DNA Structure,Wi-Fi, pulsar: these various inventions have one thing in common. All were developed by female inventors, eclipsed by history, in the shadow of their male colleagues. We remember their story.
Where are the women in technology and science? In the shadow of their male counterparts, for many of them. This is particularly what happened to researcher Marthe Gautier, who died on April 30, 2022, who was eclipsed for part of her life by her male colleague, who had stolen her discovery.
We have decided to return to her career, but also to that of other female inventors forgotten by history, whose exploits have been attributed in particular to men. We speak of the Matilda effect to designate the way in which the contribution of many women scientists has been minimized, or even attributed to male colleagues.
Marthe Gautier and trisomy 21
Marthe Gautier, born in 1925 in Seine-et-Marne, dedicated her life to medicine. She began her studies at the age of 17 in Paris in 1942, then passed the competition for the Parisian hospital boarding school. She then specialized for 4 years in pediatrics as an intern, before defending her thesis in pediatric cardiology in 1955. It was his thesis director who offered him the same year to leave for a year to study at Harvard, with an American scholarship, in order to specialize in cardiology. Marthe Gautier is thus one of the very first interns in Paris hospitals to have a scholarship to study in the United States.
At Harvard, she trained in new cell culture techniques, a practice still rare in France at the time, and which enabled her to conduct a large number of experiments. Upon her return to France, she joined a team specializing in research on Down’s disease. Thanks to the techniques she learned in the United States, Marthe will be the first to highlight the presence of an additional chromosome in patients: this is the discovery of trisomy 21.
But before being able to publish her findings, she must be able to take photos of her discovery, which she does not have the budget to do. It was another researcher, a certain Jérôme Lejeune, who suggested that he do it in another laboratory. It was also he who published, in 1958, under his name, the discovery of Marthe Gautier, who was relegated to the rank of simple assistant. It was not until 2007, 13 years after the death of Jérôme Lejeune, that Marthe Gautier spoke out to denounce the theft. She will finally receive the Legion of Honor medal in 2014, before dying on April 30, 2022.
Ada Lovelace and the first computer program
His manuscript still attests to this today: Ada Lovelace, born in 1815 and died at the age of 37, produced the first computer program. Between 1842 and 1843, the countess translated into English an article by the mathematician Federico Luigi, which described Babbage’s analytical engine. On the advice of the latter, she will enrich this translation with her own notes, the volume of which is larger than the original text.
In note G, she presents a particularly detailed algorithm. This work is considered the world’s first computer program, written in a machine-executable language. Charles Babbage, who devoted his life to the construction of this famous analytical engine, benefited greatly from the work on the algorithm carried out by Ada Lovelace.
Hedy Lamarr and Wi-Fi
We don’t just owe Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian naturalized American actress, some thirty films. The inventor, born in 1914 and deceased in 2000, also played another important role in the history of our telecommunications. The patent she filed in 1941 (registered the following year) further attests to this: Hedy Lamarr had invented a ” secret communication system for radio-guided devices, such as torpedoes. The discovery, at the origin of GPS and Wi-Fi, was the result of a collaboration with George Antheil, an American pianist.
The patent thus filed allowed the United States Army to use it freely. The technology, however, was not mobilized until 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The “Lamarr technique” won the actress an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation… in 1997.
Alice Ball and leprosy treatment
For 90 years, the University of Hawaii did not recognize his work. Yet Alice Ball contributed to the development of an effective treatment for leprosy during the 20th century. This chemist, born in 1892 and died in 1916 at the age of only 24, became the first African-American to graduate from this establishment. Later, she became the first woman to teach chemistry there.
Alice Ball looked at a natural oil produced by trees of the “Chaulmoogra” species, known to cure leprosy. By isolating components of the oil, she managed to retain its therapeutic properties while making it injectable into the human body. Died before having had time to publish her work, Alice Ball fell into oblivion while Arthur L. Dean, the president of the University of Hawaii, attributed her work to himself.
Grace Hopper and the first compiler
In 1951, Grace Hopper designed the first compiler, that is, a program capable of translating source code (written in a programming language) into object code (like machine language). Born in 1906 and died in 1992, this American computer scientist was part of the US Navy where she rose to the rank of general officer.
