Talk:List of female scientists before the 20th century

Merger discussion

I propose that we merge Index of women scientists articles into this one. There are several reasons for this

1. Most of the other index articles I see are about topical articles, not biographies
2. the two lists overlap in scope - in fact one is a perfect subset of the other. We can simply merge and expand the scope to include the 21st century scientists in this list
3. Dual maintenance of two lists means that currently, if someone adds an article about a woman scientist, they need to add it to two articles. This isn't currently happening and I don't have any reason to believe it will happen in the future with regularity - dual maintenance should always be avoided when possible.
4. The list vs index format gives us a much better chance to give a description of the woman and her field of study, whereas the index is a plain list that serves little value and adds additional maintenance burden.
5. generating a new index is fairly trivial, and can be done by simply enumerating all articles (say, using catscan2) under Category:Women scientists, which as of today has around 2,200 members. This gives a pretty good list of women scientists, and can be used as a starting place for building out a list or as a related--changes list that has the advantage of being dynamic and capturing additions the index would miss.

--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:36, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Who is proposing or offering to sort by field & add the extra detail? Female scientists before 1900 are relatively rare and of particular interest; they would get swamped in a full index. This list is manifestly very incomplete; personally I'd prefer to see it stop with those who became notable before WW2 or 1950, & be more complete. The much larger number of post-WW2 figures might go to the index. Johnbod (talk) 04:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - In addition to the temporal restriction on the biographies, several of the articles in the index are not biographies, so they would not fit in the list. Moreover, the very ease of generating a new index is part of its usefulness - it can be used as the basis of a recent changes list. RockMagnetist (talk) 06:09, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd be happy to work on building out an appropriate table. We could make a separate list for post-20th century scientists. My main point is, that neither of you address, is these two lists make for dual maintenance. Much better to combine them, somehow - otherwise both will always be out of date. I don't think there's any reason to worry about pre-1900 women being swamped, one could simply list them separately, or have them in a separate list. but we don't need one list of "all women scientists" + another list of "all women scientists before 2000" - it's silly.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:39, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Judging by the edit history, the index hasn't consumed a lot of editor time, so it's not much of a burden. And I don't see keeping these lists up to date as a top-importance issue for the project. Improving the biographies is still higher on my list. But I do think it would be better to have one list for the 20th century and another for the 20-21st centuries. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Of course; however the current index has around 900 articles, while there are over 2,000 articles under Category:Women scientists. It's way out of date; the same applies for the list. If such lists exist, and we take them seriously, we should make sure they are up to date. Having two lists makes this all the harder. If you really want a list just to use for tracking recent changes, then put the list in wikispace (as opposed to article space) and don't worry about formatting, just have it be a recursive enumeration of Category:Women scientists, it doesn't need to be a list that readers actually look at or edit -- then you can just generate it one a month or so automagically. The other "index" articles I've seen are mostly for cases where you have a hundred or a few hundred at most articles - when you get to 2200 articles maintaining and index and a list becomes burdensome.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:20, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

If we classify all of the women scientists by century, we can use category intersection to find all of them, and hence build separate lists - e.g. List of women scientists from 19th century and before, List of women scientists from the 20th century, List of women scientists from the 21st century. Of course, you always will have the problem of, what happens to the woman who published papers in 1990 and in 2010? Does she go on both? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a tricky problem if you try to date their main contributions, but I suppose that they could simply be listed by birth date. That's one of the main ways they are categorized, of course. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

It was done this way for Category:American novelists for example, it took a fair bit of work, but dating by years contributing gets you a better result, IMHO, since someone born in 1899 isn't really a 19th century scientist. And yes, if they published across a century they could be put in both. In any case, if we get the categorization right, building/maintaining a list becomes much easier.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:22, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I imagine you could get a pretty good first approximation by matching, say, the 19th century with births between 1780 and 1880. The nice thing about using birth dates is that almost every biography beyond a stub is already categorized by birth date. But if someone wanted to put in the effort to create categories like those in Category:American novelists, that would be even better. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

