Another woman done out of a nobel - Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell - I had no idea it was a woman who discovered Pulsars! **Thread title edited by MNHQ at OP's request**

There isn't actually a Nobel prize for economics, I've just found out!

In 1968, Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which, although not being a Nobel Prize,[6] has become commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics

Franklin's Nobel was stolen by the Grim Reaper rather than Watson and Crick. I don't think it's fair that it should only be awarded to the living but Fred Hoyle (who discovered nucleosythesis) didn't get one either.

Does anyone know why there's a Nobel for economics? I mean, physics, chemistry, even literature, I can understand - but economics is largely bollocks isn't it? Why isn't their a prize for maths?

"I don't want or need the money myself and it seemed to me that this was perhaps the best use I could put to it"

How wonderful.

Wonder what member of an under-represented group will suddenly find they qualify for a bursary?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Juells?

I'm not sure Franklin would have, apart from the DNA work, TBH - her area of macromolecular crystallography was probably too similar to Dorothy Hodgkin's at much the same time, and (regardless of both being women) I'm not sure they often award Nobel prizes in similar fields close together.

Franklin may well have got a Nobel prize had she lived long enough, probably for chemistry. She certainly deserved it.

TBH the real 'aha' moment in the DNA story was realising that the base pair ratios - in the context of a molecule believed to transmit genetic information - had to be deeply significant. Once Watson and Crick had seen that, and how the hydrogen bonds could work, they must have known they were almost certainly on the right track. The model would have to fit the crystallographic data, but the vital part was the pairing. The data was sufficient because a key to the form could be deduced from function. However, DNA is perhaps a unique case - for other macromolecules (especially proteins) the fine detail is crucial in understanding how form and function are related. So, Franklin was correct to try to get better data, but I'd have to agree Watson and Crick were right to publish when they did.

"Faffing around...or trying to make sure the science was bulletproof...whereas men could just put it out there with less evidence as less likely to be torn apart than a paper submitted by a woman I wonder?"

She had the essential data at the time when it was needed. Beyond that it's speculation.

"Unlikely. Pauling was still convinced by his inside-out triple helical model, and hampered by poor crystallographic data. He might have beaten Watson and Crick to the right solution if he'd seen Franklin's data.

paulingblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/the-pauling-corey-structure-of-dna/"

I can't blame them for not taking that risk.

I read about this today too.

And thought that it was interesting that what made the news was not her winning the prize for her science, but her donating the prize money. Of course it might have made the news in later pages at the time and I just didn't spot it - but it wasn't front page news in the way this was.

Not that I'm not glad that this is big news, and that the issue of unconscious bias is being talked about. But I'd also like more celebration of scientists and the work they do and the prizes they win, particularly women, as making them visible and known for their work (rather than for their fight against discrimination) is also a good way to fight against unconscious bias.

Science tends to have quite strong hierarchies where the senior people get the credit regardless of who did or noticed what.

Having worked in science academia, senior academics always get credit for their student's and post-docs work.
I've been lucky enough to know lots of senior female professors and they "take credit" for their student's work, male or female.
That's how the hierarchy works.
Of course, there are also egos and such, so that some people are more pushy than others.

She sounded lovely on the radio this morning. Said she was grateful to be there at Cambridge, so made sure she worked hard as she was worried they'd made a mistake in admitting her.

She made a great case for diversity this am.

Also: more recent students HAVE been in on awards. She should have been recognised along with her supervisors.

I was just coming on here to make this thread :)

Burrell should have been in on the Nobel - it was her who discovered the signal in the first place.

She’s one of my scientific heroines: physicsworld.com/a/look-happy-dear-youve-just-made-a-discovery/

Bell Burnell describes how the attitude for solving this problem is often “Fix the women!” – make them braver, give them special training to address their inability to communicate and so on. However, this assumes the problem is with women, not with the scientific community or society in general.

