” This pamphlet listed multiple women in science whose names and work went unnoticed because the accolades went to their male counterparts.
By Napoleon Sarony — Internet Archive identifier, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19172704
In 1993, science historian Margaret
Rossiter conceived the term “The Matilda Effect” in her publication The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.
In this publication, Rossiter explained the constant occurrences in science where
women go unrecognized while men receive all the credit. The Matilda Effect continues
to this day. Whether it is in science, politics, education, the corporate
world, or even in the home, women continue to be overshadowed by men.
In science, the examples are numerous:
- Dr. Marie Curie won her first Nobel Prize in 1903; however, she would not have received it if it were not for Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler and her husband, Pierre, who advised the committee that Marie had a pivotal role in their discoveries in radioactivity.
- Dr. Lise Meitner, who collaborated with Otto Hahn, discovered nuclear fission. Even though Niels Bohr nominated Dr. Meitner first and Dr. Hahn second, the lone winner of the Nobel in 1944 went to Otto Hahn, and he never included Meitner as a co-author.
- Dr. Marietta Blau, an Austrian physicist, did pioneering work with the pion, a subatomic particle that is comprised of quarks and antiquarks and has a mass that is about 270 times larger than the electron. Even though Dr. Erwin Schrodinger nominated Blau and female physicist Dr. Hertha Wambacher, for the Nobel Prize, the Nobel committee passed on them. Instead, Dr. Cecil Powell received the Nobel Prize in 1950 for work that utilized Dr. Blau’s discoveries.
- Dr. Cecilia Payne proposed that stars were composed of hydrogen and helium. It was her advisor, Dr. Henry Norris Russell, who was nominated for the 1953 Nobel Prize. Note: Russell did not win this prize. Instead, it went to Frederik Zernike for his invention of the phase-contrast microscope.
- Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu conducted extensive work on the radioactive decay of cobalt-60. Her story begins with her sailing to America in 1936, hoping to study Physics at the University of Michigan. However, during a visit to the University of Berkeley, she impressed nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence with her brilliance. He invited her to study at Berkeley instead, and in no time, she had established herself as a pioneer in the field of nuclear physics. During the 1950s, while conducting work on radioactive decay of the unstable isotope cobalt-60, she found a large asymmetry in her experiments. However, it was physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, who conducted further experiments through the guidance of Dr. Wu, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957.
By Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg — http://www.estherlederberg.com/ColleaguesIndex.html, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45215313
- Dr. Esther Lederberg was a renowned microbiologist. However, according to science, she was just Dr. Joshua Lederberg’s wife. From 1946 to 1968, during the 22 years of their marriage, the glory of their work solely went to her husband. Esther, along with her husband, created a new method of replica plating. This replica plating was a new, convenient way to transfer bacterial colonies from one petri dish to another. This replica plating opened the door to future studies in antibiotic resistance. Esther’s brilliant method of replica plating allowed her husband to receive the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In 1959, while working with her husband at Stanford, he received a tenured position as the head of the Genetics department. Despite her efforts to advocate for herself and two other women to the dean of the medical school, she never received a tenured position. Stanford even “let” her keep her status as an untenured faculty member after she divorced Joshua in 1968. Stanford eventually transitioned her to adjunct professor, where her position depended on her securing grant funding.[i]
- Dr. Rosalind Franklin was a British biophysicist and DNA pioneer, who, along with James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins, discovered the structure of DNA. This discovery was in 1953. In 1958, at the age of 37, Franklin succumbed to cancer and passed away. Four years later, in 1962, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the pulsar in 1933. However, the 1974 Nobel went to Anthony Hewish and Martin Ryle for their work with pulsars. Burnell was a student of Dr. Hewish at the time of her discovery. Regardless, she continues make exceptional breakthroughs, and continues to receive accolades for her work. In 2007, Burnell was appointed as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to Astronomy. In 2014, she became the first woman to hold the office of President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2016, the Institute of Physics renamed the Very Early Career Female Physicist Award to the Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize.[ii] Moreover, in 2018, Dame Burnell won the $3‑million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Even after this, she continues to make huge contributions to science: she donated the $3 million dollars to a United Kingdom charity that supports physics graduate students that come from underrepresented groups.
