The Women Involved In E = MC2

Posted: 4/19/2015

Trigger

Just watched “Einstein's Big Idea The story behind the world's most famous equation, E = mc2”. Either this is a politically correct docudrama by PBS Nova or indeed women made significant contributions to the world’s most famous equation. I tend to agree with latter. This docudrama appears to be released first by Arte TV (see here).

Of course, there was the wife of Einstein, Mileva Maric, who is portrayed here as a trusted advisor to Einstein, but giving up her own academic career. I believe, much has been written about her role in Einstein’s career, however, it appears, she never published any scientific papers of her own for which Albert Einstein probably cannot be blamed.

Émilie du Châtelet

I have to admit, I probably never heard of this lady before or forgot about her. Emilie is presented here as having promoted a rather similar formula 250 years before Einstein.

This woman is special. Her father encouraged her curiosity in science and math. She had a close friendship with Voltaire. She defended a precursor of the above equation against Voltaire and Newton. She learnt about this precursor equation from Leibniz and Willem 's Gravesande. She helped to refute the since then obsolete scientific theory of Vis viva.

Reading the Wikipedia article on Emilie du Chatelet you also encounter another extraordinary German-Jewish female mathematician named Emmy Noether

Lise Meitner

A Austrian-Jewish scientist who made a major contribution to explain Otto Hahn’s experiment’s as nuclear fission and that Einstein’s equation can be applied here. The above docudrama shows how several prominent male scientists, such as Max Planck, helped to advance her scientific career.

Once you research the discovery of nuclear fission, you will come across the name of Ida Noddack, who already in 1934 pointed to nuclear fission as an explanation for Enrico Fermi’s experiments.

And with whom was Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassmann or Rutherford and Enrico Fermi competing? With Irène Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie.

Where Are We Going With This?

E.g. feminism is an ideology and a fiction! Intelligent women were never as oppressed by males as feminists have make us believe for now over a century or so.