Tom Breton <tehom at REMOVEpanNOSPAMix.com> wrote:
>But there is also a legitimate question of favoritism towards a
>birth-group, women. Consider just the facts we saw in the Curie case,
>well before Feminism reached its current power:
In an era when women had virtually no respect in the sciences in
France, Marie Curie rose to the highest levels.
>A confessed advocate for women scientists sitting on the nominating committee
"confessed" - you make it sound like a sin.
>and taking direct action to secure a woman's nomination,
She WASN'T nominated, yet she was already well know for the work. He
simply asked why.
>the admitted fact that Pierre secured Marie her part of the prize by his letter,
It is not "admitted". Pierre's letter may or may not have had
anything to do with her getting the prize. It was a letter to that
"advocate" who obviously already thought she was worthy of
consideration, not to the Nobel committee.
>Marie's
>second prize for which the cited work was at best joint work with
>Pierre,
Actually, Pierre had NO part in that work
http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/ph/sci/msc.htm
>Turning to minerals, her attention was drawn to pitchblende, a mineral
> whose activity, superior to that of pure uranium, could only be
> explained by the presence in the ore of small quantities of an
> unknown substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie then joined her
> in the work that she had undertaken to resolve this problem and that
> led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium and radium. While
> Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the physical study of the new
> radiations, Maria Curie struggled to obtain pure radium in the
> metallic state--achieved with the help of the chemist A. Debierne,
> one of Pierre Curie's pupils.
Pierre was working on physics of radiation, while Marie was working on
the chemistry.
>a prize which the committee admitted (not noted on either site
>AFAICT) was aimed at giving her unshared recognition.
If she deserved unshared recognition, then why is this an "admission"?
>Thus when a prize is shared between man and woman, there's a
>legitimate suspicion that the man provided disproportionately more of
>the gravitas and credibility, since the woman also provided the
>rewarded quality of being female.
Only for bigots like you who thing that one must be a man to have
gravitas and credibility.
To the rest of us, the fact that she overcame the anti-female bigotry
in an era when there was no "affirmative action", to become one of the
most highly recognized scientists in French history (even though she
was Polish by nationality), the fact that she overcame silly scandals
about her love life and went on to direct a major research institute
and to singlehandedly raise her daughter to be a Nobel-caliber
scientist, shows that her performance was unquestionably great.
>Of course, favoritism to women is not the only factor, it's probably
>not even the dominant factor, but one shouldn't overlook it.
If anything, the "favoritism" was AGAINST women. When that happens,
it takes a truly superior talent to overcome the favoritism, and
sometimes it may even take an "advocate" asking a pointed question.
lojbab
