老司机传媒

In the US, the balance between men and women in STEM is, shall we say, unbalanced. , women only had similar levels of employment in life science, and women only exceeded men in terms of employment in the social sciences. Meanwhile men had significantly higher levels of employment in computers, mathematical science, engineering, physical science, and when it came to working as technicians. It is where we are at the moment, and while things have somewhat improved from the past–as in 1970 women only made up 8% of STEM workers, while in 2019 they made up 27%–we are still a long way away from fair treatment. This bias towards STEM being treated as a male field is even seen in how young children grow up to think of scientists. found that when children younger than six were asked to draw a scientist, they were not biased towards drawing one gender over the other. However, once children started to reach elementary and middle school, when they are exposed much more to societal perceptions and biases, they began to show a strong tendency to draw male scientists. This shows just how important it is for everyone, not only children, to be exposed to more prominent women in STEM. And while many people know about people like Marie Curie, who worked with radioactivity, or Rosalind Franklin and her work with DNA, or Katherine Johnson and her work as a NASA scientist, or for some of the more techy among you, maybe even Ada Lovelace, who is considered one of (if not the) first programmers, today I want to focus on a few lesser known women in STEM. First, to Biology!

is a Nobel Laureate and professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Molecular Biology at University of California Berkeley. While you may not have heard of her, it is quite possible that you have heard of what she discovered. Doudna is the scientist who is responsible for the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9, or more commonly known as CRISPR, which is a piece of biological machinery that can be used to easily and cheaply edit the genes of a cell. To say this discovery revolutionized biological research in genetics would be an understatement. By giving scientists a tool that could be used to modify the genetic material of a cell, Doudna allowed immense leaps in both the understanding of and control over cells and the information in their DNA.

Next, meet , a Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine. Yalow’s work involved a process called RIA, or radioimmunoassay. Basically, she and her research colleagues took several compounds of interest, and modified the compounds to contain trace amounts of radioactive elements–enough to be detected, but not enough to be harmful. They could then inject the tagged substance into a person and watch how the body interacted with that substance itself by keeping track of the concentration of the radioactively tagged substance. One of her most notable applications of this technique was with insulin, where she injected the tagged insulin into volunteers and tracked how the insulin was treated by the body, discovering new information about diabetes and guiding the way towards possible treatments of diabetes. This technique is still used today, and has continued to be used to track and study various biological substances and how they interact with our bodies.

Moving in a slightly different direction, next up we have , who was the first woman to win the Turing Award, which is sometimes considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” She led the team which designed one of the first supercomputers, massive computers designed for performing huge calculations. Beyond that, Allen did work on and made improvements on the processes used in computer programs called compilers, which basically take code written in the computer languages that humans program in and convert it into specific commands a computer can understand. Without flexible and efficient compilers, computer science and programming as we understand it would be so sophisticated and difficult that computers as we have them today would be a fantasy. In addition, she created a framework for improving the performance of computer programs as well as other algorithms and methods for improving computer performance and analysis. Her work led to immense improvements and optimizations in computing performance and other improvements made by people building off of her work.

is considered one of the first woman electrical engineers, and was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame for her invention of the , which is by far one of her most famous contributions to electrical engineering. What this device would do is simplify the calculations used in modeling and setting up electrical transmission, which was crucial in developing and expanding the power grid. It allowed engineers to analyze and develop large systems which would become the foundation of electrical transmission. She also developed techniques and tools that could be used in obtaining data for and then analyzing power networks, as well as methods and graphs for making complex power systems easier to understand and predict. It is largely thanks to Clarke that we are able to have the electrical grid that we have today, as without her work and what it has led to, such a large system would be nigh impossible.

Next up is , whose work in abstract algebra and physics should (in my opinion) earn her a top rank in any list of mathematicians or scientists, male or female. Abstract algebra can be thought of as a kind of generalization of regular algebra, where instead of thinking about how one adds and multiplies numbers, one thinks about what it means to add or multiply any collection of objects that behave kind of like numbers–for example, one can think of “adding” rotations of a circle as just doing one rotation after another. Noether proved several facts that are now known as Noether’s Isomorphism theorems, which pretty much tell us important information about how these different “number-like” collections that are studied can be similar to one another, and how they can relate to each other. This is all besides another discovery of hers, Noether’s theorem, which has been foundational to our modern understanding of theoretical physics.

Last, but certainly not least, is physicist . Several years prior to her own work, two other physicists had proposed the idea that one of the fundamental forces in nature, the weak force, does not conserve something called parity; Wu developed and performed the ingenious experiment that verified this idea. One of the best ways to think about parity is to look at a mirror. If you stand in front of a mirror and raise your right hand, then the image of yourself that you see in the mirror will raise its left hand. This idea of left or right handedness is parity, and a mirror swaps parity; it turns left handed things into right handed things and right handed things into left handed things. It was believed by most scientists at the time that if one held the universe up to a mirror, if one flipped the universe, swapping all left and right handed things for right and left handed things respectively, the universe would behave the same as before. However, Wu, by looking at the directions that spinning radioactive atoms of cobalt emitted their radiation, showed that the weak force actually treats left and right handedness differently. If one was in a mirror reflected universe, one could tell if you were in the mirror universe or the regular universe. It is hard to describe how important this result was. Her experiment and related work brought a new understanding of what is truly fundamental in the universe.

Given the immense influence of the women mentioned above, one may ask, why don’t we hear much about them? A huge problem is that many women simply did not receive the credit they deserved during their own time. Noether, for a time, was only permitted to teach at a university under the name of one of her male colleagues, and Wu was not included in the Nobel prize for her work. Historically, beyond simply not being fully recognized for their accomplishments, women scientists have often been marginalized, disregarded, and harassed because of their gender. If STEM is to prosper, it needs a diversity of thoughts, ideas, understanding, and approaches. This means creating a more accepting and equal environment for those who choose to pursue it. What we see with the scientists, engineers, and mathematicians above is that women have not only done vital and revolutionary work in their respective fields, but they have always been doing so, and if those in STEM do not take intentional steps to treat women how they deserve to be treated, STEM will only suffer because of it.

For those who want to learn more about the continuing problems of sexism and harassment women face when entering STEM fields, their experiences, and the battles many have had to face, I would suggest the movie which addresses and discusses past and current issues women face in scientific fields.