So I have a very low voice and I would like to know if you can hear me from everywhere.
So I'm going to talk about the contribution and life and the difficulties of women in science,
mostly at the beginning of the 20th century.
And the aim of this talk is to dispel the myth that women cannot be a scientific genius,
which is something that still these days will have to hear a lot.
This talk is very personal for me because I'm a scientist.
Actually, I live doing research and I've been studying physics for more than 15 years now.
And during my studies in university, it seemed to me that the only representative woman of science,
or the only woman that did science during the 20th century, was Marie Curie and nothing else.
And it was really difficult for me to understand because I got my degree in Spain,
my degree in France and in both countries, among my classmates there were a lot of girls
and they were very smart, they were brilliant, they were motivated.
They like what they do. Many of them are now researchers too.
And I could not understand why there were not women during the 20th century.
I mean, what happened? Because I could not believe that they did not like it, that they have no brain to do it.
And so, that's why I started studying the role of women in science during the 20th century.
So, I finished my degree and I was looking for a PhD and I knocked the door of Pedro Miguel Echinica
and he's a very well-known physicist in Spain and he's the one who later became my PhD supervisor
and he invited me to go to a diplomatic talk that he was giving in Bilbao
and in the middle of the talk he said, please, the DNA double helix was discovered
thanks to the experiment of Rosalind Franklin. And I was like, what the fuck?
I mean, one of the most important discoveries that has led to one of the most important revolutions
in the 20th century was led by a woman and I don't know it.
I mean, because even when I was in high school, I was taught, I knew who was Pauly, I knew who was Irak, I knew who was Rour.
Even though if I could not understand what they did, but those names were there
and I had no clue about Rosalind Franklin. Instead, this picture here, I don't know if you can see it,
these are James Watson and Francis Crick looking at the mother of the double helix of the DNA.
It's very familiar. I mean, I've seen it before, but I had no clue about who was Rosalind Franklin,
so were they few or they were just unknown.
And in order to answer this question, I want to contextualize better in which situation they lived during the 20th century
and after that, I will be able to explain better if they were few or they were unknown or what happened.
So, women as a group did not have access to the Academies of Science until the mid-20th century, for example.
In the Royal Society of London until 1945, this one was created, the Academies de Science 1979,
the Academy of Nations after 1964, and the Royal Academy of Sciences 1988.
And there were some exceptions. When women were very brilliant, they were accepted to the university,
but as a group, they could not fully get a degree in the university.
They were still in Switzerland in 1860, UK in 1895, but of course, not in Cambridge or Oxford.
The most prestigious university did not happen in 1948 or 1921.
France in 1890, but not today called the Technique Française,
where all the President of France had been created, but the Sainte-Côte d'Ivole, I think.
They were accepted for the first time in 1972 in Germany in 1900 and in Spain in 1910.
But that doesn't mean that they could do science, because at the beginning they were accepted in university,
but to do female studies like history or literature, to do science, it did not happen until the beginning of the 20th century.
It seems that it's not a struggle until the mid-late 19th century.
There were individual calls by many people since the 15th century in order to have access to high education.
Some examples are Margaret Cavendish, Mary Aston, Daniel Defoe, Olympia de Coche.
Actually, in France, they started, I could say, the first feminist movement after the Revolution.
But they were all prosecuted and killed.
So the feminist movement that started in France ended when Olympia died.
And then another individual attempt to ask for high education was Maria Vostencraft.
But real progress was not made until a woman gathered together as a group,
pushed and organized themselves in order to achieve something.
And this happened in the UK within the first wave of the feminist movement.
The first organization of women was called the Lengam Group.
And they were some resourceful women that were concerned with the women's situation and women rights.
And they were determined to change it.
So they hired some offices in the Lengam Street of London.
And they organized themselves politically because that was one of the first moments
where women thought that this was a political problem.
It was not related to nature or something like that.
It was political.
