0896: "ZOmbeis"

[SirMustapha]

Not sure how I feel about this comic. "Radium kills you" is definitely not a punchline, but it's not like there's no merit in the comic. But I do know that it's little mor than a thinly veiled, short rant on the part of Randall with a poor excuse for a joke.

To be more specific: it's a sequence of facts taken from Wikipedia, followed by a lame-ass "punchline" solely because there had to have one.

And for those who are always whining that "xkcd is not always supposed to be funnay!!": if that's the case, why didn't today's comic end without a punchline?

In other news: today's comic is just Randall being really, really angry that not everybody in the world knows the name of more than two female scientists, because everybody in the world needs to know all about science (just like he knows all about "techno"). He had to check Wikipedia to learn other two.

[dexeron]

My first thought was Kate Beaton's comic about Rosalind Franklin. (but that in no way makes this comic any less awesome.)

I expect to soon see this posted on many professor's doors on campus. And rightly so.

[Fixblor]

see also "Logicomix", "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", or "Girl Genius".

[DennyMo]

This is a good one, it's going up on the wall. But one take-away from this comic is that "lots of females did the work for which their male associates received the credit". Is that experience really unique to females? Aren't male researchers also frequently robbed of credit and honors by their associates, too?

[Vaskafdt]

Why don't I get what SP1 means? the only thing I can think about is operating systems and "SEMI PROTECTED"... tho I don't see the connection.


any clues?

[jim_ottaviani]

I immodestly suggest also having a look at "Dignifying Science": http://www.gt-labs.com/dignifying.html . It's less funny/panel, but much longer...

[FrobozzWizard]

Against my better judgement, I attend in a women's college (Mt. Holyoke...we are NOT a bunch of feminazis, pinkie swear!)

Quite right you aren't. The Smith graduates and students I've known over the years would resent you Holyokels trying to cut in on their feminazi action!

But seriously, this is awesome stuff, and one of the many reasons why the idea of writing about "herstory" isn't a bad idea. For instance, when you think of highly accomplished composers of classical music, does Clara Schumann or Hildegard von Bingen come to mind? They should, because they were about as awesome as the best men of their day.

[tomtenfarm]

Why don't I get what SP1 means? the only thing I can think about is operating systems and "SEMI PROTECTED"... tho I don't see the connection.


any clues?

The clue is in the wikipedia article on xkcd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xkcd

[rcox1]

Not sure how I feel about this comic. "Radium kills you" is definitely not a punchline, but it's not like there's no merit in the comic. But I do know that it's little mor than a thinly veiled, short rant on the part of Randall with a poor excuse for a joke.

But, you know. He had to get it out eventually.

Marie Curie invented the theory of radioactivity, the treatment of radioactivity, and dying of radioactivity.

Right! I think we now know where Randy got his inspiration for this comic.

...

For those of you out there not familiar with this quote, it's from Portal 2. Randy probably got around to buying it.

The punchline is what did it for me. Otherwise it was another diatribe, which is not a bad thing, about
one famous person representing an entire class of people. I know that people do this. I know learned people who worship at Einstein's feet and dismiss Feynman. But really the fact that most people focus on a single individual indicates a limit to what one knows, especially outside of one's interest area, rather than an actual belief that there is only one worthy representative of a group.

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History had a really interesting exhibit on Meitner. If It is still there it is worth a look. I can't get to the web sites

[jonas]

Has anyone created an image filter that turns stickmen to zombies?

[Klear]

Wait... so a better way to make girls interested in science is to show them that there is an overwhelming chance that even if they against all odds manage to become great scientist, their contribution will be stolen, disregarded or forgotten?

I mean, ZMSC's point sounds kinda like - "By all means, try to be a great scientist, but don't expect any recognition no matter how hard you work. You won't be famous like me. Deal with it."

[hendusoone]

For the people still wondering what SP1 is, here is the full name: xkcd Volume 0 Service Pack 1

It is a 13-comic booklet that was handed out and signed by Randy at a meetup in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco at the end of June 2010, as a "patch" to the full book. The location and time of the meetup was a message hidden in puzzles in the xkcd book - there's a thread about it somewhere.

[Walkdogger]

For the people still wondering what SP1 is, here is the full name: xkcd Volume 0 Service Pack 1

It is a 13-comic booklet that was handed out and signed by Randy at a meetup in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco at the end of June 2010, as a "patch" to the full book. The location and time of the meetup was a message hidden in puzzles in the xkcd book - there's a thread about it somewhere.

