No FEMALE won the Nobel Prize in physics

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SUMMARY

No female physicist has ever won the Nobel Prize in Physics independently, with Marie Curie being the only woman to win it, and that was in 1903 alongside her husband, Pierre Curie. Maria Goeppert-Mayer won the prize in 1963 but also shared it with others. The discussion highlights the statistical underrepresentation of women in physics, with estimates suggesting that less than 15% of active physicists are female. Factors such as differing interests between genders and the historical context of women's participation in the field contribute to this disparity.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of Nobel Prize history and its awarding criteria
  • Familiarity with gender representation in STEM fields
  • Knowledge of the contributions of Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer
  • Awareness of the current gender ratios in physics academia
NEXT STEPS
  • Research the contributions of female physicists throughout history
  • Examine studies on gender differences in career choices in STEM
  • Investigate the impact of societal norms on women's participation in physics
  • Explore initiatives aimed at increasing female representation in STEM fields
USEFUL FOR

This discussion is beneficial for educators, gender studies researchers, and anyone interested in the dynamics of gender representation in scientific fields, particularly physics.

drizzle
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Okay I know the woman Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre Curie. But seriously, is there not one who won the prize by herself... ALONE?!


Guess what I'm thinking :devil:
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Lisa Meitner

Lisa Meitner should have won it, and didn't.
 
drizzle said:
Okay I know the woman Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre Curie. But seriously, is there not one who won the prize by herself... ALONE?!


Guess what I'm thinking :devil:


Yeah, must be a terrible and ferocious conspiracy against women. Let's be serious.

There is another women who won a Nobel in Physics, Maria Goeppert-Mayer .
And years when Nobel is awarded to more than one person are very common.
 
Maria Goeppert-Mayer won it in 1963. If you are concerned that no woman has ever won it singly, there are mighty few people who have - the last single physics prize was 1992, and since the 60's, the tradition is to jointly award it.
 
drizzle said:
Okay I know the woman Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband
She won a second one for chemistry, but for doing what we would now consider to be physics.
 
No one wins Nobel Prizes on their own nowadays anyways.
 
Women have smaller brains. It's science.
 
Brian_C said:
Women have smaller brains. It's science.
And yet the blue whale, in spite of it's brain size, continues to be ignored by the color-biased Nobel committee
 
What's the gender ratio among physics professors in the developed world? I believe it's 6:1 to 10:1 among Ph.D. students. 58 out of 65 faculty members in Harvard are men.
 
  • #10
Brian_C said:
Women have smaller brains. It's science.

They also have denser ones.
 
  • #11
Go, drizzle! My field is extremely out-of-favor, though there are interesting things to report. I hope you can cut through and get some recognition.
 
  • #12


tiny-tim said:
Lisa Meitner should have won it, and didn't.

I have a Periodic Table with the erstwhile "Hahnium" (105, now Dubnium). ANd now we have Meitnerium (109). Who's laughing now, Otto?
 
  • #13
Women do physics?
 
  • #14
There is a Nobel Prize in Physics?
 
  • #15
Not a lot of women like physics, either now or throughout history. Probably even fewer women like computer science, even though women probably have greater tolerance for the most time-consuming aspect of programming (guess what it is?) than men.
 
  • #16
I believe in the philosophy that if you see a problem go fix it!

This is out of context, but in practice, I am more like if there is no (Engineering) problem go create (find) one.
 
  • #17
Yah there's an extremely disproportionate number of men in physics than women so you think one could understand the extreme disproportionate number of male nobel prize winners.

Makes you wonder why people make a stink when women only make up 4 of 10 positions on some random government chair or women score .0001% worse on some standerdized test yet you have a billion to 1 ratio of men to women in physics and no one cares.
 
  • #18
rootX said:
I believe in the philosophy that if you see a problem go fix it!

This is out of context, but in practice, I am more like if there is no (Engineering) problem go create (find) one.

