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**

[NothingOnTellyAgain]

BBC today

She's donating her £2.3 million prize around work she did in the 70s to a fund to help those who are subject to bias (discrimination) in here

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.

I also recently was amazed to discover that a woman designed the Clifton Suspension Bridge and she gave the design to Isembard Kingdom Brunel and it's cited of course as a massive engineering feat and a beautiful structure done by him (her input has only recently been mentioned ?known) here

I continue to be boggled at the number of female discovieries / inventions where the inventor is either never mentioned (while comparable male advances always have their name attached / are mentioned more) or men take the credit. How much more is there?

Thinking about it, I think dark matter was discovered by a woman as well... yes it's here

Pulsars and dark matter are surely 2 of the more well known phenomenon in the physics / astronomy world I think. These women should be as well known as their male counterparts. Or at least,the fact that women discovered these should be more widely known even if the names aren't.

Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, let’s actually mention her name.

Yup, women struggle to have career opportunities in science and then often men take credit for their discoveries.

I posted in praise of Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell on a thread elsewhere on MN, which is very active.
I was about to post here too, when I spotted your thread.

As a scientist, I am so proud of her, but she doesn't make the news, unlike the latest sleb dross.

At least she has finally received a big prize and big money -
whuch she has then donated, with amazing generosity, to help others to make a career in physics

Great she's using the prize for that purpose!

While you're absolutely right, no 'women in science' thread is complete without mention of the one British woman so far who did win a Nobel prize for science (chemistry) - I'm sometimes surprised that more people seem to have heard of Rosalind Franklin than Dorothy Hodgkin. The Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships are another excellent idea.

I knew about her because her brother and his wife are old friends of my parents. I'm glad to hear that she has been publicly recognised in this way, and good for her to put the prize money towards helping others.

Apologies el bandito shall I ask to get it pulled?

obviosuly not hit the mark i was hoing to!

No! We need these threads, ask @MNHQ to amend the title.

I think it's fine - your link and the second post makes it clear who we're talking about though your omission of her name in the OP is a little ironic!

Dame Jocelyn gave a talk at DDs school once. One of the things she mentioned is how she, like so many women, suffers from 'imposter syndrome'. That's one of the reasons IMO why we need awareness both of the women who've been done down but also those who (somehow!) managed not to be.

I've asked them to change the title

I note I also named Isembard Kingdom Brunel and not the woman who did the design.

I think this is quite entrenched isn't it? I didn't even realise I'd done that.

Who was called Sarah Guppy

Errol There was a nice piece in the Guardian about her today that mentioned the impostor syndrome. She resolved to work extra hard to compensate for the feeling that she wasn't good enough. What was astonishing was that when she told her PhD supervisor she'd detected these new an interesting radio waves, he dismissed them as "interference". But it was he who then won the Nobel prize.

I'm so pleased for her. And also thrilled that she's donating the money to such a good cause.

When I lived in Latin America a geologist we knew lead a team who discovered a viable location to mine gold. Her name was removed from the report she submitted.

Oh for fuck's sake.

This is reported on a much smaller scale by women in workplaces all over the world all the time isn't it.

"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.

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

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

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

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.

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.