Female scientists have made some incredible contributions to our world, but to this day, they still get harassed by their male colleagues. While that's simply not cool, Emily Temple-Wood's reaction to the harassment is pretty awesome.
Rather than letting herself sit around and get frustrated, she has dedicated herself to uploading a new Wikipedia article about a female scientist every time she gets an inappropriate email, some form of physical contact or any other unwanted attention from a male co-worker. She's been adding entries since 2012 and has since added hundreds of articles on feminine scientists from all backgrounds. While it would be nice if Ms. Temple-Wood went through her career without sexist comments, at least something great is coming from it.
Via NY Mag
Her Wikipedia article, alas, slants more towards her published results and is staid and boring. Did you know she enjoyed tennis? Not from the article. Compare it to John von Neumann's article, where we learn "Von Neumann liked to eat and drink; his wife, Klara, said that he could count everything except calories. He enjoyed Yiddish and "off-color" humor (especially limericks).[12] He was a non-smoker.". Oy vey - what a difference!
Or, the WP entry for McClintock says only "She successfully described the number of chromosomes, or karyotype, of N. crassa and described the entire life cycle of the species." From http://old.weedtowonder.org/files/pdf/McClintocks_World.pdf we learn the more powerful comment "Barbara, in two months at Stanford, did more to clean up the cytology of Neurospora than all other cytological geneticists had done in all previous time on all forms of mold.”
I'm dismayed to read the talk comments at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Barbara_McClintock . The phrase "the current picture is so sexy" reeks of the misogyny which dogged her life. More power to you Temple-Wood!