And they decided to tackle their discrimination for different points.
They wanted to achieve a high and equal education.
They wanted to have the same employment opportunities.
They wanted to achieve the suffrage for women.
And they wanted to reform the law, rewarding a married woman.
But soon they realized that the key to success was to achieve a high education.
And by that time, girls were allowed to go to primary school until 10 years old,
but then there was nothing.
Middle-class women were taught at their houses, at home, with some teachers, women teachers.
But the teachers were not prepared themselves, so the education was very poor.
And at some point, the government decided to open a school for prepare better the teachers.
And two of those pupils that belonged to the Lengam group decided to open the first school for women.
And this was the North London Collegiate School in 1850 and the Seltanam Ladies' College in 1855 by these two women.
But still those were female studies.
They could not study Greek or Latin or mathematics.
It was Emily Davis, the first woman who decided that she wanted to open a college like Manor.
This is not a skilled university. This is college.
Because as she thought that only women succeed in subjects, how to be prestigious for men,
would their educational achievement recognize as equally valid,
because different would mean automatically mean inferior.
So this woman opened Gyrton in 1879 and 10 years later, Eleanor Sidbit opened the Newham Hall.
Remember this name because it's going to show up later.
And the Sophia X Plague opened the London School of Medicine for Women.
It was college, it was university, but still there were some problems with women studying science
because they thought it would take more energy for them to understand
because they could not understand it as well as men.
And the framework energy could be diverted from the reproductive system.
But any doubt about the Spanish when Philippa hosted in 1890 of the Newham College
with the top male students in the National Mathematics Competition.
Philippa hosted was one of the daughters of the Longnam ladies.
And then the next step starts.
They wanted to have access to university, but they wanted to get a degree too.
They did not just attend the classes because they were allowed to do it already at the beginning of 19th century.
They could sit on the first row of the classes to listen to the lectures,
but they could not do exams and they could not get degrees.
And even though the University of London accepted women in 1878,
they were excluded from the student science.
It was especially a strong problem with women studying medicine
because the doctors even wanted to have one on the ground.
And in general there were many objections about women going to universities
because when they opened universities there was a rapid increase of women,
so general immunization was feared.
There was a strong objection from many students to the attendance of women
because they were not as smart and of course a man could not stand a woman being better than him.
And of course women needed a particular education and the reason was in nature.
So we have to thank a lot to the World Wars because
that's when finally the university opened the doors for women
because doctors were needed.
And so the science universities opened the doors,
so let's say in 1920 they came,
we had access to the university studies,
we would graduate,
but what about practicing the profession?
And that is what I'm going to answer,
to answer that second question I will present some biographies of some women
that did science during the 20th century.
Okay, and this is,
that you can have a general view of what happened after the Second World War.
So this is, here we have the percentage of women involved in mathematics in the US university
and as a function of design.
So universities opened the doors,
and of course many women wanted to study so they enrolled.
It keeps increasing, increasing, increasing.
And we cannot have a high peak,
it's not here but we have a high peak between 1939 and the end of the Second World War
because men were in the battlefield
and women were needed in factories and outside universities.
And there was a strong campaign in order to motivate women to enroll in universities
with these two advertisements for example.
This image is very, I mean I'm sure it's familiar to everybody
because it was taken by the feminist movement during the 80s,
but actually the idea was,
this was made by Howard Miller in 1943
to encourage women to go to factories
and then it goes down incredibly fast.
And what happened?
Well, two things happened.
One of them is that the men came back from the battlefield,
so the percentage went down because they were there
and women were not needed anymore
and on the other hand what happened with particularly mathematics or physics
is that before the Second World War it was not a very recognized degree or career,
it was something more for weird people,
there was not much sense of doing it,
but after the Second World War the nuclear army races started
and so brains were needed
and it got more unified,
so it needed some of the main control.
So then an opposite strong campaign started
where they basically encouraged women to go back home.