This is a good article about the way she had to struggle against sex stereotypes.

she has personally done loads for women in science. She set up the Athena SWAN awards.

She’s also spoken of suffering from imposter syndrome...

Teen As a scientist, 62 years old, my experience is that women come behind men in hierarchies, even considering that it is the mature scientists who nearly always receive the prizes.

This is indeed partly because so many women give up their careers when they have DC and either don't return ft or find others have overtaken them in research during even a year or 2 absence.
Also, conditions in the early career years have hopefully improving for the generation of women to win the prizes of the next 2+ decades.

However, it is also misogyny - I'm childfree, but can remember umpteen instances of being talked over, of being called out for "shrillness" when I tried to assert myself or reclaim my own ideas and work;
male contempories did not experience these disadvantages.

I haven't come across any real acknowledgement from Crick & Watson of Franklin's contribution, certainly not from the early days of their fame (when women scientists were looked down on)

Even if her death before the nomination disqualified her, ethical scientists should have acknowledged her work - which they used - in their Nobel acceptance statement

She should have had public credit at the time, which might have widened knowledgenow of her achievements.
Sadly, most non-scientists who have vaguely heard of Crick & Watson think they did it all on their own and have no idea that Franklin existed.

Physicists should be able to analyse data and do statistics correctly so hopefully any group who is truly underrepresented in physics should be eligible. Well, other than 'people who are rubbish at physics', obviously, though it would be fun if a truly pomo-addled arts grad tried applying.

Wonder what member of an under-represented group will suddenly find they qualify for a bursary?

On Radio 4 this morning she did say that usually students don't get Nobel Prizes, and it goes to their (Male) supervisors. Science tends to have quite strong hierarchies where the senior people get the credit regardless of who did or noticed what.

She wasn't convinced by Crick and Watson's DNA model. If they hadn't 'stolen' her work they would have likely all lost out to Linus Pauling whilst she faffed around generating more X-ray diffraction data.

Unlikely. Pauling was still convinced by his inside-out triple helical model, and hampered by poor crystallographic data. He might have beaten Watson and Crick to the right solution if he'd seen Franklin's data.

paulingblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/the-pauling-corey-structure-of-dna/

She wasn't convinced by Crick and Watson's DNA model. If they hadn't 'stolen' her work they would have likely all lost out to Linus Pauling whilst she faffed around generating more X-ray diffraction data.

Faffing around...or trying to make sure the science was bulletproof...whereas men could just put it out there with less evidence as less likely to be torn apart than a paper submitted by a woman I wonder?

Kind of like Jocelyn Bell's imposter syndrome...conditioned to worry that work might not be good enough.

Then insisted that her name be on their nomination for the Nobel.

Was she still alive at the time of the nominations? It was awarded in 1962, she died in 1958 and it is never awarded posthumously.

While they did rob her of credit, I'm not sure it's actually fair to say that male scientists rather than death robbed her of the prize - though it does seem somewhat likely that she wouldn't have been included in the nomination had she lived.

Crick & Watson may well have felt they needed to publish earl
BUT
they should have given full acknowledgement & praise to Franklin, whoses work they used.

Then insisted that her name be on their nomination for the Nobel.
imo, what they did would have been called out for plagiarism if done to a male scientist

This is an issue that still makes many of us (women in science) fume, decades later

Yup, either talked over, or "that's totally impractical, BigChoc" ...
followed by later seeing the report under someone else's name
and hearing how dynamic & creative they are

I remember that even from my post-grad days < bitter >

I did once get a late apology for this from my boss at the time, along with a brilliant annual evaluation ... much too late for the promotion I had wanted

"In the article she says "I'm in good company" I think she is alluding to rosalind franklin whose work was famously stolen by 2 colleagues."

She wasn't convinced by Crick and Watson's DNA model. If they hadn't 'stolen' her work they would have likely all lost out to Linus Pauling whilst she faffed around generating more X-ray diffraction data.