Melanie Fine* looks at recent contributions by women scientists and asks whether we are on the edge of a new era.
Philipp von Jolly, trying to dissuade a young Max Planck from entering physics, remarked that “almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.”
Luckily, Planck, who went on to become the father of quantum physics, ignored his advice.
Attempting to identify any one year as the year of women in science seems to embody the same hubris and is, with any hope, similarly premature.
After all, it would seem that 1918 was the year of women in science, or at least, one woman in science.
In 1918 physicist Lise Meitner and her research partner Otto Hahn discovered a new element, protactinium.
Originally named proto-actinium because it decays into actinium, it is found in trace amounts (3 parts per million) in uranium ore.
Or rather, maybe 1898 was the year of women in science, when Marie Curie discovered not just one but two elements, polonium and radium.
Both Lise Meitner and Marie Curie have had elements named after them, meitnerium and curium respectively, neither of which they themselves discovered.
In fact, they are the only women among the 14 scientists so honoured.
Marie Curie was awarded two Nobel prizes, one in chemistry and one in physics.
In fact, she remains to this day the only person to receive a Nobel prize in both categories.
Lise Meitner received a remarkable 48 Nobel nominations, but never was awarded the elusive prize.
Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to 180 people, five (or 2.8%) of whom have been women.
The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to 210 people, three (or 1.4%) of whom have been women.
These percentages jumped dramatically this year when the Nobel Prize committee announced that two women were awarded Nobel Prizes, one in each chemistry and physics.
So perhaps after all, 2018 was the year of women in science.
Donna Strickland received the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics for her work on chirped pulse amplification (CPA) a method she and her doctoral adviser Gerard Mourou developed to deliver short laser pulses of high intensity.
Before then, researchers were not able to exceed a certain threshold in laser intensity.
By creating short pulses of higher intensity, Strickland and Mourou opened the door for the use of lasers in medical procedures such as laser eye surgery and proton therapies to treat deep-tissue tumors.
In addition, CPA is used in several manufacturing processes, such as cutting the cover glass for smartphones.
And, in research, CPA is used to “generate huge quantities of charged particles and light for heating matter to stellar interior conditions,” according to Professor Gilbert (Rip) Collins of the University of Rochester’s high-energy-density physics program.
Strickland is the third woman in history to receive the Nobel Prize in physics, and the first in 55 years. The second female laureate Maria Goeppert-Mayer received the prize in 1963.
Frances Arnold, Caltech professor of chemical engineering, received the 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work in genetically engineering enzymes used to make biofuels, medicines and even laundry detergent.
Initially failing to manufacture new enzymes from scratch from their amino acid building blocks, Arnold then piggybacked on nature’s own reproductive capacities, by injecting into bacteria the genes that code for the enzymes she wanted.
By iterating the process with randomly mutated genes, she was able to produce the best version of the enzyme, directing and accelerating the otherwise slow process of evolution.
Often accused of not doing actual science, she “laughed all the way to the bank, because it works.”
And with the 2018 Nobel Prize to add to her vast list of awards and honors, Arnold clearly has the last laugh.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the voting body for the Nobel prizes in Physiology and Medicine, Chemistry and Physics, has awarded only 3% of its science Nobel prizes to women, historically overlooking even the most deserving.
In fact, it’s more likely that a woman will have an element named after her than win a Nobel prize.
Of the 14 elements named after scientists, two, or 14%, are named after women.
With the numbers of women entering scientific fields growing each year — there are now more women than men enrolled in the U.S. in both science-related bachelors and graduate degree programs, we should expect to see these numbers rise in the near future.
In addressing a press conference at Caltech, Dr. Arnold predicted that, “As long as we encourage everyone — it doesn’t matter the colour, gender; everyone who wants to do science, we encourage them to do it — we are going to see Nobel Prizes coming from all these different groups. Women will be very successful.”
* Melanie Fine is a science educator and writer about those women (and men) who have contributed beyond their measure without due recognition. She can be contacted at RocketGirls.com.
This article first appeared at www.forbes.com/