And this is what happened.
It went down and it took us like 30 years to go back
to the numbers that we had at the beginning of the century
and thankfully these days at least concerning the enrollment
things are getting better.
What happened afterwards, Elena will explain it very well in the next talk.
So I think I can answer the question.
Yes, of course there were few scientists in every country and time period
but there was no choice if you cannot be educated,
how come are you going to become a good scientist?
But there are more than what are known
and more than what are thought to be.
Here we have the ones who won the Nobel Prize during the 20th century
and these are clear cases where they should have won it and they didn't
and I'm going to talk about these four right now
but I want to make clear that of course they were genius
because in the situations they had to live completely discriminated
and even though they put the science to the state where it is now
you must be a real genius and you must have a special brain to do it.
I mean, every scientist knows how important it is to belong to a group
to be supported and to be funded and to have funding
and how handicapped you become when you have to work in completely isolation.
So for sure they were genius but they were even more.
Through their participation they became the agents of change.
When you get there you change things when you are outside you don't.
Now I'm going to talk about four of them
that I think they are very representative and they discover amazing things
and not many people know them.
So I'm going to be quiet fast, I just want to mention briefly what they did.
Liz Maynard, she discovered a nuclear fission
and she was born in Vienna in a Jewish family.
When she was born women were excluded from universities
but the need for medical doctors to attend Muslim women
in Austria I think invaded Bosnia
opened the door so she started in 1901 the university
and she meets the physique Ludwig Walszmann.
Ludwig Walszmann was a physicist that did not exclude women from his classes
and he created a group where Liz was completely integrated
and she felt very good so she was fascinated by science
and in 1906 he moved to Berlin
because Ludwig Walszmann killed himself
and she wanted to follow her career and he could not do it in Austria.
She comes to Berlin and she attends the classes of Max Planck.
Max Planck didn't want to have women in his classes
but he was so open minded to permit them to come
when they were extremely brilliant and that's what happened with Liz.
So he let her come and he introduced her to Emil Fischer.
Emil Fischer was the director of the Wilhelm Kaiser Institute
that these days are called the Max Planck
and she started working in his lab
and Otto Hahn, a new state PhD student, he wanted to work with her.
The problem was that women were not allowed to enter the institute
so her experimental setup was in the basement
and even she didn't have any restroom of course
so she wanted to pee or whatever so she had to go outside
even in winter in Berlin.
But why?
Liz and Otto, they became a hand-to-hand couple
he was a chemist, she was a physicist, he prepared with samples
she could measure them, she built the experimental setup
to measure them very well and they were very productive.
So in 1908, she gained the access to go to the laboratory.
In 1913 she became an assistant scientist
and she earned her bachelor's degree
because before she was working for free.
They did many interesting works in actinium
they discovered the actinium
and in 1919 she received a permanent position
and in 1920 she became the director of her own laboratory.
So everything was fine for Liz.
