When the Physik Journal honored Nobel Laureates Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou for their discovery

The German Physical Society’s Physik Journal reached a new low in its current issue featuring a special section on this year’s Physics Nobel prizes. Half of the prize was awarded for the method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses, and was awareded in equal share to Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou. However, to honor the laureates and their discovery the Physik Journal managed to publish an article portraying Mourou as the brilliant genius (e.g., “äußerst innovativen und großartig visionären Wissenschaftler”) and mentioning Strickland only on the side, in one sentence in the whole article, as the PhD student who did some measurements (article; paywall).

Among illustrations showing the physical principles, the article starts with a big photo showing not the both Nobel laureates, but instead Mourou and the article’s author, sitting in the first row at a meeting of mostly old men. At the end of the article there’s even another photo of the author, who is Science and Technology Manager at an ELI facility in the Czech Republic. ELI is a research infrastrucure that Mourou had initiated, and remember: to promote ELI, Mourou had had made a “funny” creepy sexist video showing himself in the lab decorated by undressing half-naked young women (No Mourou, this is fun — yours is just creepy).

It’s worth noting that this article appeared in the Physik Journal’s December issue, so way after the uproar on the fact that a few months before Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel prize, a Wikipedia article was written about her but not approved by a Wikipedia moderator saying Strickland doesn’t qualify for Wikipedia.

So it’s not only that women are often neglected by the Nobel committee (e.g., Lise Meitner, Chien-Shiung Wu, Deborah Jin, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Vera Rubin) but when they are awarded they are almost entirely neglected in an article honoring them, making it sound like Donna Strickland received the prize just by mistake.

Colleagues have contacted the Physik Journal’s editorial board, but unfortunately they see no wrongdoing on their side, claiming only the author is responsible for the article.

For context: The German Physical society (DPG) claims to be the largest Physical Society in the whole world, however they are even today lacking basic programs or a division for e.g. diversity and inclusion which e.g. the US-American APS and AIP and the British IOP have installed for long time now (And here’s a symptomatic photo showing the previous, the current, and the future DPG presidents).

The society’s journal is the monthly “Physik Journal”. I had written an opinion piece on women* and queer inclusion in Physics, which after many alterations appeared in a very soft version on page 3 of the Physik Journal’s June 2018 issue. It had provoked people to leave the society, people claiming my article had no relevance at all and comparing me to the Nazis (and the Physik Journal even printed the Nazi comparison in a Letter to the Editor section of a later issue), but there is no interest by the society’s board in this topic at all.

I’m advocating for equal opportunities and women* visibility in the DPG for years now as board member of their working group on equal opportunities (AKC) but it’s so frustrating. Does anyone have any idea what to do with this? Please do write me because by now when I see such articles I start to feel like I just want to go to bed and sleep, I’m so extremely tired of all this. But this is dangerous. We as a society should not tolerate this anymore.

Increase the visibility of female scientists on Wikipedia

By Niki Vavatzanidis

Dear all,

if you are reading this, chances are high that you already are interested in empowering women in science (congratulations) and here is a very nice opportunity to go from “interested” to “actively promoting”. And that’s even without moving from your comfy couch!

How so? Less than 20% of biographies in Wikipedia are about women, meaning that too many links to women are red (as in: non-existent content). A WikiProject called “women in red” wants to change that by getting more and more blue links to women’s biographies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red).

So here is the chance to finally create your first Wikipedia article! Choose your favourite female scientist and write about her. Or translate an already existing biography and spread the knowledge into more corners of the world. Or improve an already existing article.

Of course, you can do this any time. If you like the additional inspiration of a group event, however, you can join the edit-a-thon taking place on March 24, 2018 in Berlin – online or in person: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Deutschland/Edith-a-thon_Frauen_in_Rot (sorry, the page is in German only, but an online translation should help).
Can’t make it on Saturday? Maybe you’d like to arrange your own little edit-a-thon with friends around a pot of tea or coffee.

Help make women blue in Wikipedia!

Interested? Here are some first steps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Essays/Primer_for_creating_women%E2%80%99s_biographies

Have fun with it!