The list goes on:
- Pandrosion was a 4th-century female math teacher in Alexandria, Egypt. History books declared she was a man.
- Trota of Salerno, the 12th-century Italian physician who wrote books on her work, continues to be unnamed because publishers attributed all of her work to male authors.
- Dr. Alice Augusta Ball, the brilliant African American chemist from Seattle, found a revolutionary treatment for leprosy. Sadly, she passed away at the age of 24 in 1916. College President Arthur Dean continued her work and never credited her for the discovery.
- Dr. Nettie Stevens, the genius geneticist who, while working with mealworms, discovered that male mealworms produced sperm with X- and Y‑chromosomes, and females produced cells with only X‑chromosomes. However, all the recognition went to Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan.
- Dr. Mary Whiton Calkins, psychologist and philosopher, made groundbreaking discoveries with her work on stimuli. Dr. George Elias Muller and Dr. Edward Titchener received the credit.
- Dr. Marian Diamond discovered the phenomenon of brain plasticity. In 1964 she was about to publish her paper on her work when she found that two other authors, David Krech and Mark Rosenzweig, had their names placed before hers. Diamond protested, and the journal put her name first.
- Then there are the uncredited female heroes who were part of programming ENIAC, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. These amazing women include Adele Goldstein, Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marilyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman.
The Matilda Effect is still prominent in all areas of women’s lives. Even though activists have fought hard for women’s rights, we still live in an age where a male-dominated society silences and marginalizes women.
Matilda Gage published her pamphlet in 1870. Even then, her activism could not make gender discrimination go away. It has been 150 years and society continues to relegate women scientists to the basement laboratories, figuratively and literally.
Since 1971, when science historian Margaret Rossiter received her Ph.D. from Yale, she has made it her life mission to shine a spotlight on the many female scientists who have been silenced, hidden, diminished, and overlooked.
However, here we are approaching 2020, and women still sit on the sidelines. At some point, women deserve a fair shot at receiving accolades for their scientific discoveries. Last year, 2018, was quite a year of celebration for women in science when Donna Strickland won the Nobel for Physics, and Frances Arnold won the Nobel for Chemistry. I was hoping that 2019 would be that year that we would finally turn a corner to see a level playing field. We didn’t. Unfortunately, this year was not the year that more women would receive awards for their discoveries.
Among scientists, economists, theorists, sociologists, and leaders, we have our best and our brightest at the helm of academics. Yet, we still cannot intelligently step out of the societal mindset that devalues women. It is as though we can see where we need to be, but the group mindset restricts our brains. Thus, we can never get from here to there. And so, we remain stuck. It makes one wonder how far we have come if we still cannot achieve gender equality.
ADDITIONAL READING:
Dr. Margaret Rossiter
has written volumes of work on women scientists. You can find the most recent
one here: https://www.amazon.com/Women-Scientists-America-Forging-Volume/dp/1421403633
Susan Dominus, a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, wrote a marvelous
piece on Dr. Margaret Rossiter for Smithsonian Magazine that you can read that
here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/unheralded-women-scientists-finally-getting-their-due-180973082/
Nadia Drake, a writer for National Geographic, wrote such a superb piece about Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, that you can read here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news-jocelyn-bell-burnell-breakthrough-prize-pulsars-astronomy/
Katy Steinmetz wrote an excellent long-form piece about Dr. Esther Lederberg for Time.com that you can read here: https://time.com/longform/esther-lederberg/
Carisa
D. Brewster wrote a great article on Dr. Alice Ball that you can read here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/alice-ball-leprosy-hansens-disease-hawaii-womens-history-science/
[i] “Professor Esther Lederberg | Biographical Summary,” WhatisBiotechnology.org, accessed October 14, 2019, https://www.whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/people/summary/Lederberg_Esther.
[ii] Institute of Physics, “Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize,” Institute of Physics — For Physics • For Physicists • For All : Institute of Physics, accessed October 14, 2019, http://www.iop.org/about/awards/career/bell-burnell/page_67977.html.