Exactly. The last paragraph in the History section on the Wikipedia page says this. I was baffled by what SP1 meant at first, but I read the Wiki page a little while ago, so I had a suspicion it was the book.

[CelebrenIthil]

I remember when I was in school it seemed like the only two women involved in the maths and sciences were Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace. I sometimes felt like Ada Lovelace (and I say this as a feminist) got included because she had an awesome story being the the daughter of Byron and dying young, not because of her contributions. Can anyone confirm or deny my suspicions?

I don't know, but she co-stars in an awesome steampunk-ish comic: http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/

[jbmorch]

I enjoyed this comic among other reasons because my kids go to Marie Curie Elementary School in San Diego. It is not a science magnet school but has a very strong science committee run by some dedicated parents, and through events like Family Science Night, two powerful telescopes that can be checked out from the school library, and a dedicated science classroom, the kids (not just the girls) are getting exposed to the wonders of science at an early age. Too bad California budget cuts are going to really take a bite out of other support that the kids get, like small classroom sizes, art and music education (as important as science to young minds, people!) and the administrative staff that keeps the campus humming.

[CaribouM3gs]

Quite right you aren't. The Smith graduates and students I've known over the years would resent you Holyokels trying to cut in on their feminazi action!

But seriously, this is awesome stuff, and one of the many reasons why the idea of writing about "herstory" isn't a bad idea. For instance, when you think of highly accomplished composers of classical music, does Clara Schumann or Hildegard von Bingen come to mind? They should, because they were about as awesome as the best men of their day.

*Mild rant warning!*
I hear that a lot about Smithies! Seems to me that man-hating is the most anti-feminist thing you can do. There are plenty of brilliant female scientists here (my best friend is best described as the girl from the XKCD "Beauty" http://xkcd.com/877/ and they don't wave the flag of righteous anger; they simple kick bum in their respective fields. THAT is what progress is about. I don't need to find a bunch of martyrs to justify being a woman. I need no justification. I have boobs and men don't. Which is kind of sad for them because boobs are pretty great =D

Self-proclaimed "feminists" need to stuff it. Being progressive isn't SLAMMING on nearly half of the population. XY didn't CHOOSE to be XY. I'm kind of a fan of XY, myself. =D Not even because of differences in genitalia (though that's pretty awesome too); You just definitely don't see enough cute nerd boys on a women's campus who will play chess and video games with me while looking lustfully at guitars and automobiles ~wistful sigh~
Concluding with an interesting fact: Smith College is in Northampton, where Questionable Content takes place. I've been to a lot of the places it references =D

[jozwa]

The first rule of SP1 is that you don't talk about SP1.

Agh, hearing that cliché always kills a few of my brain cells.

[Apeiron]

Remember kids:

If you do something and you have a penis, it's no big deal. But if you have a vagina, the same accomplishment is somehow astounding. Being brown, poor and not American helps too.

[LtStorm]

I thought this comic was cute at first, but then I started thinking about it.

Lise Meitner only got a National Women's Press Club award from America. But she was not American, she was Austrian and later Swedish. Just going by her Wikipedia page, which Munroe apparently didn't check, she received the Leibniz Medal from the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1917, the Max Planck Medal of the German Physics Society in 1949, and claimed the Enrico Fermi Award along with Hahn in 1966. She also co-taught lectures with Leo Szilard (also kind of a big deal, but not American), was the first woman in Germany to attain the position of full-professor of physics at the University of Berlin in 1926, and was director of the Institute for Chemistry in 1933. Oh, also she got some kind of Women's Press Club Award and was named Woman of the Year in America in 1946. I don't know much about Emmy Noether, so there aren't any red flags there, but I'd guess at this rate she had a similar story.

My point is, Munroe is being pretty goddamn ethnocentric here. That Meitner isn't remembered alongside Marie Skłodowska-Curie is a failing of history textbooks, specifically American ones, not of the German-centered scientific community of the early 20th century (Germany was the scientific powerhouse of the world up until WWII; it literally took a genocidal maniac to unseat it from that position) where she got her due accolades. He also ignores that the Nobel Prize has all of the same issues the Oscars do. Someone's always due, someone always gets snubbed, there are constant scandals, etc. But it's a highly visible event and attracts a lot of attention. I believe the metaphor would be, Munroe science fanboy, not a scientist. He's a film buff, not a filmmaker. So all he sees are the Oscars.

