MIT's Bouman photo
This is an exciting and proud moment, and the questioning of Katie Bouman's contribution - her contribution is not enough to make her publicized separately - has quickly spread on social platforms. Although the scientific history narrative of "lonely genius" is indeed unreasonable, media Vox pointed out that this kind of doubt is often only targeted by women.
"Lonely Genius" only applies to men?
has always been a tendency to narrative in history of science. This kind of scientific story is usually told like this: the world is as usual, and then people like Newton, , Einstein, , etc. came to the world, shaking our basic understanding of the world. In fact, in modern science, there are few achievements behind only one person's efforts, and those achievements are often the result of long-term accumulation of academic circles and team efforts.
When the Boman photos released by MIT were viral, Boman suddenly became the "lonely genius" behind the black hole photos. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised, Boman inspired all Americans, especially young women who dream of the STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
Nancy Pelosi posted twitter
Soon, Boman stated that the shooting of black hole photos relies on teamwork, and a total of more than 200 scientists have worked around the world, and have contributed to this. However, the right-wingers who attacked her still refused to give up, fearing that a female scientist would show off, would challenge orthodoxy and make men's status in society no longer stable and safe. “It’s a cultural/ideological struggle,” commented social scientist Nour Kteily.
In fact, the image shaping of "lonely genius" is very common in the history of science. For example, the discovery of gravitational waves relies on the efforts of thousands of scientists, and in the end they won the reputation and the Nobel Prize in are only the three scientists Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish. In stark contrast, women’s contribution to major scientific discoveries is often overlooked or underestimated.
Austrian -Swedish atomic physicist, "atomic bomb mother" Lise Meitner (1878-1968) has outstanding work throughout his life. He has nominated the Nobel Prize three times, but has never won. She and German chemist and physicist Otto Hahn (1879-1968) discovered nuclear fission, and the first to explain nuclear fission with theory and named "nuclear fission". But when male scientist Hahn won the Nobel Prize for nuclear fission, Meitner was ignored.
Lizer Metner
Promotion of Boman may be a bit exaggerated, but this photo of her is indeed of great significance to gender equality. When we imagine a scientist, what often comes to mind is the image of Einstein sticking out his tongue, and almost no image of a female scientist appears. Because in textbooks and media reports, male scientists have far more photos than female scientists. When female scientist Donna Strickland won the Nobel Prize in 2018, she didn’t even have Wikipedia entries because she was considered not important enough. Now we have this photo of Boman, which will be imprinted in people's minds and inspire many women who are interested in academic research.
Sexual harassment prevents women from moving forward
In January this year, a report released by the Pew Research Center showed that 50% of women working in the STEM field have encountered gender discrimination at work, and 36% believe that sexual harassment is a major problem in the workplace.
research report shows the dilemma faced by women in the STEM field. The image comes from an article published by Pew Research Center science writer Margaret Wertheim in Aeon magazine, which describes her experience of being sexually harassed and choosing to leave the physics she loves. In the 1970s, Watson studied at the University of Queensland in Australia, when she was the only woman in the physics department except secretary. She originally thought that the study environment here was very pure. It was not until a professor sexually harassed her that she felt like she was involved in the "Glass Bead Game" written by Hermann Hesse . The original pure and noble university utopia disappeared.
Margaret Watson, picture from https://www.margaretwertheim.com/
Now it has been more than forty years since Watson's experience back then, but Watson pointed out that the situation has hardly changed now. Scandals from top universities in the United States have occurred frequently, including California Institute of Technology , University of Chicago , and senior scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have been accused of sexually harassing female students and female colleagues. Geoffrey Marcy, a famous astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, has millions of dollars in scientific research funding and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. After he was reported to be sexually harassed, the university's response has been lukewarm. He resigned after strong protests from teachers and students.
In addition to the university's tolerance of high-powered professors, the "major incident" of sexual harassment has also made the situation worse. A female postdoctoral fellow once sought advice from a column in Science, one of the world's most authoritative academic journals, because her male tutor kept looking into her shirt, and the column responded to this that the tutor's behavior should be regarded as a kind of "humor". One of the highest halls of academia regards sexual harassment as a kind of "humor", which itself is the greatest "humor" and is also "black".
A large number of young women have withdrawn from scientific research due to sexual harassment and an ongoing unfair environment. For example, two students who reported that Professor Maxi had left astronomy, but the academic community disagreed with this and was extremely arrogant. Those female students and scholars are potentially priceless treasures of mankind. They may have made huge scientific discoveries and inventions, but are now overwhelmed by this male-ruled academic community. But the academic community does not think this is a huge loss because they feel that women are not good at all. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Lawrence Summers said at a meeting that there are no more women among top scientists, just because women's intelligence is different from men.
Academic community’s “hostility” towards women has been a long time
In fact, the academy community’s hostility towards women has been a long time ago. This community composed of human elites should have been at the forefront of the times, but it not only did not become a leader in striving for gender equality, but lag behind society. In his speech, Chizuko Ueno listed the proportion of women in research positions in universities, with female assistants accounting for 18.2%, associate professors accounting for 11.6%, and professors accounting for 7.8%, which are lower than the proportion of women in MPs.
Also, in the era of Meitner, the "Mother of the Atomic Bomb" mentioned above, most European countries did not allow women to receive public education, but her parents were very enlightened and gave her family education, which helped her obtain a doctorate in physics. However, even though she already had a PhD, she still had to apply in 1905 to attend a lecture by Max Planck, founder of quantum mechanics. Before that, Planck had never allowed women to appear in his class. Later, while working at the Caesar William Institute in Berlin, Metner was arranged to conduct research in the only basement with a female bathroom. As Hahn's co-scholar, Meitner is simply regarded as Hahn's "tenant" who doesn't need to pay.
also has the outstanding mathematician and physicist Emmy Noether (1882-1935), and has similar experiences.She studied at a German university and eventually got her PhD because her father was a professor at the school. After that, she worked for several years without pay and finally became a pioneer in the field of abstract algebra. She was invited to join the world's most cutting-edge mathematical research center at that time - , the Department of Mathematics, University of Göttingen. At that time, teachers in the philosophy department strongly opposed this woman to become their colleague. The mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943) retorted: "After all, we are a university, not a bathhouse."
Emmy Nott was doing experiments. Both Meitner and Nott were Einstein's peers. Nott even provided mathematical help for Einstein's general theory of relativity, and Einstein admired them very much. However, such an outstanding woman has been able to conduct scientific research through many levels with special help. Most of the female scientists who left their names in history have relatives as scientists, such as Madam Curie , because only in this way can women discover a path to get rid of gender discrimination and conduct scientific research. As mentioned in Chizuko Ueno's speech, many girls have broken their wings that everyone had when they were young.
The situation of white women is still so difficult, and women of color suffer greater discrimination. There are many beautiful and powerful black women in Western mythology and history, but we seem to know very little about them today. The reason behind it is actually self-evident, that is, Western art and historical narratives quietly erase them, as if they have never existed. Women have always existed as passive "second sex", and within women, people of color are even more discriminated against and oppressed by gender and race. Perhaps at this moment, we should ride the east wind of Chizuko and Boman to actively and bravely make women's voices to break free from the chains of "second sex".
Reference:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/4/16/18311194/black-hole-katie-bouman-trolls
https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-scientific-sexism-so-intractably-re sistant-to-reform
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190114-how-black-women-were-whitewashed-by-art
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904130027.html
Author: Beijing News Reporter Xu Yuedong Intern Reporter Li Ying
Editor: Mu Zi; Proofreader: Zhai Yongjun
