Coloring in the Blanks
LGBTQIA Accomplishments in STEM
Diversity within the STEM fields in the United States is significantly unrepresentative of the country’s general population that the fields aim to educate and influence. In 2010, white males accounted for 51 percent of workers in science and engineering fields, but only 32 percent of the general population. This overrepresentation creates less space for racial minorities in STEM. For example, while Latinos and African Americans make up about 16 and 12 percent of the general population, they are only six and five percent of STEM workers respectively. Disparities also exist between the binary genders provided by census polls, with males representing 70 percent of the STEM workforce.
Although federal and local programs to increase gender and racial diversity in STEM are on the rise, initiatives to increase the diversity and inclusion of LGBTQIA people within these fields are lacking both attention and resources. This is because queer citizens are unaccounted for at a national level in the United States. The US Census has never contained questions about sexual orientation or gender identity, making it essentially impossible to assess the needs of and address the challenges these communities face. Furthermore, the use of binary gender categories in the current census completely erases trans and nonbinary identities. Thus, the lack of encompassing statistics leads to invisible and unrecognized communities.
However, informal surveys of LGBTQIA people in the United States and in STEM have been performed. The 2015 Queer in STEM survey reported that about 40 percent of queer scientists have not disclosed their identity to their coworkers. This number is even greater in traditionally male dominated and racially homogenous fields, like engineering and computer science, and suggests that less overall diversity creates less space and acceptance for queer identities. Furthermore, when marginalized identities, like race and class intersect with queer identities, invisibility and lack of recognition is heightened. In researching for this article, queer people of color were entirely absent from lists of LGBTQIA scientific achievements. In STEM, the privilege of whiteness creates less space for queer people of color, which is a significant limitation of this article.
Representation and equal opportunity are essential for diversifying any field because they provide resources and a visible framework that encourages marginalized groups to pursue and succeed in these areas. Representation is essential for the progression of science, providing different points of views, alternate ways of thinking and solving problems, and offering inclusionary goals and visions for different communities.
For these reasons, this article highlights the accomplishments of LGBTQIA people in STEM to emphasize the importance of striving towards inclusion and visibility.
Sara Josephine Baker (1873–1945)
Based in New York City, Baker was a physician who centrally focused on children’s health and aimed to reduce infant mortality rates, specifically in impoverished and immigrant communities. She helped train mothers in proper infant care, distributed clean milk and baby formula, and offered solutions to prevent infant blindness that was caused by the transmission of gonorrhea at birth. After retirement, she became the first female representative to the League of Nations and was president of the American Medical Women’s Association. Most interestingly, Baker helped catch Typhoid Mary, the first known healthy carrier of typhoid, twice.
Louise Pearce (1885–1959)
A dedicated physician and pathologist, Pearce researched African Sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), syphilis, and cancer over the course of her career. Her research led to an effective drug against African Sleeping Sickness which she used to treat patients during an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Afterwards, Pearce researched the course of syphilis in rabbits as well as studied the transmission and growth of malignant epithelial tumors. She received many honors for her work and was also the first elected woman member of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
Alan L. Hart (1890–1962)
Hart was a trans American physician and researcher who dedicated his career to the treatment of tuberculosis. He most notably influenced tuberculosis detection by pioneering the use of the X-ray, and he also implemented TB screening programs that aided in the prevention and isolation of this disease. This combination saved many lives because it preemptively detected TB before it began to show symptoms, and it also allowed for early intervention and isolation to prevent the spread and limit the amount of deaths it caused.
Alan Turing (1912–1954)
An incredibly intelligent English computer scientist, mathematician, and cryptographer, Turing is widely accredited as the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. His computation framework provided grounds for the first computer, as it theorized that a machine could simulate all mathematical deduction using binary symbols. During World War II, he cracked the code on a machine made by the Germans (“Enigma”) and deciphered German traffic signals. Despite his contributions, Turing was arrested on accounts of his sexuality in the 1950s, when homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, he was barred from working in cryptography up until his suspicious death by poison a few years later.
Neena Betty Schwartz (b. 1926)
Known for her work on the regulation of hormone signaling pathways in reproductive biology, Schwartz and her lab studied the feedback mechanisms that govern these signaling pathways in the menstrual cycle and discovered the hormone inhibin. Inhibin is a hormonal secretion in both the testes and ovaries and plays a central role in signaling and controlling hormone fluctuations. Schwartz is also known as a founding member of the Association for Women in Science. Later in her life, she revealed her lesbian identity in her autobiography “A Lab of My Own” in the hopes of “providing young gay scientists and other professionals with a lesson of possibilities for success and happiness without such splits in their lives.”
Ben A. Barres (b. 1955)
Barres is a neurobiologist at Stanford University who studies the interactions between neurons and glial cells in the mammalian central nervous system. His lab’s most recent publications identify microglial subsets that promote myelination, which is an axon insulator on nerve cells essential for a functional nervous system. He’s also a founding member of two organizations involved in the search for drug therapies that block neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s and in multiple sclerosis research investments. Barres was the first openly transgender scientist in the US National Academy of Sciences and is a proponent of reducing gender and racial bias within the science community.
Jim Pollack (1938–1994)
Interested in researching the atmospheric science of Earth and Mars, Pollack was an openly gay American astrophysicist who worked for NASA’s research center. A student of Carl Sagan, he worked with Sagan and Christopher McKay to theorize on the theory of nuclear winter, which is the prolonged global cooling effect that would occur following a nuclear war due to firestorms that inject soot into the stratosphere and block sunlight. Pollack also explored the weather on Mars to understand the overall climate of this planet.
Lynn Conway (b. 1938)
A computer scientist and electrical engineer, Conway’s research in microelectronics contributed to the “Mead and Conway revolution” of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) structural design in the 1970s. This discovery simplified chip design while also increasing its electronic power, and it has impacted the design of microelectronics worldwide by minimizing the semiconductor materials of electric design, like capacitors. Conway is a prominent and successful transgender woman and she continues to advocate for the employment opportunities and rights of transgender people in technology during her retirement.
Uzi Even (b. 1940)
Even is an Israeli professor of physical chemistry at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the spectroscopy of super-cold helium clusters and cluster impact chemistry. He has theoretically and experimentally explored the fragmentation patterns of heated molecular clusters and how their transition into fragments is in accordance with entropy. After his PhD, Even worked for the Israeli army’s Nuclear Research Center until his sexuality was discovered — a fireable offense in the Israeli military at the time. After his termination, he contributed to the changing that law so openly gay citizens could serve in their armed forces, and then became the first openly gay Israeli parliament member.
Sally Ride (1951–2012)
At the age of 32, Ride became the first American woman and the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, as well as the first known LGBTQIA astronaut. Of her many accomplishments, Ride flew twice on the Challenger before its disaster and spent more than 343 hours in space. After NASA, she dedicated her life to the education and encouragement of American youth to pursue STEM by becoming a college physics professor and the head of two STEM public-outreach programs for children. Her legacy continues in her name as she was the founder of the company Sally Ride Science that brought science programs to schools, and as the co-author of science children’s books she wrote with her wife.