• Merge to List of women scientists from the 19th century and before and List of women scientists from the 20th and 21st centuries. You have convinced me, Obiwankenobi. I think making the time cutoff earlier for the first article answers one objection of @Johnbod; and catscan seems to have improved considerably since the last time I used it. It only took me a few minutes to create WP:WikiProject Women scientists/index, and that is now the source for the recent changes listings. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:26, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

great - that's what I was thinking - a wiki space background/auto generated list where we don't really care what it looks like that serves that role for recent changes. Now the tricky part, as always, is keeping the list in mainspace synched with the articles in the categories. I don't have a good way to automate this - perhaps some comparison could be done between the auto-enumerated index and (list 19th c + list 20/21 c)? I'm sure a script could handle this but not sure where to host it or if someone has already built something that does this - eg recursively enumerate a category and then generate a list of all wiki pages that aren't linked from articles a,b,or c.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:34, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

It's doable, but we'd need to use a different category. I used Category:WikiProject Women scientists articles for the above list, but needed Category:Women scientists for the query you're suggesting (where at the moment I'm excluding articles linked to the existing list). See Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists/missing from main list. It is a daunting list. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

yeah, catscan is powerful - unfortunately the urls it generates for repeating the query are broken... We should also ensure that women scientists is a subset of the articles tagged by this project- that if we presume everyone under women scientists is a member, which actually may not be the case (ex:eponymous category that lists a woman's husband who isn't himself a scientist). But that list, and the number of entries missing, is one reason why I often dislike really long/all-inclusive lists - they are simply too hard to maintain and thus always present an incomplete story to the reader of what is actually here. I wish we had a much easier way of synching lists with categories...

It's too bad about the broken links. Fortunately, you can deduce the query from the text in the url. One category I excluded was Category:Fictional women scientists. The biggest problem, though, is all the articles where a birth date has not been assigned yet. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:45, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose I confess I have not read through the above discussion, so maybe this has already been answered, but the Index-page does not mentioned years and dates at all, while the purpose of this article is to show how women active in science prior to the 21st century: and not only that, it offers the reader the chance to see women in science during the 17th-century, the 18th-century, the 19th-century and so forth, which is important and useful for some one interested in history. This is impossible in the index-page, which does not show any dates and years at all. If we merge this page in to the Index-page, then all we will have is names with so much less of a context, without any way of separating centuries and years except if we undertake the workload of searching through every single article we find - a time consuming job which we are spared with this article. The Index-page therefore lacks an important an valuable advantage this article has: the categorization in years and centuries. --Aciram (talk) 14:54, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Western Bias: Non-Western Female Scientists?

Besides Enheduanna, I don't see any Non-Westerners in this list; even if I'm missing all the rest, I can't see how it there could be very many at all.

What about Merit-Ptah or Akka Mahadevi, for instance? 自教育 (talk) 18:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

If you have other articles on female scientists please add them. Akka_Mahadevi seems more like a philosopher than a scientist, she isn't in any other scientist cats.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:58, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you can find some more in WikiProject Women scientists/missing from main list. Also, if you can find any good lists of non-Westerners on the web, it would help to post them at WOMENSCI. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:28, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Cleopatra the Alchemist is another ancient Egyptian in the list, and I have added Peseshet. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Surnames

Any chance of reorganising so searching by letter searches the surname instead of first name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.174.143.18 (talk) 08:24, 7 May 2014

It was mostly ordered by surname already. I fixed a few exceptions. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:56, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Missing from list

I created a page for finding articles that are not included in this list: Talk:List of female scientists before the 21st century/missing articles. I am working up from earlier centuries (currently it covers the 11th-18th centuries). Earlier I had a Wikiproject page doing this work, but it now has a different purpose. RockMagnetist (talk) 23:05, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposed split

• List of female scientists before the 20th century
• List of 20th century female scientists

This page is likely to grow enormously, I would estimate by several thousand entries at least.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:30, 31 October 2015 (UTC).