During World War II, she worked on the Harvard Mark I, the first large digital computer built in the United States. The mathematician John von Neumann is presented as the one who initiated one of the first programs executed by the machine. Grace Hopper was, however, part of the team of the first programmers of the Mark I.
Esther Lederberg and bacterial genetics
This microbiology specialist was a pioneer in microbial genetics, a discipline that crosses microbiology (the study of microorganisms) and genetic engineering (the addition and deletion of DNA in an organism). Microbial genetics is the study of the genes of microorganisms.
Esther Lederberg was born in 1922 and died in 2006. She discovered what is called the “lambda phage”, a virus that infects the E.coli bacteria in particular. Lambda phage is widely studied in biology and is used to enable DNA cloning. Esther Lederberg identified it in 1950. She regularly collaborated with her husband Joshua Ledeberg: it was he who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1958, rewarding his work on how bacteria exchange genes without reproducing.
Jocelyn Bell and the pulsar
In 1974, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to British astronomer Antony Hewish. However, he was not the one who discovered the pulsar, an astronomical object that could be a rotating neutron star. Antony Hewish was Jocelyn Bell’s thesis director: he built the telescope needed for these observations. It was the astrophysicist, born in 1943, who first identified the pulsar.
In 2018, she finally received the Fundamental Physics Prize. She chose to use the $3 million offered to her to encourage underrepresented students in the field of physics.
Chien-Shiung Wu and nuclear physics
Chien-Shiung Wu, born in 1912 and died in 1997, was a nuclear physicist. In 1956, she demonstrated by experiment the “non-conservation of parity in weak interactions”, during her work on electromagnetic interactions. It is an important contribution to particle physics.
Two Chinese theoretical physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, had conducted theoretical work on this question. Both received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. It was not until 1978 that Chien-Shiung Wu’s experimental discovery was rewarded with the Wolf Prize in Physics.
Rosalind Franklin and the structure of DNA
Physical chemist Rosalind Franklin, born in 1920 and died in 1958, played an important role in the discovery of the structure of DNA, in particular its double helix structure. Thanks to X-ray diffraction, she takes DNA images that allow her to make this discovery. She presented her results in 1951 at King’s College.
A certain James Dewey Watson attends this presentation. This geneticist and biochemist informs the biologist Francis Crick of the discovery of Rosalind Franklin. Using the physico-chemist’s photos, they publish what appears to be their discovery of the structure of DNA. In 1953, they published this work in the journal Nature. They won a Nobel Prize in 1962, not to mention the pioneering work of Rosalind Franklin.
Lise Meitner and nuclear fission
Nominated three times to receive a Nobel Prize, this Austrian physicist has never received the precious distinction. However, it was a collaboration between Elise Meitner and Otto Frisch, her nephew, which made it possible to provide the first theoretical explanation of the merger, in 1939.
The scientist, born in 1878 and died in 1968, never received the same esteem from the committee awarding the distinction as that of her colleagues. In 1944, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Otto Hahn, a chemist mistakenly considered the discoverer of nuclear fission.
Katherine Johnson and celestial navigation
The decisive action of Katherine Johnson in NASA’s aeronautical and space programs has been the subject of a film, Hidden Figures. Born in 1918, this physicist and mathematician has calculated numerous trajectories and worked on the launch windows of numerous missions. A veritable “human calculator”, she checked the trajectories of the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission by hand, which sent a man into orbit around the Earth.
In 1969, it calculated essential trajectories during the Apollo 11 mission. It was on this occasion that humans — men — landed for the first time on the Moon. In 2015, she was rewarded and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sophie Germain and her essential theorem to build the Eiffel Tower
Born in 1776, Sophie Germain is a genius mathematician with an atypical background. It is thanks to a clever stratagem that she manages to follow the courses of the École polytechnique, pretending to be a man, Antoine-August Le Blanc.
Relentlessly, she managed to demonstrate the mathematical law behind the vibration of elastic surfaces in 1816. Without these mathematical foundations laid bySophie Germain, a project such as the Eiffel Tower could not have existed. However, his name is not among those of the 72 scholars registered on this structure.
