Disappering Act // Hazlitt
Lise Meitner
Hazlitt
In 1993, Margaret Rossiter coined a term for the forgotten women in science and, more generally, academia: The Matilda Effect. There was a pattern throughout history, she argued, of women who, when compared to men, failed to receive equal recognition or reputation for equal scientific achievement. These are the women whose names have been relegated to footnotes, or whose accomplishments have been scrubbed out like a blemish. “Not only have those unrecognized in their own time generally remained so,” Rossiter wrote, “but others that were well-known in their day have since been obliterated from history.” To look back at historic record, we might think that women hardly made any contribution to science at all—but that’s not the case.