• Question: Who is the most famous scientist from a minority group?

    Asked by bench1001 to Craig on 8 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Craig O'Hare

      Craig O'Hare answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      This is an excellent question considering today is International Women’s day!

      If I’m being honest, who the most famous minority scientist is, is more a personal opinion rather than a fact.

      Considering the day that is in it, if we look at women you would probably say Marie Curie who was a pioneering scientist in the field of radioactivity. She won the Nobel prize for Physics and Chemistry for her research, making her the first person (and only woman) to ever win twice.

      I think looking only at dead scientists for this would be a bit depressing. So let’s talk about living ones too! Two very famous living women scientists are Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier. They discovered a genetic tool called CRISPR that will make it faster and easier for scientists and hopefully one day doctors to edit genetic information. This work could be used to cure inheritable genetic diseases like Cystic Fibrosis or Muscular Distrophy.

      There are also loads of examples of excellent scientists among people of colour such as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson or astronaut Mae C. Jemison.

      In terms of LGBT scientists, the most well known example is Alan Turning. He was a brilliant mathematician and his work allowed us to eventually go on to make computers, and made major contributions to cryptography (code breaking) during world war II, but his story is quite sad. He was found out to be gay before the decriminalisation of homosexuality and as a result subjected to horrific treatment by the state (rather than go to prison he was instead chemically castrated).

      I’m afraid I don’t know of many famous LGBT scientists currently living who would be considered role models on the same level, but I don’t feel that everyone needs to be famous to be a good role model. Because of this I’d like to think my photo project could allow people to just identify more LGBT scientists and women scientists so that they could be role models for them.

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