School houses - scientists

[Gamache]

My two oldest are at primary school, boys 6 and 9, dd starts in September.

Chatting with dc last night about the famous scientists who make up their school houses - Darwin, Faraday, Newton, Einstein.

It suddenly hit me, they are all men! Why are they all flippin men?

We just this term got a new head, I'm thinking I'll email him and suggest they change at least one or two houses to be female scientists.

Any suggestions for what to say? Any references to articles on the importance of female role models, especially in STEM?
Any examples of scientists?

Are all schools like this?

The only famous female scientists that spring to mind are Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin.

I think that mentioning the importance of female role models in encouraging girls to study STEM subjects is definitely worthwhile.

STEM subjects and careers still tend to be male dominated (with some exceptions, notably medicine). Sciencey toys tend to be put in the boys section in toy shops which split up toys along gender lines. So including some female scientists would be a useful reminder that science isn't just for boys.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell - astrophysicist who discovered radio pulsars. Her supervisor and another collegue (both male) later got a Nobel Prize for this work...

Dorothy Hodgkin - Nobel prize in Chemistry for x-ray crystallography that lead to the discovery of the structure of molecules such as insulin and vitamin B12

She's probably my favourite as I met her at my first big conference a very long time ago and was completely star struck

This kind of thing just makes me so annoyed. Trying to bring children up to see men and women as equally capable of anything while all they're fed at school tends to be unthinkingly male focused.
Thanks for the scientist suggestions.

Ada Lovelace is a good one as well

Lise Meitner and Emmy Noether

This kind of thing really annoys me too. If they're going to focus only on male scientists they should at least teach why there were no female ones instead of leaving girls thinking it's simply that they're not up to it.

Dd's school have burnell and franklin as 2 of their houses

Obviously more progressive than I realised!

Barbara McClintock- www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/barbara-mcclintock-and-the-discovery-of-jumping-34083

Anne Mclaren
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_McLaren

Will say these examples are rare though because at least in the biosciences, women are treated fairly abysmally. I worked as a research scientist for over a decade and saw plenty of sexual harassment (particularly of female phd students), bullying, and women being made redundant/sidelined if they got pregnant or had children. My cohort of fellow students were the high achievers at uni- all got 1sts, prizes etc, all did well at phd level. Yet we're all dropping out of research now we've had kids, it's extremely depressing. Such a waste of talent.

Encourage girls into STEM subjects (a STEM degree is valuable in the job market), but don't, for the love of god, encourage them to go into research.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson & Elizabeth Blackwell

Ada Lovelace - arguably the first computer programmer.

Second noether and lovelace

btw thank you for that Scitable site Bolshybookworm .

Hedy Lamar invented wifi. She is more usually remembered for being a glamorous Hollywood film actress.

Marie Stopes was a scientist before she went into birth control. She was the first female academic ever at Manchester University when she lectured there. Probably a bit controversial for a primary school though.

Marie Curie is always one. My DC's school have 6 houses and include Helen Keller

Mary Anning - female paleontologist

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning

Worth pointing out that their list is extremely physics heavy - I didn't take Biology for GCSE because I'd got the impression there was a hierarchy, and I was already doing the "important" science.

Dorothy Hodgkins would fit as chemistry. If you keep Darwin for biology and Faraday for physics, then which other science would you pick?

Lovelace for mathmatics/computing

What about female engineers?

I know Lovelace is the first, but would be inclined to pick a later female computer scientist/mathematician - so that kids realise there is still plenty to discover/do!

E.g. Admiral Grace Hopper (large parts of the banking system still use the language she designed).

Or - the woman who had a Google Doodle recently - Inge Lehmann, who discovered the Earth's core. Never heard of her till then, but it's such a cool thing, I would have been really excited to hear about her as a kid.

Orlando, we always have Mary Anning as a topic focus at some point in the year for Y3&4.
Maybe in the future, it won't be so much of a struggle to instantly name female scientists.

This is a useful book, not particularly well written, but it's a good starting place
www.amazon.co.uk/Girls-Think-Everything-Ingenious-Inventions/dp/0618195637