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?

Lots of good suggestions. Dorothy Hodgkins would be my top choice as the first British woman to win the Nobel Prize. It's a disgrace that she's not better known.

Rachel Carson, Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Caroline Herschel (admittedly, people would probably think her brother was being honoured).

Great suggestions thanks.
How would you go about approaching this with the school ?

At my school there is a display outside the physics corridor with 55 famous scientists and Marie curie is the only woman. I emailed smt about it along with a suggestion that I track a level numbers according to gender, so far I have not received a reply....

Gamache - I would be inclined to say how pleased I am that they're using scientists as house names, but suggest that although all the names they've picked are undoubtedly great scientists, more variety might be more inspiring: varied sciences, not just physics, maybe some more recent or even current practising scientists, and varied in race and gender so that kids don't think it's just white men who lived centuries ago who do science.

This isn't to minimise the gender aspect, but because that list is very samey in many ways. I think if they want to inspire kids, then trying to pick names everyone has heard of can be a mistake - it's an opportunity for them to choose scientists who've done work that is accessible (e.g. seismologist Inge Lehmann) but who aren't well known.

Theblackrider love that link, depressing quote but hugely inspiring responses!!
Thanks slightlyeggstained, really good point about being more inclusive and relevant generally.

Susannahmoodie, that is so depressing...
I guess all we can so is keep making noise whenever we see this thoughtless sexism happening

All we can DO

I think you might be talking about my DCs' school and for what it's worth, I would be entirely supportive of changing two of the house names to female scientists' names to promote STEM careers for the girls there. If you tried to get support for the idea from parents there I would support it. If it is the school I think it is the head there seems keen to try hard and impress the parents so he might be open to the idea.

I was in Lonsdale house in school, named for Kathleen Lonsdale (the crystallographer). Our other houses were (Amy) Johnson, (Barbara) Hepworth. Final one was Thornton, but I can't remember who she was, I have a suspicion she may have been only marginally notable but came from Kettering
I did go to a girls' school, though . . .

I'd second Dorothy Hodgkin - I can never understand why more people seem to have heard of Rosalind Franklin TBH. She had a long and successful career - and while her Nobel was for chemistry, it was studying biological molecules using physics techniques needing very advanced maths and computer programming! (I shared an office with her for about half an hour once, during which time I was almost completely dumbstruck)

Takver, I'd guess you mean Janet Thornton - she's extremely well known in the field of bioinformatics and protein structure. Nothing 'marginal' about her!

Not Margaret Thatcher, food chemist?

Errol - sadly I think she's too young - I joined the school in 1981, and the houses were longstanding then . . . I'd love to know, though.

Whichever Thornton it is may not have been a scientist - obviously Hepworth was for the arts, and I think Johnson for adventure/exploration - so possibly something religious/spiritual? Though I do have a vague memory she was a scientist.