This is the cave where the golden years of the physics
the nuclear physics was just discovered
I discovered the atomic nucleus
and nobody could understand anything of what was going on
because when you crush for example two protons
the results are three protons
one antinotrino and a few p-mesons
so it was something completely intuitive
and brains were needed
so everybody was working very happy
actually in Europe there were four groups
one of brother four in England
another one from Enrico for me in Italy
Irene Giorgio Tucuri was the daughter of Maria Marie Curie
living the one in France and Liz was living the one in Berlin
and another great achievement of Liz was in 1933
she measured positron for the first time
the positrons predicted by Degas
but unfortunately in the same year
the Nazi party rises to power
and she was a U
so it was not that clear what it was going to happen at the beginning
but things started getting worse and worse and worse
many people tried to take Liz away from Germany
but Max Planck persuaded her not to do it
because Germany needed her and needed her research
so she stayed
but at some point she was kicked out from university
and then she decided to leave
and when she was about to leave
they took her out of her passport
so she could not leave anymore
and then she got really scared
so finally she escapes in 1938 from Germany
and first she lived in the Netherlands
and then she moved to Sweden
but she did not stop working with Otto Hahn
and before leaving Germany she was really interested
in studying the uranium
what she had in mind was
to be able to build a heavier atom
than the one that we have here
so she wanted to understand what was inside the atom
so she suggested Otto Hahn
together with her replacement Otto Fritz Spassmann
to bomb an uranium nucleus
with I think it was better particles, I'm not sure
and so they did it
and what they measured was two different atoms
so that was the first recognized vision of their history
and the team that remained in Berlin
they could not understand what happened
and nevertheless they published the paper
without her because they told her
that they could not include her in the paper
because it was you and it was not allowed
but they could not explain anything
it was her together with her nephew
who understood what happened when you bomb a nucleus
by means of the increase in mass
and that explanation was published a bit later
in a nature paper
but the discovery of the fission
was always thought that it was made by Otto Hahn
and this is Otto Fritz Spassmann
another anecdote is that she refused to participate
in the Manhattan Project
and in 1944 Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for the discovery of the nuclear fission
well nevertheless he got many awards
and recognitions after that
and the element 109 is called the magnet in her name
so at least my name is nuclear fission
and the next one is Xin Xun Wu
that was called the first lady of physics
she was a woman in the Shanghai
after the Chinese Revolution
she studied in a clandestine school
created by his father
she was the first woman accepted in a Chinese university
to obtain a degree
and she moved to the US to start her PhD in physics
and she did it in Berkeley
under the supervision of Ernst Lorenz and Emilio Siegret
and she was there at the same time as Fermi and Oppenheimer were there
and she became an expert in nuclear physics
till the level that Fermi and Oppenheimer
referred to her as the authority
so she finished her PhD
and he wanted to find a permanent position
the Japanese bomb of the Harvard
so she was hunted by xenophobia
because she was Asian
and she could not find a position for years
and she had to work in a college in Northampton
but finally thanks to the help of Lorenz
she finds a temporary position in Princeton
and she was the first woman
to participate in the Manhattan Project
and afterwards she received a permanent position at Columbia
but this is not her...
this was just the beginning
what she discovered
or what she proved was the parity violation
and here we're going to have a little bit of people that did science
so Lee and Yang were too serious
and they questioned the parity violation
and the weak interaction
which is something really impossible to believe
by that time by the physicists
so nobody wanted to do the experiment
and actually the experiment was really really challenging
because you needed to place an atom
without moving, applying a magnetic field
and it was really delicate
and in a few days this experiment would be really difficult
and basically...
well I don't know if I should explain the physics now
anyway, she proved
the parity violation
when you change the magnetic field
that is applied in a couple of atoms
one would expect that the amount of electrons
decaying in one direction would be the same as the...
one would expect that when you invert the magnetic field
this image would switch to an impedance
and it was really amazing by the time
so she proved it
but she did not receive the Nobel Prize
it was only Lee and Yang who received it
but again as she...
