Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded

[Vorticity]

...to two physicists for their work on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the anisotropy therein:

Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot have won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe.

Mather, 60, works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Smoot, 61, works at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Their work was based on measurements done with the help of the NASA-launched COBE satellite in 1989. They were able to observe the universe in its early stages about 380,000 years after it was born. Ripples in the light they detected also helped demonstrate how galaxies came together over time.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/03/nobel.physics.ap/index.html

(An aside: I knew Smoot when I was a grad student at UC Berkeley.)

 

[stocks]

...to two physicists for their work on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the anisotropy therein:

In the two hardest science categories, physics and chemistry, men have made up all of the last 169 laureates going back to the last woman winner in 1964.

 

[Vorticity]

In the two hardest science categories, physics and chemistry, men have made up all of the last 169 laureates going back to the last woman winner in 1964.

Your point?

 

[Dilb]

Your point?

Clearly he is deeply disappointed by the lack of women in technical science. We need to stimulate female interest in science and engineering. The effort over the last 30 years to encourage women to become scientists, engineers and mathematicians does not seem to have worked terribly well. As an example, my engineering class had the largest proportion of women in my university's history (I think, anyway. It's the largest in recent years), at 25% women, and it's gone down from that. Clearly we need a new approach.

Now, from my experience with female engineers, a considerable number become engineers because their fathers were engineers. Thus, being an engineer (and not some statistician with his 'correlation is not causation' babble), we need to increase the number of engineers having female children, and since IVF and gender screening is rather expensive, we will simply try to increase the total number of children engineers have. Thus we have our new campaign: "Women can contribute to science. Date engineers and science majors."

 

[stocks]

Clearly he is deeply disappointed by the lack of women in technical science. We need to stimulate female interest in science and engineering.

While we're at it, let's stimulate male interest in nursing and elementary
school teaching and female interest in garbage collecting.

 

[jay gw]

Some women say there is a male bias in university administrations. Almost all university presidents are male.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-10-04-american-nobel-sweep_x.htm

 

[Dilb]

While we're at it, let's stimulate male interest in nursing and elementary
school teaching and female interest in garbage collecting.

Okay?

So what was your point? Did this thread simply seem like the best place to bring up the gender imbalance in advanced math and 'hard' science? Does the labelling of the CMB as anisotropic seem inherently sexist? Did you feel that because of the lack of women receiving Nobel prizes in physics Vorticity should have used a gender specific pronoun?

 

[stocks]

Okay?

So what was your point? Did this thread simply seem like the best place to bring up the gender imbalance in advanced math and 'hard' science? Does the labelling of the CMB as anisotropic seem inherently sexist? Did you feel that because of the lack of women receiving Nobel prizes in physics Vorticity should have used a gender specific pronoun?

Dilb,
Sorry. You're right. This is not an appropriate thread for a gender
imbalance discussion.

mike