How the Matilda Effect Explains Why Brilliant Women Were Erased From History
And why its consequences are still felt today
The Polish physicist — and my fellow countrywoman — Marie Curie, née Maria Skłodowska, is one of the most famous female scientists today, but she very nearly wouldn’t be.
The Nobel committee that eventually awarded Marie, together with her husband, Pierre Curie, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 for their study into spontaneous radiation initially wanted to exclude her simply because she was a woman, which meant that her contributions to the field would’ve been entirely attributed to Pierre.
However, one of the nominating committee members, Swedish mathematician Magnus Goesta Mittag-Leffler, wrote to Pierre advising him of the situation. He then complained to the committee and demanded Marie’s name to be added to his nomination. And the rest is history.
(I have a hunch, though, that if Marie weren’t a married woman, this situation would’ve played out quite differently.)
Another brilliant physicist, Lise Meitner, born in Austria to a Jewish family, who discovered nuclear fission — the splitting of atoms that led to the development of nuclear energy and atomic weapons — wasn’t as lucky. It was her collaborator, Otto Hahn, who took home a…
