Written out of history: meet these forgotten women whose work in stem had been credited to men PT. 1

By Arielle Arbel, Executive Blog Director

Nettie Maria Stevens, Geneticist (1861-1912)

An entire career devoted to research, geneticist Nettie Maria Stevens revolutionized chromosome understanding in the scientific community. In 1905, Stevens observed that male mealworms produced two types of sperm, one that carried a large chromosome, while the other, a small chromosome. When fertilized with a female egg, the large chromosome would produce female offspring and the small chromosome would produce male offspring. Nettie Stevens then had the understanding this same application of chromosomes applied to human genetics as well, leading to her discovery of the X-Y determination system concept. This system states "that female offspring were determined by two large sex chromosomes (XX) male offspring by a large and small sex chromosome (XY)"

However, around the same Stevens made her discovery, fellow geneticist Edmund Beecher Wilson produced similar findings in his own research. Despite both researchers being correct in their findings, Nettie Maria Stevens was discriminated against due to her gender, leaving her work not being taken seriously by the scientific community and allowing only Wilson to be credited for the discovery.
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Rosalind Franklin, Chemist & Molecular Biologist (1920-1958)

“Rosalind Franklin was a chemist, X-ray crystallographer and leading molecular biologist who discovered the structure of DNA” (Pak, 2020). In 1952, Franklin used  X-ray crystallography techniques on DNA capturing an image of the molecule’s structure, creating what is identified as Photo 51. However, while doing her research, Rosalind Franklin had grown close with fellow researcher Maurice Wilkins. Unknown to Franklin at the time, Wilkins took Photo 51 and shared it with Francis Crick and James Watson, who used her research to publish their double-helix theory of DNA. “After publishing their work in 1953, Franklin would publish her own separate research on the same theory shortly thereafter. 

However, her manuscript was dismissed as merely confirming her male colleagues' discovery In 1958, Franklin died from ovarian cancer at 37, never knowing her research was stolen. Four years following her death, Wilkins, Crick, and Watson would go on to receive the Nobel Prize for their double-helix theory of DNA. Watson would later author the book, The Double Helix, in which he continued to credit himself and his male colleagues for their award-winning discovery and went on to describe Franklin as an antagonistic and overly emotional woman” (Pak, 2020).

Henrietta Leavitt, Astronomist (1868-1921)

During her time working as a “computer” for Harvard college Observatory (a term used for female astronomers employed to help analyze data), Henrietta Leavitt was given the assignment of measuring and recording “stars whose brightness would turn off and on at specific intervals. After cataloging over 2,400 stars, Leavitt discovered the relationship between luminosity and the period of a specific kind of variable stars called the Cepheids. This discovery helped astronomers see the universe in an entirely different way — both by helping measure the distance to other galaxies and understanding the universe's scale” (Pak, 2020). Much later after her death, astronomer Edwin Hubble directly used Leavitt’s discoveries to establish his observations stating the universe is continuously expanding. This statement, known as Hubble’s Law, is still used in science today.

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Sources

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, July 9). Rosalind Franklin. Wikipedia. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, June 12). Nettie Stevens. Wikipedia.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettie_Stevens.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, June 25). Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Wikipedia. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt.

Images courtesy of Wikipedia.