Based on this list, I would say more like 600. But a split might still make sense since the 20th century dominates the list. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:26, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I would support a split: in the 20th century women scientists was no longer an exception in the same way as in the previous centuries any way - though I admit there is a difference between the 1910s and the 1990s in that regard. --Aciram (talk) 23:19, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I suspect a split should be on a significant event such as the end or beginning of WWI or WWII not on a century year. If they were active before then, in the earlier article, otherwise in the later article. I will note that the the total number of scientists is vastly greater in the 20th century then in earlier centuries.--Erp (talk) 03:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC) --Erp (talk) 03:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

It's quite hard to date the beginning and end of WWII. I don't see WWI as such a significant watershed. In any case would we then split the others sections on the Crimea and the Peninsula Wars? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:43, 6 November 2015 (UTC).

It would be hard to determine exactly were to make the split: WWII can be a good choice, so can WWI, as many nations gave women the right to vote in circa 1920. But such reasons can always be contested, particularly since this is a worldwide list. Therefore, the most uncontroversial choice, I think, should be to split it at the year 1900, and give the entire 20th-century a separate list. It it still true that there will be a huge difference between the 1920s and the 1980s, but I suspect that would still be the most uncontroversial choice.--Aciram (talk) 19:54, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Rich, I think you can perform the split know. Women scientists may have been a minority in the 20th-century but no longer an exception, and the split must be performed because the 20th century members will grow to a huge extent, eclipsing all other in the list. They need a separate list. If the 20th-century list should be split to further, then it can be discussed and performed after the century has its own list.--Aciram (talk) 17:03, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that hiving off the 20th century would be helpful for this to really function as a reading/finding aid. It may even be that down the line the 19th century will need to be split off as well.Alafarge (talk) 20:44, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to do the split though I'll name the 20th century article List of female scientists in the 20th century so the first bit is the same. Erp (talk) 01:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Go for it. RockMagnetist(talk) 02:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Done though someone should probably check that I didn't miss anything. I put Marie Curie's picture at the top of the new article. Erp (talk) 02:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

An academic review of the Middle Ages list

I've been fortunate to correspond with Monica H. Green, an academic in the history of medicine and health, who has extensively surveyed the literature about medieval women in science and medicine. She has identified profound problems with the Middle Ages section of this list, including entries that seem to be fictional characters or unconnected with science. I reproduce her comments below:

• General note: a lot of these citations come from Marilyn Ogilvie & Joy Harvey: Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. That book essentially just repeated citations found in other published literature. There was no effort to verify references from analysis of original documents. Hence, what they are often doing in relation to medieval women is repeating bibliographical “ghosts” created in early modern texts (16th-19th centuries), which themselves reflect political agendas unique to their own times. Cf. Green 1997.

