The organization is hosting an edit-a-thon to beef up sparse profiles
The Royal Society announced that it will hold a meeting in London on October 19 to undertake massive edits to the Wikipedia pages of female scientists and engineers. Since many women in those fields were overshadowed by male colleagues, they are not as well-known by the general population and have little to no representation on the crowd-sourced site. "If you can't find them easily in a place like Wikipedia, you won't know anything about them," said Uta Frith, a cognitive development professor who will lead a panel discussion at the edit-a-thon. "You'll think they are not important."
Some of the ladies of science who will have more expansive Wikipedia entries after the event include Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, a crystallographer who identified the chemical structure of benzene, and Dr. Elsie Widdowson, who helped include vitamin supplements in World War II rations. The Royal Society event is also affiliated with Ada Lovelace Day, which honors the contributions of women in the sciences and technology. It bears the name of Ada Lovelace, a mathematician who made essential contributions to the growth of computer programming.
[Image credit: The Ada Picture Gallery]
[via Mashable]
This article was written by Anna Washenko and originally appeared on Tecca
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