Or maybe he's trying to teach through example. "You can do everything you want, if you don't win a specific prize I pay attention to, I'm not going to remember you." That aside, the moral of, "You shouldn't become a scientist to get attention" is a good one. He just unintentionally creates an unreliable narrator in the process and ignores the actual problems the scientific community has that causes it to bring through so few female scientists.

[lanicita]

I'm glad someone mentioned SP1. I was so confused when I first read this comic because I was sure I'd already read it before, yet I couldn't find it in the archives.

[benmoreassynt]

Registered purely to say (as other have) - don't forget Rosalind Franklin. Arguably that missed the point of the strip, but what the heck.

Note - she was never called 'Rosy' by anyone except James Watson, and only by him in 'The Double Helix' as part of the process by which her contribution to identifying the structure of DNA was belittled.

[e^iπ+1=0]

Well, looks like people finally found out what it means. Here is the thread, for those interested.

And yeah, I was really confused until I realized where I'd seen it. At least Randall told us we might have seen it before or I would have thought I was crazy.

[dan_dassow]

Randall, thank you for today's strip. I will pass this onto my daughters who are currently in college.

[123forman]

Correction: Noether did eventually get a professorship - at Bryn Mawr. So, you know, she eventually got some modicum of professional respect. Not remotely what she was due, but still.

[KestrelLowing]

Remember kids:

If you do something and you have a penis, it's no big deal. But if you have a vagina, the same accomplishment is somehow astounding. Being brown, poor and not American helps too.

Eh, come on now, you have to at least realize that many minorities/women have had a lot more barriers to overcome than white men attempting the same thing. It's like winning a race when you've got 5lb weights strapped to your ankles and the other person doesn't. Each step is harder because there's more resistance and weight behind your movements.

But yes, that is annoying. Heck, it's annoying from the female side too! I think I've mentioned this before on the forums, but I was on a successful FIRST Lego League team (building robots out of LEGO Mindstorms). We were all girls. Every time anyone said anything about us it was "Oh! It's so amazing you can do this because you're girls!" when what we really wanted to hear was "Oh! It's so amazing you can do this!"

The troubling thing about all these female scientists is that they were not recognized similarly to similar male scientists. I hope that is much better currently, but it certainly wasn't in the past.

[buddy431]

I thought this comic was cute at first, but then I started thinking about it.

Lise Meitner only got a National Women's Press Club award from America. But she was not American, she was Austrian and later Swedish. Just going by her Wikipedia page, which Munroe apparently didn't check, she received the Leibniz Medal from the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1917, the Max Planck Medal of the German Physics Society in 1949, and claimed the Enrico Fermi Award along with Hahn in 1966. She also co-taught lectures with Leo Szilard (also kind of a big deal, but not American), was the first woman in Germany to attain the position of full-professor of physics at the University of Berlin in 1926, and was director of the Institute for Chemistry in 1933. Oh, also she got some kind of Women's Press Club Award and was named Woman of the Year in America in 1946. I don't know much about Emmy Noether, so there aren't any red flags there, but I'd guess at this rate she had a similar story.

My point is, Munroe is being pretty goddamn ethnocentric here. That Meitner isn't remembered alongside Marie Skłodowska-Curie is a failing of history textbooks, specifically American ones, not of the German-centered scientific community of the early 20th century (Germany was the scientific powerhouse of the world up until WWII; it literally took a genocidal maniac to unseat it from that position) where she got her due accolades. He also ignores that the Nobel Prize has all of the same issues the Oscars do. Someone's always due, someone always gets snubbed, there are constant scandals, etc. But it's a highly visible event and attracts a lot of attention. I believe the metaphor would be, Munroe science fanboy, not a scientist. He's a film buff, not a filmmaker. So all he sees are the Oscars.

Or maybe he's trying to teach through example. "You can do everything you want, if you don't win a specific prize I pay attention to, I'm not going to remember you." That aside, the moral of, "You shouldn't become a scientist to get attention" is a good one. He just unintentionally creates an unreliable narrator in the process and ignores the actual problems the scientific community has that causes it to bring through so few female scientists.

