I have now posted 24 diaries concerning the contributions of women to science prior to the 21st Century. These have been:
Barbara McClintock http://www.dailykos.com/...
Augusta Ada King Countess of Lovelace http://www.dailykos.com/...
Hypatia http://www.dailykos.com/...
Jeanne Baret http://www.dailykos.com/...
Margaret Ursula Mee http://www.dailykos.com/...
Jane Colden http://www.dailykos.com/...
Rachel Carson http://www.dailykos.com/...
Florence Bascom http://www.dailykos.com/...
Rosalind-Franklin http://www.dailykos.com/...
Henrietta Swan Leavitt http://www.dailykos.com/...
Florence Merriam Bailey http://www.dailykos.com/...
Edith Marion Patch http://www.dailykos.com/...
Maria Mitchell http://www.dailykos.com/...
Annie Jump Cannon http://www.dailykos.com/...
Alice Gray http://www.dailykos.com/...
Mary Davis Treat http://www.dailykos.com/...
Ann Haven Morgan http://www.dailykos.com/...
Arabella Buckley http://www.dailykos.com/...
Maria Sibylla Merian http://www.dailykos.com/...
Elizabeth Gifford Peckham http://www.dailykos.com/...
Lise Meitner http://www.dailykos.com/...
Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin http://www.dailykos.com/...
Beatrix Potter http://www.dailykos.com/...
Libbie Hyman http://www.dailykos.com/...
There are many more women in science and mathematics and I will continue to add to the list with such as Marie Curie, Irene Joliot-Curie, Mary Ball, Margaret Rae MacKay, Cynthia Longfield, Annie Trumbull Slosson, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Doris Cochran, Anna Botsford Comstock, Caroline Herschel, Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes, Mary Leakey, Marie Victorie Lebour, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and others. It is indeed remarkable that so many women made a mark of some sort in science and/or mathematics before women were even recognized as competent in these areas. Fortunately this has changed (although we still have some vestiges of this attitude left) and the numbers of women in science have continued to grow. This is one reason I have limited my diaries to women in science and mathematics who died before 2000, as the numbers have risen almost exponentially and in some fields women are now more numerous than men. Unfortunately my criteria preclude many very remarkable women scientists, including most of African descent. Being both female and black was a terrible burden and it is only recently that African women have had the opportunity to advance in science and most of these are still alive. One exception was the mathematician Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes.
A few years ago I heard a speech by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who with Anthony Hewish and several others, published the discovery of pulsars, but unlike Hewish, did not receive the Nobel Prize (even though she actually made the discovery and was second on the list of authors.) The Nobel Committee's decision was roundly condemned, especially by the astronomer Fred Hoyle. Some wag called Hewish's award the "No Bell" prize. Significantly the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, where I was a judge, scheduled her with several Nobel Prize Laureates. Times do not change as rapidly as we would like, but at least such injustices are now more readily noted.
As for my own experience I can say that I have been at three institutions when they hired their first tenure-track female faculty members. In each case the inclusion of women enriched the community. This is not to say that there have never been women, like men, who have been bad scientists (one of Lysenko's apologists in the Soviet Union is a good example), but only that women are generally as competent as men and that they often bring a different perspective that aids in understanding, especially in biology. Some are truly brilliant in a given area of study. I have worked with a fair number of women in research projects and had three women as successful graduate students, all of whom published at least some part of their work. A forth female graduate student who quit because of financial reasons, had her research published after she left. Female faculty members with whom I have collaborated were certainly the equals of male faculty with whom I have also published.
Perhaps I am also influenced by having two daughters and a foster daughter who have followed careers in applied sciences (various branches of medical science), but even before I married and had children I was influenced by reading publications by women (such as Eugenie Clark, the ichthyologist, who is still alive, and Alice Gray, the entomologist, who I have featured in a diary), as well as men, who wrote on scientific subjects. I perceived no real quantitive or qualitative differences in ability. It is, I decided, best to judge scientists by what they do, not who they are. Nobody should be given either a free ride or a deaf ear because they are of one sex or another, or for that matter, one class or another. To do so is perhaps to deny the insights that may lead to major breakthroughs, such as Barbara McClintock's controlling and jumping genes, Jane Goodall's original work on chimpanzee behavior, or Rachel Carson's understanding of the cumulative effects of pesticides on the environment. This would be a waste of potential knowledge and interpretation of that knowledge.
This is why I took on this task, even though I am a male scientist. We are at a crossroad in our relationship with the earth's environments and we as a species need all the insights, breakthroughs, and applications that science can provide to solve the problems involved, if indeed they can be solved. To deny the potential of over half the world's people to aid in this great and imperative task is, I think, a great stupidity and indeed a great crime.