she was well recognized worldwide
and she got her... finally her permanent position in Princeton
and the permanent position on the full professorship
and she kept doing research
and she never complained
now Rosalind Franklin on the DNA structure
this among the stories I know is one of the saddest ones
because she never knew what she did
when she was alive
so she was born in 1920 in London
in a U.S. family
she studies in Munich
and the one of the colleges that were created by
Eamon High School before
and she received degrees in Cambridge
on the University of the Gold
she moved to Paris
and in 1951 she goes back to London
as an expert on X-ray diffraction
X-ray diffraction is the technique that you need to
to know the position of the atoms in a crystal
in a crystal in a solid
so in order to understand what she did
and what important it was
I need to describe a little bit the scientific context
so by that time
the DNA was the genetic messenger was already known
but nobody knew how it happened and why
and nobody, biologists didn't know what to do about it
because it was like a mystery
so then in 1945
Schrodinger writes what is life
and what he said is that if the DNA is a molecule
and it's transmitted from generation to generation
perfectly
so to speak
there must be no disorder
so it has to be a crystal
but a crystal
with the atoms having a specific spatial position
and it was the clue
that would lead the scientists to understand what was the DNA
and how the inheritance was transmitted
so everybody starts going crazy about finding the crystal structure of the DNA
that was called the secret of life
and in that moment
so when Rosalina writes to Cavendish
she started working in a group of a guy called Maurice Wilkins
and he had an experimental setup
by that time it was good
but not good enough to find the real structure of the DNA
actually they thought it was one elix and they published it already
so when Rosalina went there
she did not get along with Maurice Wilkins
so they decided to split
and Rosalina made her own experimental setup
and Maurice Wilkins started working with these two guys
with James Watson and Francis from the Cavendish
so Rosalina found that the model of one elix was wrong
because with her very sensitive technique
he could find the position of, for example, the phosphorus
that were on the other side
and the oxygens that were inside
so she knew that the hot bodies was not good
but she wanted to perform a better experiment
so in 1951
she made what many people call the most beautiful picture of the 20th century
is the photo of 51
and in this photo one can see these days very easily
that the DNA has a double elix
but Rosalina did not see it at the first time
but she was not really in a hurry
because she thought that things should be done slowly and good
to avoid these publications
where people say that the DNA has one elix structure
and it's not true
but she was achieving another very nice result
and her collaborator, Maurice Wilkins, was really bummed about it
so he started talking to Watson and Crick
and he told them about Rosalina
so they invited Rosalina to the Cavendish
that she could see the model that they have created
and she saw the model and she said that model was not right
because they placed the atoms only and this and that
so they realized that it was her the one who knew
a lot of things about the DNA
and they asked
well I don't know if they asked
but actually what happened is that in the final report of the year of the laboratory
Rosalina included the photo 51 in it
she gave it to the director
so Maurice Wilkins asked that for that report
and she gave it to Watson and Crick
Watson was an expert in some kind of protein
which has also like somehow two double elix
so when he saw Rosalina picture
he immediately thought about the double elix
and just in that time
another physicist he published that the DNA had three elix
so people were getting really close
and Watson and Crick got stressed
but even though they could see it was a double elix
they didn't know how they were the elix
matched to each other
but thankfully in the department by that time
there was a postdoc who did some experiments
in another kind of proteins that had similar bonding
and they told them that actually the elix were anti-parallel
and then it was clear for them how was the structure of the DNA
and they published it in April
in the notebook of Rosalina in 1953
she wrote structure B
B was the sample she had evidence for two chain elix
but of course she was not fast enough
but also I would have to say that she was working completely alone
nevertheless she congratulated Watson and Crick
because if you didn't know it was thanks to her data
that he found out the crystal structure of the DNA
and she was really tired about the cavendish
and she moved to another laboratory that was called Birbeck
and then she became quite known worldwide
and she was invited to the US
and there she met Aaron Black
and those were her most happy years of her life
because they matched very well together
and they published more than 10 articles in two years
and Aaron Black won the Nobel Prize later on
and he said that if Rosalina would be alive
he would share it with her for sure
unfortunately she passed away due to a number of cancer
when she was 37
and since 1968 Watson, Crick and Wilkins
received the Nobel Prize in Medicine
the story was already sad there
but what happened later was even worse
