Update: the Nobel Prize for physics for 2020 went to the scientist for whose profile I created the Finkbeiner Test; and the prize for chemistry went to the two scientists who helped create CRISPR; and to the amazement of headline writers everywhere, all three were women. I had to get all over Twitter, grading these […]
Finkbeiner Test
This post was originally published on March 5, 2013 at Double X Science, a now defunct website about women in science. Since then, it’s gotten quite a bit of attention, including a story in the Columbia Journalism Review, a mention in the New York Times, and even its own Wikipedia page. The Finkbeiner Test also has […]
Apparently we’re feminine/ist this week, or so far Emma and I are. I want to argue about the Finkbeiner Test. The test began with a heroic vow: I would write a profile of a woman scientist without the clichés that litter these profiles. The test took off when Christie wrote a post about my post […]
In an obituary for veteran rocket scientist Yvonne Brill this weekend, the New York Times disastrously failed science writer Christie Aschwanden’s Finkbeiner test for profiling scientists. She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew […]
I have an assignment from a magazine to write a profile of a woman astronomer. I am delighted about this: the magazine is excellent, the editors are superb, and the woman astronomer is impressive. I did notice that the assignment came just before the magazine announced publicly it needs to redress its problem with a […]