They're American. They're Women. And They're a Triumvirate of Nobel Prize Winners!
Black (news) Holes Can't Dim Their Lights
In the 119 years since 1901 when the first Nobel Prize was given out, only 58 of those prizes have gone to women. Marie Curie won twice, so 57 women have won.
Of those 57, only 17 of those Nobel Prize winners have been American women.
And of those 17 American women, three of them are women who won the Nobel Prize this year — in 2020.
Two of these amazingly accomplished women — Andrea Ghez and Jennifer Doudna — were awarded their Nobel Prizes in the traditionally male-dominated "hard science" fields of Physics and Chemistry, respectively.
To give you some perspective, only four women from around the globe — over the course of 119 years — have ever even won a Nobel in Physics. It’s pretty wild to note that two of those women have been Americans: Ghez, of course, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer -- a German-born American who won in 1963.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry -- for a woman -- is almost as rare. Doudna is, I believe, only the seventh woman to ever receive that recognition, and only the second American woman.
Louise Glück won this year in Literature -- only the third time an American woman has won the Nobel Price for Literature over the course of 119 years.
Three American women. Three Nobel Prizes. An outstanding triumvirate of female genius in one year.
A happy circumstance that has never happened before in the history of Nobel Prizes. There’s never been a year where more than one woman from the same country has won in a single year.
The closest it’s ever been was, yes, you guessed it — when American women won two Nobels in 2009. All other years in which women have won a Nobel Prize, even when there were several women winning in a year — there was never more than one woman from one country winning. Until this year.
So, this 2020 American women trio of triumph is pretty important stuff.
And, yet, this striking historical achievement for American women — particularly American women scientists — has received little to no fanfare.
Tell me, dear reader, how much did you hear about all this?
A lot? A little? Nada, zip, zero?
I'm guessing it was a big, fat goose egg.
In doing a bit of googling, I did find a few articles here and there about the two women who won in the sciences, and I found a few more about Glück, but I couldn't find a single article about the stellar achievement of all three in one year.
So why didn't you hear more about it? I could speculate and postulate ... create some cute conspiracy theories ... rail against a chauvinist media, etc. And, of course, everybody's got quite a bit on their minds lately, what with a pandemic and political maelstrom. But, really, I'm just going to blame the lack of attention this great news received on the prevalence of black holes.
Ms. Ghez is only the fourth woman in the history of the Nobel prizes to win for Physics and she won, according to an October 6 The New York Times article, for her work "on the gateways to eternity known as black holes, massive objects that swallow light and everything else forever that falls in their unsparing maws."
I'm in awe of Ghez's discoveries around black holes, but I wish she had talked to me before she went to the edges of eternity in her research. I could have shown her a fairly massive black hole swallowing light and everything else much closer to home.
The Times reporting went on to say that Ghez won the award because of her "relentless and decades long investigation of the dark monster here in the center of our own galaxy, gathering evidence to convict it of being a supermassive black hole."
I think I know another dark monster I'd like to see convicted.
(You didn't really think I'd skip politics altogether this close to an election did you? — image from globaljustic.org.uk)
My Trump-jabbing aside, I hope we soon see a 60 Minutes segment on these three amazing American women. And if you know a little girl — or a grown woman — out there who hasn't heard this news -- be sure to tell her, okay? Share this blog post seven ways to Sunday — I’ve made it free and public because it’s big frickin’ news.
These American women have rocked. It. Out.
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MC, these women absolutely rock - and so do you! Enjoying your work, can’t wait to see what’s next...
I did hear the exciting win for 3 amazing women...thank goodness something positive to remember for 2020. Good read MC!