[Music] this is marie curie you probably know who she is she's one of the most prominent scientists of all time she was the first and only person in history to win two separate nobel prizes in two separate sciences she pioneered radiation research and discovered two new elements she was also denied membership at the french academy of sciences because she was a woman throughout her incredible career she faced enormous amounts of sexism and yet you've heard of her despite all the obstacles she succeeded in her career and was recognized for her achievements but what about the
women that didn't what about the women who were denied that same recognition for their work how many other historical female scientists can you name how many of these women have you heard of caroline herschel was a german astronomer she discovered several comets she was also the first woman we know of who was paid for her contribution to science the first woman to be awarded a gold medal of the royal astronomical society and with mary somerville she was the first woman to be named an honorary member of the royal astronomical society lee smetna performed extensive work
on nuclear physics and radioactivity her collaborator was later awarded the nobel prize for their discovery of nuclear fission this is hypatia of alexandria a greek mathematician philosopher and astronomer she was head of a school in alexandria none of her work has survived to the modern day and according to many sources she was murdered by a christian mob jocelyn bell bernell discovered the first radio pulsars this was described as the greatest astronomical discovery of the 20th century her phd supervisor was later awarded a nobel prize for this discovery belle bonnell was excluded from the prize cecilia
payne gaboshkin discovered what the sun is made of the leading astronomer of the day dismissed her hypothesis and encouraged her not to present her findings four years later he published his own paper with the same conclusions for most of history he was given credit for this discovery rosalind franklin performed work that was vital to the discovery of the structure of dna her colleague shared her work with our her permission with james watson and francis crick with this information the two were able to make their famous discovery watson and crick along with franklin's colleague were later
awarded the nobel prize for the discovery franklin was excluded emmy never was a mathematician who made enormous contributions to rings fields and algebras nother's theorem has been called one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics she had to work without pay for seven years after completing her dissertation as women were excluded from academic positions at the time later in her career she had to lecture under a male colleague's name as the faculty at her university objected to a female lecturer these examples are horrifying but surely that's all
over now women can attend university after all they can lecture they can publish their own results so what's the problem unfortunately sexism in stem is still a major issue women are still perceived as less able when it comes to science and technology and this perception has a real effect on their careers for example a recent study analyzed data from github an open source software community they found that code written by women actually had a slightly higher approval rating than code written by men but only if their gender was unidentifiable if it was obvious that the
coder was a woman the approval rating dropped many other studies have found similar results a large study in 2012 sent out resumes for a lab manager position and found that resumes bearing female names significantly less likely to be successful than an identical resume bearing a male name sexism isn't gone it's just become less overt society cannot progress when half our population is held back from achieving their full potential imagine where we would be if women had been educated to the same standards as men throughout history imagine what these women could have accomplished if they had
not had to battle sexism if they could simply have focused on science every year there are improvements for women in stem more and more women are entering science and technology fields but discrimination still exists and it is the responsibility of every person who cares about science to help fight this prejudice and to help ensure that examples like those listed in this video never happen again
