The title of this article really shouldn’t surprise you, because one quality every man has is audacity. However, the contents may shock you, as you realize that objects you use every day and some discoveries that redefined disciplines, were all made by women and credited to men.
As if monthly (hopefully) periods, the wage gap, and being catcalled 24/7 just wasn’t enough! So, dive into some of the discoveries women made that men shamelessly took credit for.
- Discovery of DNA by Rosalind Franklin
- Franklin’s X-ray photographs of DNA revealed the molecule’s true structure as a double helix, which was a theory denounced by scientists James Watson and Francis Crick at the time. However, since Watson and Crick originally discovered the (single) helix, they ended up receiving a Nobel Prize for their research.
- The first electronic computer
- The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first computer ever built. In 1946, six women programmed this electronic computer as part of a secret World War II project. Inventor John Mauchly is often the only one who gets credit for its creation, but the programmers are the ones who fully developed the machine.
- Monopoly Board Game
- The invention of everyone’s favorite board game has been credited to Charles Darrow, who sold it to Parker Brothers in 1935. But it was Elizabeth Magie Phillips who came up with the original inspiration, The Landlord’s Game, in 1903. Ironically, she designed the game to protest against monopolists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
- Dark Matter
- Astrophysicist, Vera Rubin, worked with astronomer, Kent Ford, between the 60’s and 70’s and confirmed the existence of dark matter when they understood the pattern of movements of stars outside a galaxy. She is dubbed a “national treasure,” but still remains without a Nobel Prize, for obvious reasons.
- Moon Landing Path
- I really hope you all have watched Hidden Figures and if not, get on the bandwagon now! The movie follows the life of Katherine Johnson, a mathematician at NASA who was nicknamed a “computer” due to her undeniable intelligence, but as the movie shows, she faced immense racial and sexist discrimination.
- The Law of Parity
- During WWII, Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, working with two men, Dr. Tsung-Dao Lee and Dr. Chen Ning Yang. According to the National Women’s History Museum, “Wu observed that there is a preferred direction of emission, which disproved what was then a widely accepted ‘law’ of nature.” Guess who got a Nobel Prize in 1957 for this discovery and guess who didn’t?
It’s time for males to step up and recognize women’s amazing successes and efforts. Recognize their persistent efforts, the challenges they face, and the wisdom they bring to the table. Give credit where credit is due, not just because it is the correct thing to do, but also because it is long overdue.
Celebrate women, because they can accomplish what men can do, while literally bleeding.
