THE PHYSICIST WHO WROTE 200 WIKIPEDIA BIOGRAPHIES FOR WOMEN IN STEM
The first of dozens of positive Wikipedia pages about female scientists was written by Jessica Wade in 2018. Her encounter with climate researcher Kim Cobb at a conference served as the impetus for this first entry. Wade was so impressed by her work that he wanted to research the scientist and find out more about her on Wikipedia. In an interview with AAAS in 2019, Wade stated, "I thought Cobb was so fantastic." She didn't have a [Wikipedia] page when I went to see whether she had. I was simply appalled. Wade made the decision to write one for her at that point.
The British physicist has since committed herself to promoting accessibility and diversity in the STEM field, with a particular focus on women from diverse backgrounds. Of course, her Wikipedia bios, which she started writing in her twenties, are one of her numerous lobbying endeavours. With an emphasis on women and underrepresented scientists who have been ignored or forgotten by history, she has written over 2,000 articles for the online encyclopedia in less than ten years.
In a 2024 podcast discussion with Scientific American, Wade noted that only roughly 19% of biographies on English-language Wikipedia are about women, even though women make up 51% of the world's population. And it's not limited to female scientists either. That includes women in all occupations. That is, anyone who has gained notoriety on the Internet.
Through her research, Wade has rediscovered countless pioneers in their fields, including Gladys West, a Black woman born in the 1930s whose contributions to mathematics led to later advancements in GPS technology; Roma Agrawal, who led the engineers responsible for completing the Shard, Western Europe's tallest tower; and Dawn Shaughnessy, whose team of chemists discovered five of the super-heavy elements in the Periodic Table. Wade has received important awards, including the Rosalind Franklin Award and has given a TEDx Talk on diversity in STEM, demonstrating the success of her work. Even Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, has acknowledged her.
Wade has faced challenges despite having a mission as significant as hers. Other Wikipedia editors and contributors criticised and even removed Wade's biography of Clarice Phelps, a Black nuclear chemist who worked on a team that found a new element in the Periodic Table. Wade had to fight to keep the entry online, and she prevailed in the end.
Wade stated in a 2019 piece for The Independent that "the lack of diversity in research is more than just unfair—it influences the science we conduct and the systems we develop."
However, according to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), women only comprise 26 percent of STEM workers. According to a 2022 AAUW survey, parents and teachers frequently undervalue females' arithmetic skills throughout early education, and Black and Hispanic women make up just 2% of engineers.
It's commonly believed that girls don't pursue science because they lack inspiration. In an interview with TODAY, Wade stated, "Girls are already interested." "In the end, we need to raise the percentage of women who remain in science, not just the number of girls who choose it."