Thread by @methanoJen

I often hear senior male scientists griping about how Lynn Margulis’ 1967 endosymbiotic theory was actually first proposed by the Russian botanist Konstantin Mereschkowski 60 years prior, and therefore she shouldn’t get so much credit for it. /thread

If you want to make that argument, you have to acknowledge many other theories first proposed by someone else (in multiple cases, by a Russian, in the late 1800s/early 1900s) later expanded upon by a Western White man in English, which are rarely criticized for originality.

I’m collecting a list of such discoveries/theories to show how common it is that multiple people have the same idea, but the western white man and/or the one who publishes it in English gets much more of the credit for the idea. Please add more examples to the list below:

Here’s a quote from Paul Falkowski’s “Life’s Engines”. I’m pretty sure Margulis was the *only* woman named in the main text of that book. Here’s how her legacy is presented:

Here’s a list of 19 examples: marieclaire.com/culture/g5026/…

1) 1905: Nettie Maria Stevens published a paper on sex chromosomes before Edmund Beecher Wilson, who is often credited for discovery. Thomas Hunt Morgan won the 1933 Nobel for the genetic role of chromosomes, whose existence he at first dismissed. jstor.org/stable/230427?…

2) 1952: Marie Tharp discovers mid-ocean rift valleys. 1953: Maurice Ewing and Bruce Heezen are credited with rift discovery. (This 1998 PBS article presents them as the discoverers: pbs.org/wgbh/aso/datab…) Read @hfelt “Soundings” for full story: amazon.com/Soundings-Stor…

3) 1976: PhD Kathy Crane & colleagues discover hydrothermal vents. Jack Corliss gets NSF grant to return to next year. 1977: Bob Ballard gets credit for vent discovery (and still does, to the present day, for ex: whoi.edu/oceanus/featur…) Full story: amazon.com/Sea-Legs-Tales…

4) 1856: Eunice Foote discovered that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas.

1859-1862: John Tyndall credited for discovery.

2011: Foote’s earlier role revealed in this article: searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2011…

5) 1991: Reva Kay Williams, African-American astrophysicist, gets PhD for solving Penrose mechanism for black holes.

1992: Williams emails Kip Thorne her dissertation+postdoc proposal. Thorne takes William’s idea and prevents her from working on it.

arxiv.org/pdf/physics/04…

This is one of the most egregious examples. Reva Kay Williams deserves her due credit. I’m glad to see she now has a Wikipedia page at least en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reva_Will…, but look how few times her work as been cited. She has been robbed. scholar.google.com/citations?user…

Astronomy/astrophysics community, y’all need to give Reva Kay Williams A LOT more citations, awards, recognition, pronto. Why aren’t white astro “allies” tweeting about this travesty? Why hasn’t anyone called out Thorne, except me and RKW herself??

https://twitter.com/methanojen/status/939162214157701126?s=21

#faintpraise
#withfriendslikethat

Thx @ThadHarroun for next example:
6) 1891: w/o formal training, Agnes Pockels invents slide trough for measuring surface tension, publishes in Nature. 1933: Irving Langmuir wins Nobel based on findings w/ updated “Irving trough.” (Pockels died in 1935.)
nature.com/articles/04343…

Here’s how Margulis’ theory is described in “Oxygen” by Donald Canfield.