Paris. The death of the French Marthe Gautier, co-discoverer of the chromosome that causes Down syndrome, once again puts on the table the debate about the “forgetfulness” suffered by female scientists.
Gautier’s role was only recognized in the 2010s, despite her work alongside her male colleagues, Jérôme Lejeune and Raymond Turpin.
His last name, misspelled, appeared in the background in the signatures of the article that caused a sensation in 1959, explaining the chromosomal origin of the syndrome.
An ethics committee vindicated the name of the scientist in 1994 by admitting that “the role of Jérôme Lejeune (…) was probably not very preponderant” in the genesis of the discovery. Gautier, who died on Saturday aged 96, was only recognized in the 2010s. She was destined to be a pediatrician and in the 1950s she joined the team of Turpin, who was studying Down syndrome.
Supporter of the hypothesis of the chromosomal origin of this syndrome, Turpin proposed the idea of using cell cultures to count the number of chromosomes of affected children.
Gautier offered to do it using the techniques that he had learned in a course in the United States and that he had mastered to perfection. He thus played a key role in the discovery.
Gautier’s case is reminiscent of that of the British Rosalind Franklin, a chemist who identified the double helix structure of DNA. However, the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three men for that discovery.
British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell discovered the first pulsar in 1967, but the Nobel Prize went to her thesis director, without her name appearing anywhere.
Margaret Rossiter, historian of science, issued a theory on this discrimination in the early 1990s, following the work of sociologist Robert King Merton.
According to the expert, the darkening suffered by the collaborators of great scientific personalities grows when it comes to female assistants.
The “Matilda effect”, named after the feminist activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, investigates the phenomenon that makes women in science invisible.
“In the 19th century, women in Europe were practically excluded from the world of science in the name of their alleged natural inferiority,” Louis-Pascal Jacquemond, a historian specializing in women and science, tells AFP.
This situation lasted for decades in the 20th century. This is the case of the wife of Albert Einstein, the physicist Mileva Marić.
Marie Curie’s name always appears next to her husband’s.
It was the well-known “glass ceiling” that prevented women from accessing decision-making positions or scientific renown for a long time, despite the fact that “the policies of democratization of education after the Second World War that increased the number of young people and women in science”, highlights Jacquemond.
Even in the 21st century, “high-level female scientists are still considered exceptional,” deplores this specialist.
“For a long time the role of women was perceived as subordinate, auxiliary,” adds physicist Sylvaine Turck-Chièze.
Women’s names aren’t mentioned as often as they should be in school textbooks, says Natalie Pigeard-Micault, a specialist in the history of medicine and women.
“Women in the scientific branches in secondary schools are very good students, but they are not taught to fight against invisibility, to defend themselves when someone takes over their work,” says Ophélie Latil, founder of a French association that organizes workshops at that level of studies to change the situation.
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