Noble Speech

Their gender denied them their award.
Today, they defy death to speak out.

For decades, in the male-dominated field of science,
many female scientists have had to witness their achievements being attributed to their male colleagues.

Physicist

Austrian physicist Dr. Lise Meitner, for example, led the team that discovered nuclear fission. Heralded by Albert Einstein as the Marie Curie of the German-speaking world, Dr. Meitner was excluded from the Nobel Prize awarded in 1944 for the discovery.

An omission she considered the most irredeemable sorrow of her life; depriving her of the chance to give the award’s acceptance speech.

She died in 1968. Today, she finally has the opportunity to speak.

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Microbiologist and pioneer of bacterial genetics.

In the early 1950s, Dr. Esther Lederberg - for example - was part of a team of scientists who pioneered microbial genetics.
Discovering a previously unreported virus, which she named the lambda phage, Dr. Lederberg’s research served as a model to help unlock the mechanism of genetic inheritance in more complex viruses.

She then developed a technique called replica plating that is still in use to this day and enables researchers to isolate bacteria that are resistant to compounds on plates. Despite her substantial contributions to the field of microbiology, the subsequent Nobel Prize in 1958 was only awarded to her male counterpart. She died in 2006.

See more scientists whose gender meant living a life in the shadows

Frieda Robscheit-Robbins

Pathologist

The German-born American pathologist worked closely with George Hoyt Whipple to conduct research into the use of liver tissue in the treatment of pernicious anaemia. Whipple received a Nobel Prize in 1934 in recognition of this work, but Robscheit-Robbins was not recognized in this award.

Marietta Blau

Physicist

The Austrian physicist developed nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high energy nuclear particles and events. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, Blau never won. In 1950, Cecil Powel won the prize for work largely based on Blau's, without crediting her.

Chien-Shiung Wu

Physicist

Known as the "Chinese Madame Curie", her discoveries resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, while Wu got nothing.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Astrophysicist

Astrophysicist from Northern Ireland, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967 as a postgraduate student. While this discovery eventually earned her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish and astronomer Martin Ryle the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974, she was omitted despite her significant contributions.

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