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parineumlast Wednesday at 3:37 AM0 repliesview on HN

Either the article chose some bad examples from this list or the list is underwhelming. After browsing a few comments explaining a bit of context for some of these entries, I read the article (comments first, always...) only to find that there wasn't much more to it.

> The Timeline series profiles a few of the women whom it describes as prime examples of the Matilda effect, including Dr. Lise Meitner...

Explanation in another comment is, long story short, she was Jewish amd the work was published in Nazi Germany. Previous to the referenced ommision, jer name was included on many published papers with the men who omitted her name on a paper published at a more tenuous time.

> Likewise, the name of Alice Augusta Ball has been “all but scrubbed from the history of medicine,” though it was Ball, an African American chemist from Seattle, Washington, who pioneered what became known as the Dean Method, a revolutionary treatment for leprosy.

This one seems egregious. After looking at a few other sources, it seems to be consensus.

Dean published their/her work in his own name and, while giving others credit for their contributions, completely ommitted Ball who, seemingly, made the most significant contribution.

> Other women in the Matilda effect series include bacterial geneticist Esther Lederberg, who made amazing discoveries in genetics that won her husband a Nobel Prize...

This also seems to be a good example but it was interesting to see that her husband seemed to steal the credit. They later divorced but not until 10 years after the Nobel. I tried to find more information on it but didn't find anything not paywalled that addressed that.

> Irish astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, but was excluded from the Nobel awarded to her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish and astronomer Martin Ryle.

Addressed in another comment, she was a student at the time and they, apparently, don't award the Nobel to students in most circumstances. She, herself, doesn't believe she should have won it.

> A similar fate befell Dr. Rosalind Franklin, the chemist excluded from the Nobel awarded to her colleagues James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins for the discovery of DNA.

A similar but different circumstance as Burnell. Franklin died well before the prize was awarded and they don't give the award posthumously. Allegations of stolen research seem disputed and the authors did give her credit for her research in the paper.