I agree, Meitner isn't really a good example here. She was widely respected in the field, and did receive many prestigious honors for her discoveries. Yes, she probably should have won the Nobel with Otto Hahn in 1944, but the Nobel committee is pretty notorious for skipping people who "should" have won the prize, both female (Meitner) and male (Oswald Avery). I don't think we can point to one woman who didn't win one prize and conclude that this is evident of a systemic bias against women in the sciences (though this bias certainly does exist, so the comic still works overall).

[LtStorm]

I agree, Meitner isn't really a good example here. She was widely respected in the field, and did receive many prestigious honors for her discoveries. Yes, she probably should have won the Nobel with Otto Hahn in 1944, but the Nobel committee is pretty notorious for skipping people who "should" have won the prize, both female (Meitner) and male (Oswald Avery). I don't think we can point to one woman who didn't win one prize and conclude that this is evident of a systemic bias against women in the sciences (though this bias certainly does exist, so the comic still works overall).

Addressing the actual issues that keep women out of jobs as scientists and engineers would require realizing that most scientists and engineers aren't cute socially awkward nerds that just need to be given a chance, and the ones that are can easily be sexist pricks as well. There's a macho man culture in academia as there is anywhere else. Girls having female scientists as good role models aren't magical fixes for the endemic problems women in the sciences will face.

For girls conditioning starts early in primary school being told they're not as good at math or science as boys, either directly or indirectly. Having a good role model would help here. That pressure will keep on them all the way through their undergraduate years in college, though, and if they manage to overcome those naysayers, and many do, the use of a good role model ends about there. They'll then find they've just been inducted into the modern culture of academia, reminiscent of high school or any other business scene. It's competitive, slowing down for things like having kids is seen as a sign of weakness (grad school is competitive, no time to have kids; you enter academia as a junior faculty member and it's still competitive, no time to have kids, by the time you're established enough to consider it you likely would be 30-35), they're accused of being there only through affirmative action, and many of their male colleagues are just plain sexist pricks either intentionally or unintentionally. A large slice of women that have left jobs as scientists or engineers did so because of a hostile work environment (http://blog-aauw.org/2011/04/26/women-scientists-still-face-discrimination/). So this comic sort of misses its mark by ignoring the actual big problems that women who want to become scientists or engineers face and instead focusing on a pop cultural issue that isn't important other than helping little girls decide they want to be a scientist when they grow up. It in no way helps change the perils their road to becoming a scientist/engineer will contain.

[lly]

I don't know much about Emmy Noether, so there aren't any red flags there, but I'd guess at this rate she had a similar story.

Basically yes, for many similar reasons.

[E_H]

It should be noted that most of these women were collaborating with men who deserve much of the credit. Meitner collaborated with her nephew, Otto R. Frisch, who had some of the crucial insights in conceiving and explaining fission. (He also was the first to propose a specific mechanism for creating a nuclear explosion.) See page 21 of quantum-history.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/news/workshops/hq3/hq3_talks/17_stuewer.pdf for who contributed what to the discussion.

Marie Curie's work was in fact equally Pierre Curie's work. She shared the physics Nobel with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. Pierre also discovered piezoelectricity (!) , as well as the sudden loss of magnetization of ferromagnetic materials at a specific high temperature (the Curie point), and Marie did not contribute to those discoveries. Pierre did much of the work for which Marie later received the chemistry Nobel, but having died five years earlier, he was not eligible to share the prize.

Ada Lovelace was not the first computer programmer. She contributed original work as appendices to a paper by Luigi Menabrea which she translated, but none of these contributions were computer programs. The appendix on Bernoulli numbers, which was the basis for the claim of being the first programmer, was by Babbage himself. Countess Lovelace did debug his work, however. Nevertheless neither Lovelace nor Babbage can be considered programmers since they had no machine to program, and mechanical algorithms executed by hand had been known for centuries, if not millennia.

Without Rosalind Franklin's work Watson and Crick would not have been likely to have found the structure of DNA, at least, not in time to establish priority. Nevertheless, despite having found the structure of the subunits of DNA and having first access to her own data, Franklin did not figure out the structure of DNA, and this was the key insight which set Watson and Crick apart from everybody else. Franklin might well have been awarded the Nobel in Wilkins' place if she had lived. She is remembered well by history, especially given how short a life she had.

Emmy Noether is the one woman I would say has never gotten as much fame as she deserves. On the other hand, she is famous among physicists and mathematicians working with abstract algebras. It really takes most of a math or physics degree to understand anything about her work, so it's understandable that the public isn't more aware of her work.

