We should always add a mental asterisk to the names of male researchers who discovered things while women were oppressed.

That said, this meme is playing loose and fast with the specifics, which undermines that important message.

Just picking the first one:

Payne’s work was her Ph.D. thesis and Russell did not tell her not to publish it, her advisor did. The advisor told her not to rock the boat in her thesis. This is good advice that even Einstein was given. Payne, badass, declined.

When Russell later reproduced her research, he cited her thesis as the “most important research” he’d seen on the subject.

The real snub with Payne is that her title was “Technical Advisor” for 20 years despite being well regarded as a full time professor. It wasn’t until the 50’s she was recognized as a professor, when she was also made chair of the department.

Source: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/cecilia-payne-profile

Don’t forget Mary Anning!

Anning searched for fossils in the area’s Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods.

Anning struggled financially for much of her life. As a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London, and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions. However, her friend, geologist Henry De la Beche, who painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, based it largely on fossils Anning had found and sold prints of it for her benefit.

Some of the best evidence we discovered for tectonic plates was discovered by a woman. Marie Tharp discovered the Mid-Atlantic ridge and had her work stolen by her colleague.

Considering how this graph… Hmm… Shall we say… Takes a number of creative liberties with actual history surrounding these great women, doesn’t this graph undermine its own message?

My former best friend one day out of the blue told me he thought that women are on average smarter than men but are not capable of rising to the very top level of human intellect. His “proof” of this was the fact that nearly all major scientific discoveries have been made by men. Needless to say, he thought of himself as being at the highest level of human intellect - despite having made no major scientific discoveries himself (or even minor ones for that matter). This was the beginning of the end of our friendship, and I’m only embarrassed that it wasn’t instantly the end of our friendship.

At least Lise Meitner is not forgotten, I currently work in a building on Lise-Meitner Street!

Where is my fucking lady Rosalind Franklin at?

And of course Headie Lamar gets snubbed with this graphic… The woman who is the reason most of us are online, and able to listen to our podcasts

I always take posts like this with a big grain of salt. Yes, women were oppressed and in many places still are, but posts like these tend to stretch and exaggerate the truth because they WANT to find oppression of women. They WANT the fight, and they want the fight to still be here and burning brightly today to justify actions many would find questionable at best.

EDIT: Fun fact for you, in the USA in 1970 8% of stem workers were female. Today, its 27%.

The nobel prize is a fucking self congratulatory sham anyway if you read about its history

Could also add Marie Curie in there. I didn’t realise until recently that there is a lot of controversy over France “claiming her achievements” since she was born and educated in Poland.

Based and redpilled scientists