A clear example of the gender bias that still exists in science is to look at the Nobel Prize winners.
Today there are only 4 female Nobel laureates in Physics, 12 in Physiology or Medicine, and 7 in Chemistry.
If we look at all the categories, the Nobel has been awarded 889 times to a man and 58 times to a woman.
Fortunately, parity is currently being reached in some science careers, mainly in biomedical sciences, although there is still much to be done in engineering, physics or mathematics, where there is still an imbalance, which becomes greater if, instead of looking at the students, we are moving up the academic ladder from associate professors to full professors.
The perspective is that many of these problems will be corrected as the generational change progresses, but it is not advisable to lower our guard.
When the time has come to have a science without bias, it will be the opportunity not to forget the pioneers because their path was very hard.
We all remember Marie Curie and her work in physics and chemistry.
In the field of genetics, there is a name that is unfairly unknown to the general public, that of Barbara McClintock, the woman who revolutionized genetics by studying maize.
Barbara was born in the United States in 1902. She graduated in Agronomic Engineering from Cornell University in 1923. And here the problems begin.
Her interest was genetic improvement, but she had to do a doctorate in Botany because the genetic improvement department did not admit women.
She wanted to do a postdoctoral stay after defending her thesis, but her scholarship was denied.
Her reason was that it was not recommended to give it to a woman because at any moment she could get married and drop out of school, so they would have wasted a scholarship.
She had to endure her manager's reprimand because she had seen her engagement advertised in the local newspaper.
In reality, it was another Barbara McClintock who had no relation to her.
It seems that when a woman works in science she has to continually explain her private life and answer questions that no man is asked.
Thanks to her determination, none of these adverse circumstances affected her scientific production.
She dedicated herself to studying the cells of maize.
The first problem she tried to solve was how many chromosomes this cereal had.
For that she had to develop complicated staining techniques.
Which served to answer another fundamental question.
We all know that siblings, despite coming from the same father and mother, are not identical (except in the case of identical twins).
At the time it was not clear what was the cellular mechanism by which this happened since they have the same genetic material.
The American biologist Morgan had discovered studying flies that, when eggs or sperm are formed, random crossing over between a pair of chromosomes can occasionally occur.
For practical purposes, this would be like having two slightly different decks of cards.
We put them together, shuffle them and separate them again, so that the genetic material in each germ cell will be different, mixing parts of the father and the mother, and that is why non-sisters are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
When eggs or sperm are formed, random crossing over between a pair of chromosomes can occasionally occur.
For practical purposes, this would be like having two slightly different decks of cards.
We put them together, shuffle them and separate them again, so that the genetic material in each germ cell will be different, mixing parts of the father and the mother, and that is why non-sisters are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
When eggs or sperm are formed, random crossing over between a pair of chromosomes can occasionally occur.
For practical purposes, this would be like having two slightly different decks of cards.
We put them together, shuffle them and separate them again, so that the genetic material in each germ cell will be different, mixing parts of the father and the mother, and that is why non-sisters are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
For practical purposes, this would be like having two slightly different decks of cards.
We put them together, shuffle them and separate them again, so that the genetic material in each germ cell will be different, mixing parts of the father and the mother, and that is why non-sisters are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
For practical purposes, this would be like having two slightly different decks of cards.
We put them together, shuffle them and separate them again, so that the genetic material in each germ cell will be different, mixing parts of the father and the mother, and that is why non-sisters are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
and that is why non-univitelino siblings are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
and that is why non-univitelino siblings are not identical.
Barbara McClintock was the first to demonstrate this recombination at the cytological level by observing it in corn pollen thanks to the techniques that she herself had previously developed.
But that was not what earned him the Nobel, but a discovery of much more importance.
There are varieties of corn in which each grain has a different color.
The existence of these varieties was a mystery to science.
The pattern of inheritance of these colors seemed to escape all the laws of genetics known up to that time.
McClintock was able to discover a general process by studying a particular problem.
This apparently random distribution of colors was due to the fact that in the genome, which was supposed to be static and immutable, there were elements capable of moving from one place to another.
This discovery was greeted with disbelief by the scientific community.
But time is an implacable judge, who agreed with McClintock and his discovery has been essential to understand, for example, the human genome.
The Nobel came, albeit very late, in 1983, 30 years after the publication of his results.
Spain, without Physics or Chemistry
— If we look at the countries with Nobel Prizes, Spain does not seem to be doing very well in science.
We do not have any Nobel Prize for Physics or Chemistry, only one for Medicine, that of Ramón y Cajal (1906), plus that of Severo Ochoa, who, given that when he received the award (1959) he had United States nationality and carried out all the research in that country, in many rankings it is considered American or is given double attribution.
JM Mulet is Professor of Biotechnology.
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