On the whole, it seems to me that women's accomplishments in science and mathematics are actually more likely to be celebrated than those of men because there are so many fewer women than men in those fields. That shouldn't be an excuse for exaggerating women's contributions or ignoring their male collaborators.

[zAlbee]

For the people still wondering what SP1 is, here is the full name: xkcd Volume 0 Service Pack 1

It is a 13-comic booklet that was handed out and signed by Randy at a meetup in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco at the end of June 2010, as a "patch" to the full book. The location and time of the meetup was a message hidden in puzzles in the xkcd book - there's a thread about it somewhere.

Thanks. That sounds pretty cool, not sure why people wanted to keep it a secret.

[lly]

Not sure how I feel about this comic. "Radium kills you" is definitely not a punchline, but it's not like there's no merit in the comic. But I do know that it's little mor than a thinly veiled, short rant on the part of Randall with a poor excuse for a joke.

To be more specific: it's a sequence of facts taken from Wikipedia, followed by a lame-ass "punchline" solely because there had to have one.

What's sadly clear is that Randall didn't even really read the wikipedia articles. If you were to just look at this strip, it would look like both of these women lived in died without ever being noticed until after their death, which isn't even remotely true. They may not have been given the full credit they deserved, but both of them achieved fame in their lifetimes and are remembered in at least certain circles.

And for those who are always whining that "xkcd is not always supposed to be funnay!!": if that's the case, why didn't today's comic end without a punchline?

It really feels like this is an attempt to jam two--or possibly three--"comics" together into one. There's a reasonable point lurking in there somewhere about people not being as familiar with female scientists or the issues with the educational assumptions about girls and math, but it isn't expressed very well and then he tries for a punchline (similar to 397, same exact pattern) which--especially in this case--just feels awkward and falls flat. Doubly so since if I were to go up to someone on the street and name, say, many of Noether's contemporaries (even Hilbert, who is certainly famous as a mathematician, let alone some of the more "obscure" ones) I bet I'd get completely blank stares or maybe a "heard of in song and story" sort of response rather than anything detailed.

Then there is that a lot of what she worked on is in a domain of upper level mathematics and not dealing with something as widely talked about as, say, radiation.

[*bird]

It should be noted that most of these women were collaborating with men who deserve much of the credit. Meitner collaborated with her nephew, Otto R. Frisch, who had some of the crucial insights in conceiving and explaining fission. (He also was the first to propose a specific mechanism for creating a nuclear explosion.) See page 21 of quantum-history.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/news/workshops/hq3/hq3_talks/17_stuewer.pdf for who contributed what to the discussion.

On the whole, it seems to me that women's accomplishments in science and mathematics are actually more likely to be celebrated than those of men because there are so many fewer women than men in those fields. That shouldn't be an excuse for exaggerating women's contributions or ignoring their male collaborators.

1) Of course women collaborated with men who deserved credit. They had to! It's not like the atmosphere of the times you're referencing would even allow them to strike out on their own even if they wanted to - these were times when a lot of the time they couldn't claim the credit for their own work.
2) Recognizing these women does not negate their collaborators' work - in fact many of the men you're talking about do get recognition.

Also, y'all missed Chien-Shiung Wu, who experimentally verified the parity violation effect in the weak force (which garnered TD Lee and Chen Ning Yang a Nobel) and worked on the Manhattan Project.

If you were to just look at this strip, it would look like both of these women lived in died without ever being noticed until after their death, which isn't even remotely true. They may not have been given the full credit they deserved, but both of them achieved fame in their lifetimes and are remembered in at least certain circles.

I don't necessarily see it as that. I actually think Randall's point was that Marie Curie is pretty much the one of the only female scientists that gets recognized at a layman level, which is true. Just like George Washington Carver's probably one of the only black scientists recognized at a layman level. I can't even think of a scientist of Chinese descent that would be recognized at a layman level despite there being quite a few to choose from (maybe Steven Chu, but he's sort of known as being the Energy Secretary) And to forestall your comment, yes, there's lots of white male scientists that don't necessarily get recognized at a layman level for what they've done (Rejewski is a big one) but at you can point more than one of them. So it's more a combination of tokenism and lack of science education.

[hendusoone]

For the people still wondering what SP1 is, here is the full name: xkcd Volume 0 Service Pack 1

It is a 13-comic booklet that was handed out and signed by Randy at a meetup in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco at the end of June 2010, as a "patch" to the full book. The location and time of the meetup was a message hidden in puzzles in the xkcd book - there's a thread about it somewhere.

