Indeed, when posting my “Women in Science” quizzes around site, a member of staff approached me and felt quite flabbergasted at the fact that, despite even discussing a programming language called “Ada,” the course co-ordinator (on a computing course) had only mentioned Charles Babbage when it came to discussing how computing came to be.
This person had done what seems to be a common theme running through science, historically, which is overlook Ada Lovelace - the woman who proved how to program a computer using holes in a punchcard.
This is far from a single example. Crick and Watson happily took the accolades for working out the structure of DNA, yet they’d have had no chance were it not for the X-ray crystallography that Rosalind Franklin performed.
I’ve read Watson’s book, and I recall being slightly confused by the way he referred to Franklin when describing her contribution to this rather major discovery. He and Crick walked off with a Nobel Prize, while Franklin received nothing (but apparent contempt from the people who should have been lauding her).
The list of women who have been overlooked by history is a significant one, from Chien Shiung Wu, who disproved the Principle of Conservation of Parity, through to Beatrix Potter, who, though famous more for Peter Rabbit, was a formidable mycologist and naturalist in her time.
Indeed, the list includes women whose contributions have been overlooked, who had to apply to work as volunteer scientists, or whose findings have been attributed to men.
Even today, despite moving forwards, the issue is still ever-present, which is why we have been celebrating Ada Lovelace Day since 2009 - an event that has since spread to an international community.