Where's the problem? I don't see the fact that men and women are interested in different things as a "problem". Diversity is a good thing, which is why evolution gave us sexual reproduction in the first place.
 
  • #19
From what I've read, men tend to be over-represented in physics and engineering whereas women are overrepresented in linguistics and law. I've also read that male brains tend to be slightly better with spatial-mathematical thinking whereas women tend to be better with language, patterns/relations, and memory.

Based on this, I find it interesting that men tend to be overrepresented in fields such as physics and engineering whereas women are overrepresented in fields such as linguistics and law.
 
  • #20
ideasrule said:
Where's the problem? I don't see the fact that men and women are interested in different things as a "problem". Diversity is a good thing, which is why evolution gave us sexual reproduction in the first place.

If you don't see it as a problem, go find another one.
 
  • #21
ideasrule said:
Where's the problem? I don't see the fact that men and women are interested in different things as a "problem". Diversity is a good thing, which is why evolution gave us sexual reproduction in the first place.

I completely agree. I remember in one of my cognitive development classes, my teacher talked about a study that followed young women who were exceptionally talented in mathematics to see if they went on to chose careers as mathematicians. From what I recall, unlike their male counterparts, most didn't go into pure mathematics for their careers. They opted instead for work involving applied math and science - medicine, biology, solving social problems, etc. It just seems that women may be generally more attracted to different professions than men are. Far from being a problem, many people benefited from their choices.
 
  • #22
Math Is Hard said:
Far from being a problem, many people benefited from their choices.

Especially the men who they would have worked for if they chose those other fields... :wink:
 
  • #23
The ratio is likely to get worse, with LHC style mega projects the prizes are going to go to directors of institutes rather than individual discoverers. Men are a higher proportion of directors of mega projects than they are of cutting edge young researchers.
 
  • #24
ideasrule said:
Probably even fewer women like computer science, even though women probably have greater tolerance for the most time-consuming aspect of programming (guess what it is?) than men.
Debugging, though I don't know if the girls I know write code any less bug free than the guys I know.
Off topic, but comp sci has a somewhat decent percentage of women (about %18-%24, reaching almost %50 in some industry shops), Ada Lovelace is often credited as being the first programmer, and women have made lots of really significant contributions to the field.
 
  • #25
story645 said:
Debugging, though I don't know if the girls I know write code any less bug free than the guys I know.
Off topic, but comp sci has a somewhat decent percentage of women (about %18-%24, reaching almost %50 in some industry shops), Ada Lovelace is often credited as being the first programmer, and women have made lots of really significant contributions to the field.

On the network side, I got to give props to Radia Perlman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman
 
  • #26
Leptos said:
From what I've read, men tend to be over-represented in physics and engineering whereas women are overrepresented in linguistics and law. I've also read that male brains tend to be slightly better with spatial-mathematical thinking whereas women tend to be better with language, patterns/relations, and memory.

Based on this, I find it interesting that men tend to be overrepresented in fields such as physics and engineering whereas women are overrepresented in fields such as linguistics and law.

ja, women seem to be well-represented in anatomy, and they seem to think that rote memorization of structures is the easy part.
 
  • #27
drizzle said:
Okay I know the woman Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband, Pierre Curie. But seriously, is there not one who won the prize by herself... ALONE?!


Guess what I'm thinking :devil:

Look at it this way: she was very nice that she decided to share it with his husband!:-p
 
  • #28
blue and yellow

mgb_phys said:
And yet the blue whale, in spite of it's brain size, continues to be ignored by the color-biased Nobel committee

And goldfish too! :mad:

Perhaps if blue whales and goldfish got together, the Nobel commitee would see them as white? :smile:
 
  • #29
Leptos said:
From what I've read, men tend to be over-represented in physics and engineering whereas women are overrepresented in linguistics and law. I've also read that male brains tend to be slightly better with spatial-mathematical thinking whereas women tend to be better with language, patterns/relations, and memory...

Can you back up this statement? Cause I don't think it's true
 

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