Thanks. That sounds pretty cool, not sure why people wanted to keep it a secret.

There really is no reason to keep it a secret - I suspect it's because they enjoy the rules laid out in Fight Club too much. SP1 has a Creative Commons license, and it would be totally permissible to scan the book and share it with everyone non-commercially with attribution. The only problem is I don't have a scanner.

[Jobjooblies]

hmmm...similar experiance except with ninjas....i couldnt tell

[Plasma Mongoose]

The only way any scientist (male or female) can hope to get any recognition these days is to discover/invent/theorise something amazing and have some personal aspect/gimmick that will appeal to the mass-media e.g. Steven Hawking with his iconic digital voice.

Am I right or am I right?

[Erise]

As a female scientist, this made me smile. Thanks for making my day.

[lly]

I don't necessarily see it as that. I actually think Randall's point was that Marie Curie is pretty much the one of the only female scientists that gets recognized at a layman level, which is true.

The deeper question is "how many scientists/mathematicians can the layman name? How many would they recognize?"

They would almost certainly recognize Hawking (and maybe Penrose, but a lot less likely) and Einstein. They would probably recognize Oppenheimer, but anecdotally in my experience I'd bet most wouldn't recognize von Neumann. They'd probably recognize Marie Curie, naturally, and Carver. Going way back we'd probably get a glimmer of recognition for Newton (but not Leibniz) and they are then more likely to talk about apples and gravity than they are calculus or forces. One would probably get a glimmer of recognition from people who have buildings named after them (Goddard) but would also probably be hard-pressed to say what they did. They might recognize Nash (mostly because of the movie), but probably not Selten and Harsanyi. They might recognize Watson and Crick but probably not Maurice Wilkins or Rosalind Franklin.

The point: it isn't just a matter of "black," "white," "male," "female" or any other such categories. I'd guess that people are just not that educated into who is responsible for certain achievements unless those achievements can be readily parsed by the layman and—in many cases—unless that individual is in some other way remarkable or published on a lay-scale. Noether's primary works are in abstract algebra (when by-and-large if I tell people I'm studying "algebra" they'll say I studied that in high school) and is famous in part for not even being accessible for other mathematicians, let alone to laypeople.

There are certainly key examples that are used everywhere in schools of famous scientists, and a lot of those are because of some particular human interest associated with them or because they were responsible for something that has immediate application, it's also—I would guess—a very short list.

[LtStorm]

The only way any scientist (male or female) can hope to get any recognition these days is to discover/invent/theorise something amazing and have some personal aspect/gimmick that will appeal to the mass-media e.g. Steven Hawking with his iconic digital voice.

Am I right or am I right?

I'd say it's more of a lottery than even that, and always has been. You can pull off some feat that gets you recognized, even if it's an underhanded one (Thomas Edison vs. George Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla, half of the other scientists/inventors from that era...), manage to get your face on something revolutionary you theorized but did not test yourself (Albert Einstein vs. Arthur Stanley Eddington), just be a likable person who does outreach to the public (Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan vs. Paul Dirac), or get yourself made the face of a PR campaign (Robert Oppenheimer vs. Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, all of the other scientists that worked under Oppenheimer who helmed the Manhattan Project pretty much solely so it appeared an American was running the show and keeping those Hungarians and Germans in line...).

I wouldn't say getting something named after you alone gives you recognition because no one knows who Luigi Galvini or Franz Mesmer are even though they were popular enough in their times that the words "galvanization" and "mesmerism" were coined from their names.

[Abgrund]

Interesting that women are only supposed to have female role models, and men are only supposed to have male role models. For that matter, black and white role models are strictly segregated too, at least for men. AAAHHHH THUMPY WOOBLE HARRRRRPINK!! always seeks to widen the divisions between groups - and calls this "inclusiveness".

[Munfred]

I registered just to post this quote from wikipedias article about Lise Meitner:

In 1926, Meitner became the first woman in Germany to assume a post of full professor in physics, at the University of Berlin. There, she made an even more significant discovery, that of nuclear fission in 1939. She was then praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie".

And the references given indeed corroborate this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=YpEiPPFlNAAC&pg=PA229#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=428i2UdWRRAC&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q&f=false

Does this blows the purpose of the whole comic?