Following in the footsteps of Émilie du Châtelet, Andrea Ghez

Find out more about the Noble Prize winners in Physics.

An inheritor of Émilie du Châtelet, Andrea Ghez

On Tuesday, among others, the German astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He and US astronomer Andrea Ghez will receive half of the award for the research on black holes, the other half is given to British mathematician and theoretical physicist Roger Penrose. 

You can read the full article in german on here: https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/leben/forschung-technik/andrea-ghez-ist-erst-die-vierte-frau-die-den-physik-nobelpreis-erhaelt-139406732

The 55-year-old US cosmologist Andrea Ghez, who also published a highly praised children’s book “You Can Be a Woman Astronomer” in 1995, is only the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics.The majority of Nobel Prize winners in science are male and often over 70.

 The recent Nobel Prize winner in Physics Andrea Ghez says that she hopes to inspire young women to enter the field. There is so much more to explore than black holes, she says.

 The imbalance between men and women is particularly significant in the case of scientific prizes: while there have been at least 17 female Nobel Peace Prize winners and 15 female Nobel Prize winners in literature to date, there have been far fewer in medicine (12), chemistry (5) and physics (3). Among the Nobel Prize winners in economics, only two women have won the award.

Thank you fellow Dieter Suisky for this great article!

On our website you can find out about another great female scientist named Emilie du Chatelet, who made significant contributions to science: https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/project/emilie-du-chatelet-1706-1749/

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