We provide a short list of individuals who have made significant contributions to the advancement of science, yet are commonly overlooked in undergraduate curricula. It is undoubtedly a non-exhuastive list, and many others deserving recognition have not been included. If you would like to contribute to growing this list, please do send us an email with a short biography (similar to what has been written) of the scientist and we would be happy to add them in.
We include women, LGBTQI+, disabled, and black scientists whose significant scientific contributions have been overlooked. It is important to recognise that while the contributions of those on this list have been undervalued, they were at least able to participate professionally in science. However, this list is unable include the many talented scientists who were excluded from pursuing a professional scientific career and publishing/presenting their work, due to structural inequalities. This relates to the concept of “undone science” (see WJ Richardson's chapter in Decolonising the University), typically used to describe areas of research that are unfunded or ignored, but that we believe can be extended to include scientists whose ideas were never able to flourish or gain traction due to their exclusion from mainstream science.
Charles Henry Turner: his research was centred on animal behaviour, and he is perhaps best known for his discovery that insects can hear. He also showed that honeybees could recognise colours and patterns. He “published more than 70 papers in fields as diverse as avian morphology, natural history, insect navigation, education and civil rights — including the first paper by an African American in Science (C. H. Turner Science 19, 16–17; 1892). Unable to secure an academic job despite his publication record, Turner did most of his research while teaching on the meagre salary paid in African American high schools (W. S. Savage J. Negro Hist. 22, 335–344; 1937), without proper lab facilities, a library or graduate students.” Taken from Abramson, C. Charles Henry Turner remembered. Nature 542, 31 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542031d
Ernest Everett Just: conducted important research in cell and developmental biology of marine invertebrates. As an African American scholar he struggled to secure employment at a US university and relocated to Europe to continue his career. Despite Just’s reputation as an outstanding scientist he was never allowed to hold an appointment at a premier research university in the United States. There is some indication that Just was thinking about evolutionary problems, as before his death he was working on a paper entitled: “Ethics and the struggle for existence” but he died before completing this manuscript.
Eunice Foote: presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which demonstrated the effect of the sun’s rays on different gases, including carbonic acid, and theorised that this had taken place in the Earth’s atmosphere to affect its climate. As a woman, Foote had not been permitted to read her own paper; it was read for her by Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution, who started by protesting that science should not discriminate on the grounds of gender. But it was nonetheless the case that Foote’s paper was not widely published and after its reading, she vanished into obscurity. The discovery of the greenhouse effect is usually credited to Irish physicist John Tyndall (1859), who published results three years after Foote’s work was presented, demonstrating that gases such as carbonic acid trapped heat, and that this effect could and did take place in the Earth’s atmosphere, contributing to a changing climate
over time.
George Washington Carver: Agricultural scientist born (1864) into slavery. He developed hundreds of commercial uses for alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes. He became an agricultural adviser to President Roosevelt and one of the few American members of the British Royal Society of Arts.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum: was the first scientist to characterise Ebola while working as a field epidemiologist during an outbreak, but the white, Western scientists who worked on the blood samples he sent them were credited with the discovery. He has since developed public health measures and clinical treatments for the disease, and now leads the national response to outbreaks in the DRC. See here and here for more info.
Muriel Wheldale Onslow: a British biochemist known for her study of the inheritance of flower color in the common snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus), which contributed to the foundation of modern genetics. While at the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at the University of Cambridge, she worked with William Bateson. From her experiments with crossing plants of different flower color, Wheldale demonstrated that traits are inherited by offspring in specific proportions, thereby affirming Gregor Mendel’s (so far overlooked) theory of inheritance. She reported her landmark findings in 1907 in a paper titled “The Inheritance of Flower Colour in Antirrhinum majus.” She also conducted insightful research on the biochemistry of pigment molecules in plants.
Nettie Stevens: first discovered sex chromosomes in 1905, after noting in mealworms that male cells carried one chromosome smaller than the rest, whereas female cells carried all equally sized chromosomes. Edmund Beecher Wilson, Stevens’ colleague, is more often credited with the discovery. He did publish first, but this may have been only after seeing Stevens’ results. Wilson also thought that environmental factors were involved in sex determination, while Stevens correctly identified that it was solely down to chromosomes.
Roger Arliner Young: the first African American woman to receive a doctorate degree in zoology in 1940. She studied the effects of direct and indirect radiation on sea urchin eggs, on the structures that control the salt concentration in paramecium, as well as hydration and dehydration of living cells, and was the first African American to publish professionally in this field. Prior to obtaining her doctorate, she did not achieve high grades in early education and struggled to obtain funding for Masters and doctoral study. Young assisted Ernest Everett Just in his research at Howard University from 1927 through 1930, but although her assistance was noted in his grant applications, her name does not appear as a coauthor in the resulting publications.
Rosalind Franklin: a chemist, X-ray crystallographer and leading molecular biologist who discovered the structure of DNA. Her most critical work was capturing an image of the DNA molecule's structure. Francis Crick and James Watson used her research to publish their double helix theory of DNA structure. Franklin published her work shortly after Watson & Crick, but it was largely dismissed as confirmation of her male colleagues’ discovery. Franklin died from ovarian cancer at 37, never knowing her research was stolen. Four years later, Maurice Wilkins, Crick and Watson received the Nobel Prize for the double helix theory of DNA. Watson later authored the book, The Double Helix, in which he continued to credit himself and his male colleagues for their discovery and described Franklin as an antagonistic and overly emotional woman.
Sara Josephine Baker: is most famous for tracking down (twice) ‘typhoid mary’ – an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid responsible for several separate outbreaks. She was a pioneer of child health who’s public health initiatives reduced infant mortality in New York’s poorest areas. She often wore masculine clothing and lived openly with her partner, Ida (who brilliantly described herself as a ‘woman-orientated woman’). She petitioned for and won a place at New York University Medical School (after no more qualified man could be found) and became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in public health.