Andrea Reichenberger is currently leading a research group at the University of Siegen (with members Rudolf Meer, Julia Franke-Reddig, and Jasmin Özel) that investigates the role that canonization plays in the treatment of the ideas of minorities in the history and philosophy of physics and mathematics. Women working in academia have historically faced a variety of challenges: they were denied access to higher education, and were not granted degrees, particularly graduate degrees, even when they fulfilled all requirements, as in the case of the logician Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847–1930). Those who managed to overcome these initial obstacles to an academic career and who—against all odds—did acquire graduate degrees usually still failed to gain regular academic employment, and thus had to resign themselves to precarious existences. They had to take on temporary positions without sufficient access to the means necessary to continue their research, or they had to take on non-academic positions or rely on the support of their husbands. One example is the American astronomer Dorothea Klumpe (1862–1942), the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics in France in 1893. She first worked as the Director of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory, but only her marriage to the Welsh astronomer Isaac Roberts (1829–1904), who owned a private observatory, allowed her to focus on her research. Even those women who did succeed as academics failed to have the fruit of their labor acknowledged. Their findings were commonly attributed to their colleagues, husbands, or other relatives, as in the case of the philosopher and logician Elli Heesch (1904–1993). While Heesch herself was denied an academic career, she continued to show great dedication in working with her brother, the mathematician Heinrich Heesch (1906–1995). Together, they investigated tiling problems and worked out a solution to Hilbert’s 18th problem. Yet her contributions frequently went unnoticed and were attributed merely to her brother (cf. Reichenberger, A. 2023. “Elli Heesch, Heinrich Heesch and Hilbert’s Eighteenth Problem: Collaborative Research between Philosophy, Mathematics and Application.” British Journal for the History of Mathematics).
Hence, women working in physics and mathematics have been particularly affected by this process of deliberate institutional marginalization, depriving them of opportunities and recognition not only during their lifetimes, but also in the historiography, or how the theories and methods of these disciplines have been written down and taken seriously. The attempt to remedy these distortions by integrating women’s perspectives faces challenges as well, since women’s contributions have been underrepresented in the canon and their participation in science and mathematics have also been de facto diminished. Often, women were only allowed to officially occupy auxiliary roles, while in fact making substantive contributions that were then misrepresented and ascribed to their male cooperators. We are thus faced with distortions that obstruct a more objective view of the historical role of women in physics and mathematics on at least two levels.
While Albert Einstein (1879–1955), Max Planck (1858–1947), and Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) are all well-known names among the general public, women scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries largely failed to have their work acknowledged. Ilse Meitner (1878–1968) discovered nuclear fission together with her long-term colleague Otto Hahn (1879–1968) (and also Fritz Strassmann, 1902–1980), yet the Nobel prize went only to Otto Hahn. Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) discovered the structure and function of DNA, but failed to be acknowledged entirely during her lifetime. Even Marie Curie (1867–1934), who discovered radioactivity together with her husband Pierre (1859–1906), still faced discrimination and disrespect compared to her husband, despite being the first woman to be awarded a Nobel prize. Reichenberger’s research group addresses the gender biases that lead to these distortions and tries to reintegrate important people and positions into the canon. The goal is not only to finally do justice to women who have been doubly wronged by both the scientists of their time and by the subsequent history of science. The goal is also to provide a more objective perspective on the history of science itself. While some of the figures that Reichenberger and her colleagues work on are already somewhat known, many others have been entirely neglected by historians of science thus far.
A lack of objectivity in our historiography can be rather easily demonstrated for some of the figures the research group focuses on. For example, discrimination in both institutional practice and the history and philosophy of science can be shown quantitatively in the case of Christine Ladd-Franklin. There can be little question that Ladd-Franklin—who made important contributions to philosophy, logic, mathematics, and also psychology—was institutionally marginalized during her lifetime, as Francine Abeles recently argues. As a consequence of her decision to marry, Ladd-Franklin was unable to secure any regular academic position, just as she was denied a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University as a woman, despite fulfilling all the requirements for the degree. She had been admitted as a doctoral student with the support of the mathematician James Joseph Sylvester (1814–1897) after submitting an application signed with “C. Ladd”—thus obscuring the fact that she was a woman. Female students were still excluded from graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University at the time. Her later attempts to obtain a Ph.D. in Germany likewise failed due to her being female. Yet we argue that matters became significantly worse after Ladd-Franklin’s death. We used the Google Books Ngram Viewer to show that Ladd-Franklin’s work was far more impactful during her lifetime than that of her collaborator and earlier teacher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). While Peirce is today known as one of the most preeminent logicians of his time—and as the “father of pragmatism”—Ladd-Franklin’s work almost sank into obscurity after her death in 1930. However, before their respective deaths, Christine Ladd-Franklin was far more frequently cited than C. S. Peirce; we found up to twice as many mentions of her name per year before 1900.
Another figure the research group at Siegen investigates is the German-Australian physician and philosopher Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider (1891–1990), who received her Ph.D.—advised among others by Albert Einstein—in 1920 at the University of Berlin working on the problem of space-time in Einstein and Kant. Despite letters of recommendation from Einstein, Max Planck, and Max von Laue (1879–1960), Rosenthal-Schneider was unable to build a career in Australia after emigrating. Although she initiated the creation of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sidney, she was merely able to obtain temporary lecturer positions there.
Similarly, the Frege-scholar Wilma Papst (1907–1973)—whose work we recently translated into English for the first time—received her Ph.D. at the University of Berlin in 1932 and never received the recognition her important contribution to research on Frege deserves. Although she was one of very few scholars working at the intersection between German, French, and later Anglo-American schools of Frege interpretation, she was essentially sidelined after emigrating to France when she had to flee the Gestapo. Her fate is a rather typical one. Often, women in the early to mid-twentieth century were discriminated against not just as female researchers, but also as emigrants and because of their Jewish faith (or simply due to associating with Jewish intellectuals, as in Papst’s case).
These examples show how difficult a more objective take on the history and philosophy of science is in the case of discrimination during an author’s lifetime and beyond. Reichenberger and her colleagues demonstrate how only a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods can serve as a remedy. This approach to the history and philosophy of science also has important consequences for current and future research, as in Wilma Papst’s case, where recent work by Frege-scholars shows increasing interest in earlier readings of Frege, namely those preceding the dominant Anglo-American tradition. Papst’s monograph on Frege as Philosopher closes a significant gap in the history of logic. Her Frege interpretation, emerging as the result of her interactions in the 1930s with the Berlin Group of Scientific Philosophy and the Berlin School of Gestalt Theory, clarifies debates about the foundations of mathematics by reaching beyond the usual focus in the literature on logicism, formalism, and intuitionism. Reaching across various disciplines, Papst’s interest in the concept of symmetry, manifested in both logic, mathematics, and the sciences allows for a more adequate understanding of criticisms of Frege. Questioning historical stereotypes that largely suggest the absence of women in physics and mathematics is thus an antidote to a continuation of a variety of distortions—distortions that commonly discourage current female students from engaging in research in these areas, which remain disproportionately male-dominated to this day. The omission of female contributions has furthermore obstructed an appropriate understanding of the work of their their male colleagues; rectifying this situation thus ought to be in everybody’s interest.
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Jasmin Özel
Jasmin Özel is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Siegen and a doctoral candidate at Paderborn University. She received her undergraduate education at Oxford and Leipzig University, and her graduate education at the University of Pittsburgh. She was a Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard and a Fellow of the German National Merit Foundation. She works primarily in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science and in the history and philosophy of logic and mathematics.