because James D. Watson
he wrote a book called The Loved Elix
a personal accountant of the discovery of the structure of the DNA
and he ridiculized and makes fun of Rosalina during the whole book
he called her Rosy
he said that she was just a technician
that she could not understand anything
and she was doing experiments because Wilkins asked her to do them
many people complained about it
among them many Nobel Prizes
because they found it unfair
and finally the editorial changed it
but the first 6 million books were already in the market
and so Rosalina was unfairly treated for quite a while
these days there is a building in the Cavendish
it's called the Rosalina Franklin building
and it was created in the 2000s
and it was Watson who got the real DNA
and the last one, this one is very fast
so I'm going to finish soon
Yeseline Bell Brunel
she discovered the pulsar
she was born in 1943 in Belfast
she graduated to the University of Glasgow
and she moved to Cambridge to do her PhD
and her research project was to build a radio astronomy telescope
for using to study the Quasfers
some fancy stellar objects
so what she did and it took her 2 years
is that she made the kipals by hand
and provided the telescope with such extreme sensitivity
and also something that she did
is to analyze the data by hand
so that she could not miss any information
and in 1977 she measured a week and a non-signal
with a very accurate periodicity
for a small period of time
and she showed that to her supervisor
he wished
and he said that that was noise
and they should not take care of it
but since everything she did was made by herself
she knew that that was not noise
because noise has another pattern
and it was a radiation for a week radiation
with a very extreme periodicity
so she decided to keep looking at it
and she measured it again
and she convinced her supervisor
that it was not noise that it should be analyzed
so he took the data
and he started having some kind of secret meetings
with other people
and in the last one she was invited
and what they were considering
is that this was intelligent life from space
sending messages to the earth
so what was called LGM, a little green man
so he could not believe it
and actually she did not
and she decided that she was going to try
to do more experiments in it
so finally she measured the same kind of radiation
but from another direction
so now it was clear that it should be some stellar object
but they could not find what it was
or any explanation
and finally they published the data
without any explanation
in 1968 she received the degrees
and secret research
and in 1974 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics
for the discovery of the pulsar
Thomas Hall was the first one
who really explained what the pulsar was
and considered it an injustice
and a pulsar is actually what this is
an outer star that emits radiation
in a very particular axis
so you can only measure it
when it is aligned with the earth
and for a short period of time
because when the earth moves
you miss the connection
anyway, in 1968 she gets married
and creates radio astronomy
and her husband was a diplomat
and she accompanies him everywhere
and during this period
she developed very strong horizontal skills
she worked as a gamma ray astronomer
infrared astronomer
and sub-militimeter astronomer
finally, she finds her position at the Open University
and in 2007 she is the honored M Commander
of the Order of the British Empire
so just to improve now
pulsar
and to finish with this talk
I like to give this quote
it's done by Bernie Poirier
he was a postdoc of the group of Robert Gallo
when he discovered a natural retrovirus
I think the HDLB
he did not receive the number price
instead Robert Gallo did it
and this is what he says
there are many different reasons
why people associate Robert Gallo's name
as the discoverer of the HDLB
I can't change how people perceive it
or how people presented it to the media
the only thing I can do is to do my work
I spent many nights in that laboratory
the moment of discovery was mine
so they were not recognized
but the moment of discovery was theirs
do you have any short questions for Naya?
yes maybe
do you like these four women?
you're bad
but these four are not others?
I mean why
I choose them in this way
as long as I was getting to know them
I did not find these four
and say these four
and then I read about Liz Menner
and things like that
then I found a poster somewhere
and I see a gasoline bell
because maybe they are more important than
or they have some help
I mean because I thought
being a physicist I couldn't understand more or less
what they did
if this is another price in medicine
it's more difficult for me
do you have a question?
yes
you said that Watson he wrote this book
and there he said
well basically he may not appreciate the work of Rosalind Franke
but he was forced to
so basically they cancelled the printing of this book
and did Watson then rectify it after all
or he kept saying that it was his work?
I mean Watson is the one who says
that black people are stupid
genetically
and finally I think in 2000
he was invited to the inauguration
of this building in Cambridge
and he said he recognized
that the contribution of Rosalind was fundamental
to his research
he did it in the 2000
but not immediately after he published the book
thank you Watson
yes, he did it
did we scratch you?
Watson
what is it?
I don't know
I don't know
I don't know
Thank you
