Equal science

Over the years women and minor people are getting more or in this case, equal opportunities in science fields more than ever now. Even with lesser opportunities, women and minor group people have done wonders in science. Some of them never got enough credit for the wonders they brought to STEM or worse, other great people were credited for their work. In this paper we will focus on two women who had an immense influence on science but were not credited for their work. One is Rosalind Franklin and the other is Ida Noddack.

Rosalind Franklin:

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1928), is the first person to discover the double helix shape of DNA when she was recruited to work at King’s college to work on structure of DNA. Her work was shared with Crick and Watson without her acknowledgement by her collaborator Maurice Wilkins. The photographs and data Franklin collected proved to be vital in Crick and Watson’s discovery of the double helix shape of DNA. In 1953, when Crick and Watson published their work, Franklin was not given any credit for her major contributions. Later on, when Crick and Watson were awarded nobel prize she was passed over for recognition due to no-posthumous award policy. 

Ida Noddack:

Ida Noddack (1896-1978) is the person who predicted or can be said to be the one who gave the theoretical ideas of Masurium and Nuclear Fission. She was denied to be credited for both the elements and as she did not prove anything experimental the scientific community doubted her claims that cost her credibility. Ida Noddack was credited for only one discovery that she did and that was the discovery of element rhenium or atomic number 75 which she not only predicted but also extracted with her husband. Although Noddack, like rhenium, successfully predicted an element with atomic number 43, that she called masurium, she was unable to extract it. The element was later artificially extracted by fellow scientists. When all her fellow members got nobel prizes, she protested again and again but to little avail, she failed to show any experimental idea, it had cost her the credit for all these world-changing inventions.