Women in Atomic and Molecular Physics

Göttingen, Germany. 1930. A young woman stands before her doctoral committee, nerves coiled tight in her chest. She's about to defend her thesis on quantum mechanics. Across the table sit three men who will, in the coming years, win Nobel Prizes. Max Born. James Franck. Adolf Windaus. The intellectual firepower in that room could have crushed most candidates. But Maria Goeppert Mayer walked out with her doctorate. Then she married an American chemist and moved to the United States, expecting opportunity. What she found instead was a system designed to keep brilliant women in the shadows. For thirty years, she worked without pay or proper titles. At Johns Hopkins, they refused to hire her because of anti-nepotism rules. At Columbia in the 1940s, she "volunteered" her expertise, even covering classes for Enrico Fermi himself. Imagine that. Teaching for a future Nobel laureate. For free. After the war, Argonne National Laboratory brought her on board to work in nuclear physics. There was just one problem: she knew almost nothing about the field. But Goeppert Mayer had spent decades being underestimated, and she'd learned something valuable. When the world expects nothing from you, you're free to surprise them. Within two years, she cracked one of physics' most stubborn puzzles. Why do certain numbers of protons and neutrons create extraordinarily stable atomic nuclei? Her shell model explained it elegantly, revolutionizing our understanding of nuclear structure. In 1963, the call came from Stockholm. Maria Goeppert Mayer had won the Nobel Prize in Physics, becoming only the second woman ever to receive it. The committee that once included three laureates had produced a fourth. She'd defended her thesis in front of Nobel Prize winners. Then she became one herself, despite a system that tried to make her invisible for three decades. Image Credit to Nobel Foundation (Wikimedia Commons) (Restored & Colorized)

The Forgotten Half-Life of Women in Physics: "I was far from the first woman to have to choose between career and family. But in our case, there was the added wrinkle that both of us were seeking academic careers in physics, which severely limited our options. This challenge is common enough in the academic world that it has its own nickname borrowed from a well-known problem in physics — the 'two-body problem.' History is filled with women who faced similar dilemmas, and more often than not, physics lost. Take the case of Harriet Brooks – Canada’s first woman nuclear physicist. Within a span of six years between 1898 and 1904, Brooks discovered the element radon, measured its half-­life, kickstarted the understanding of radioactive transmutation of elements, discovered the radioactive recoil effect, and pointed out the multiple stages of radioactive decay. Along the way, she had become the first woman to obtain a graduate degree at McGill University, and the first woman to work with two future Nobel Prize winners. She had proved her skills at three renowned academic institutions, and she had published a paper on her own in Nature. Yet she had to abandon her faculty position at Barnard College after announcing her engagement. Barnard, founded in 1889 in response to Columbia University’s policy of not admitting women students, insisted that she resign. Her advisor, the Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford, recognized her brilliance, describing her as another Marie Curie, but it wasn’t enough to save her career. Harriet Brooks is not the only woman that physics has lost to the gender variable. Lucy Mensing, who performed groundbreaking research in the emerging field of quantum mechanics, ended her physics career in 1930 after the birth of her first son. In Australia, Ruby Payne Scott blazed a trail in radio astronomy and later chose to start a family, but without any option for maternity leave, she gave up her career. In England, Muriel Barker graduated from Cambridge in 1915 (although as a woman she did not officially receive a Cambridge degree). She then continued her graduate studies in aeronautics at Cambridge. In 1922, she published new insights about the velocity of wind flowing through a narrow bar, but the same year, she hit the marriage bar” —­ a common policy in the UK that prevented married women from continuing to work. Who knows how many more women disappeared from the physics universe? All over the world, the marriage bar swept through the ranks of women scientists, removing every trace of them from the scientific record." Read more 👉 https://lnkd.in/eSmuQbrv #WomenInSTEM #GirlsInSTEM #STEMGems #GiveGirlsRoleModels

She discovered a particle before the world… but the world forgot her name. Bibha Choudhuri — one of India’s earliest women physicists — should have been taught in classrooms, celebrated in science museums, and remembered among the pioneers of modern physics. Instead, history quietly erased her from the spotlight. In 1939, while working with D. M. Bose, Bibha Choudhuri used a cloud chamber to study cosmic rays. What she observed was remarkable: clear experimental evidence of a new subatomic particle. It was the kind of breakthrough that, with proper backing and recognition, could have placed her on the road to a Nobel Prize. But she lived in an era when women in science were rarely celebrated — often sidelined, overlooked, or written out altogether. When similar findings were later reported by researchers abroad, they were welcomed with global acclaim. Bibha’s work was not. Yet, she never stopped. She moved to England and worked with Nobel laureate Patrick Blackett, contributing data that quietly shaped the foundations of early particle physics. Even there, recognition remained limited, her role largely understated. Bibha eventually returned to India, continued her research for decades, published significant scientific work — and still remained largely invisible in her own country. What makes her story unforgettable is not just the brilliance of her discovery, but the grace with which she carried herself. No bitterness. No demands for credit. Only a lifelong devotion to science. Today, as India slowly begins to remember her, one truth becomes undeniable: Bibha Choudhuri wasn’t forgotten because she lacked greatness — she was forgotten because the world wasn’t ready to acknowledge a woman who was far ahead of her time. Her legacy is no longer silent. https://lnkd.in/gJDpgh3v

Erased Jewish Women Scientists — Episode 3 MARIETTA BLAU (1894–1970) Vienna → Mexico → Vienna She made the invisible visible. In a small laboratory at the Radium Institute in Vienna, Marietta Blau coated glass plates with silver bromide emulsions — and caught traces of cosmic rays as they travelled through matter. It was the first time humanity had seen the tracks of subatomic particles. Others called it “the dawn of modern particle physics.” But her own dawn was brief. In 1938, the Anschluss came. The Radium Institute — once filled with Jewish minds — was emptied overnight. Blau was dismissed. Her instruments, her notes, her life’s work — left behind. She fled to Mexico, carrying nothing but her knowledge. Her student and collaborator, Hertha Wambacher, remained in Vienna and continued using Blau’s method. Across the Channel, at Bristol University, C. F. Powell refined the same technique — thicker emulsions, more sensitive films — and in 1950 received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries built directly on her invention. Her name was not mentioned. When she returned to Vienna years later, the city looked the same — but its memory had been rewritten. She was a stranger in the place where she had once opened a new window into the universe. Marietta Blau died quietly in 1970. And yet every photograph of a cosmic ray, every detector tracing the dance of particles, still carries her silent fingerprint. A woman who made the unseen visible — and was made invisible in return. I might never have known her story without Shirin Abbasinejad Enger , a professor of Kurdish origin, at McGill University, who dedicates her teaching not only to nuclear medicine but also to reviving the memory of women in science — many of them Jewish — whose contributions changed the world and were nearly forgotten. Her message reminded me that women in science still carry each other’s light across time.