Belated award

[supergee]

Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulsars but did not get a Nobel Prize for it because everybody knows gurlz can’t do science. 44 years later the scientific establishment had a collective rush of brains to the head and awarded her the Breakthrough Prize, which brings with it $3 million. Apparently, she was not awarded a phallic object with which to express her feelings about the original judges, but she’s doing something even better: donating the prize to science scholarships for women and minorities, which I am in favor of less on social justice grounds than because we need all the science we can get. [LiveScience]

Thanx to Metafilter

Comments

[mrissa]

...that's what social justice is for, Arthur. More good stuff for everybody, whether it's science or art or babies who don't have lead poisoning. That is literally what social justice grounds are. You don't have to disavow social justice because we need all the science we can get, because the two go together, and also "less on social justice grounds" is the new "I am not a feminist but."