Does anyone know who described the structure of the Earth’s core ? Geophysicist Inge Lehman, who has the peculiar honor of being the author of the scientific article with the shortest title in history, P’ . And who saved the lives of many Allied pilots during World War II ? Engineer and daredevil motorcyclist Beatrice Shilling, who discovered a serious problem with Rolls-Royce-powered fighter planes. Or who proposed that stars were huge balls of hydrogen and helium ? Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, on her doctoral thesis defended in 1925. Cecilia, who was going for botany, changed her mind after going to Trinity Hall in Cambridge to hear the astronomer Arthur Eddington give a lecture on the results of his expedition that demonstrated the ideas of Albert Einstein. She was one of four women present in that room.
Another ‘shadow researcher’ was the Polish Stefanie Horovitz, who devoted herself to measuring the atomic weight of different elements, a field of paramount importance in the second half of the 19th century. Together with Otto Hönigschmid, of the Radium Institute in Vienna, he showed that the atomic weights of the elements were not invariant, but that isotopes existed. His article is considered one of the most crucial in chemistry in the first half of the 20th century.
Women have never had it easy . See the case of Wally Funk, one of the ‘Mercury 13’, thirteen women who wanted to become the first astronauts in the United States. The program was led by Randolph Lovelace, head of NASA’s Life Sciences Committee. Convinced that women could do as well or better than men, he put them through the same (and terrifying) 87 tests. Funk not only passed them, but also made other options such as enduring conditions of absolute isolation, locked in a dark and soundproof room and floating in water. After 10 hours and 35 minutes, those responsible for the test ended it, and not because she couldn’t take it anymore. However, NASA – to the applause of the male candidates – decided that space was no place for a woman .
Twentieth-century society has not been kind to women. Little do they know that in 1957 a young Carl Sagan forced his first wife to abandon her Ph.D. to take care of him so he could fully focus on his budding career. That self-sacrificing woman would later become one of the most important microbiologists of the 20th century , Lynn Margulis.
In 1965 the famous observatory of Mount Palomar, the place where the largest telescope in the world was located, allowed the entry of an astronomer: it was a young woman in her thirties who had recently received her doctorate from Georgetown University named Vera Rubin, who a few years later would prove the existence of dark matter. At that time the situation for women was not easy at all; when the great cosmologist George Gamow invited her to his laboratory, he had to speak with her in the lobby of the building because women were not allowed in the offices. Fascinated by the stars from an early age, Vera obtained her Ph. Vera didn’t know how to drive.
It is curious to discover that this intellectual discrimination of women was largely caused by the work and grace of the philosopher and anthropologist Herbert Spencer , a name today relegated to texts on the history of anthropology but who in his time was the main intellectual influencer in Europe. . For Spencer the fundamental function of women was the rearing of children. Since female mammals are the only ones that ovulate, gestate, and lactate, Spencer surmised that the use of so much energy in reproduction limited a woman’s mental development. Of course, this made them incapable of evolving into the highest intellectual and emotional faculties, the “last products of human evolution”: men produce, women reproduce . Certainly Spencer knew of women’s capacity for abstract reasoning. And in someone very close to him, the writer Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot. But Spencer saw her as a freak of nature produced by a masculinization of her intellect.
With such an ideology it was not complicated to deny women their access to science arguing that it was only for pure biology: in general, and except monstrosities, they could not succeed. The writer Simone de Beauvoir said it sarcastically: “she is a womb, an ovary; It is a female. This word is enough to define it.”
History shows us that being a woman and a scientist meant facing an obstacle course -and sometimes it still is-. But even so, in each office, in each research laboratory, we find a story, an anecdote, which reveals to us that, in addition to being scientists, they are people with their hobbies, their obligations, their desires… Of course, all they share the same passion, a characteristic that makes them unique. Which one? In this video you will find the personal testimony of five Spanish scientists. I challenge you to find out what it is.