• Abella (14th century), Italian physician
  • Maybe fictitious.
• Adelle of the Saracens (12th-century), Italian physician.
  • Maybe fictitious.
• Adelmota of Carrara (14th-century), Italian physician .
  • Never heard of her. Source of information (Ogilvie and Harvey) not reliable; will need to be confirmed.
• Hildegard of Bingen (1099–1179), German natural philosopher
  • Very well documented historical figure; huge bibliography.
• Dorotea Bucca (fl. 1390), Italian professor of medicine
  • Maybe fictitious.
• Calrice di Durisio (15th century), Italian physician
  • Error for “Clarice”. She is documentable, but citation given is worthless.
• Constance Calenda (15th century), Italian surgeon specialising in diseases of the eye
  • Suspect sources.
• Constanza, Italian physician
  • Suspect source; she may be fictitious.
• Jacobina Félicie (fl. 1322), Italian physician
  • Name incorrectly given (should be “Jacoba”); she was French, not Italian. Is historically documentable.
• Alessandra Giliani (fl. 1318), Italian anatomist
  • Her existence was questioned by Nancy Siraisi. [check to see if Park offers any discussion]
• Rebecca de Guarna (14th century), Italian physician
  • Probably fictitious.
• Heloise (12th century), French mathematician and physician
  • Heloise is well-documented and certainly interested in logic and theology. I know of nothing to connect her with math or medicine.
• Herrad of Landsberg (c.1130–1195), German/French author of the encyclopedia and technological compendium Garden of Delight
  • Well-documented; links to science less so
• Magistra Hersend (floruit 1249–1259) French surgeon
  • Documented.
• Maria Incarnata, Italian surgeon
  • Documented, and I can provide more women from the same source
• Anna Komnene (1083-1153), Greek physician
  • Well-documented historical figure, but no credible evidence to link her to medical practice.
• Lilavati (c. 12th century), daughter featured in Bhāskara II's treatise on mathematics, who solves mathematical exercises
  • I know nothing of her.
• Margarita (14th century), Italian physician
  • Apparently a truncated entry for Margherita di Napoli, da S. Maria, Margherita de Ruga, or Margherita da Venosa – all documented women who were licensed to practice surgery in 14th-century southern Italy.
• Thomasia de Mattio, Italian physician
  • No idea.
• Mercuriade (14th century), Italian physician and surgeon
  • Probably fictitious.
• Dame Péronelle (1292-1319), French herbalist
  • Documented.
• Empress Theodora (500–545), Byzantine philosopher and mathematician
  • No known association with philosophy or math that I know of.
• Trota of Salerno (12th century), Italian physician
  • I wrote this entry! It still needs fixing up
• Walborg and Karin Jota (c. 1350), Swedish officials of the court
  • I have no knowledge of the veracity of their claims to have been appointed members of the court, but I see nothing in the Wikipedia entry as it currently exists to justify their association with science/medicine.

MartinPoulter (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

@MartinPoulter: It's great to have an expert weighing in on these entries. Thank her for us and invite her to contribute to Wikipedia. It would be nice to have more detail on the citations mentioned above. Is Green 1997 this one?

• Green, Monica H. (1997). "A Handlist of the Latin and Vernacular Manuscripts of the So-Called Trotula Texts. Part II: The Vernacular Texts and Latin Re-Writings". Scriptorium: 80–104.

Where is the discussion by Park to be found? RockMagnetist(talk) 15:54, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

BTW, I would recommend fixing the linked articles first and then modifying the list. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:56, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I will follow up with Dr Green about the other refs. MartinPoulter (talk) 17:00, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Martin and Dr Green for this useful review. Have you posted mentions to the relevant wikiprojects? Johnbod (talk) 17:35, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Opening line

I don't want to get into a gender politics debate, but I'm not sure the opening line is completely 100% accurate. For the cultures that we're aware of and studied to a mass extent, it would be true (more or less) to state that women in science was rare. For the many other cultures we haven't studied to a great extent, we can't be certain that it was rare that women didn't become scientists or studied science in some capacity. Thus, I think this should be rewritten to reflect that. -RomeW (talk) 02:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

And it would probably help to have a citation, to go with that statement change. Jooojay (talk) 21:52, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Add more women to this list

I am having trouble editing right now due to technicalities, so I am adding a note here as a reminder; the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania has notable alumni listed that I noticed they are not on this page so perhaps they can be added here too. Most of them were the earliest Western-medicine trained female doctors, from all over the world. Jooojay (talk) 21:52, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

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Inclusion criteria/ancient women

What are the inclusion criteria for being on this list? I realise that the division between science and philosophy is a modern one, but there are a lot of ancient philosophers on this list for whom I can find no evidence that they were interested in anything that would be recognised today as a scientific question. For instance: Abrotelia, whose article mentions "philosophical fields such as metaphysics, logic, and aesthetics"; Asclepegenia, apparently interested in theurgy and mysticism; Axiothea of Phlius, a student of Plato; and Melissa (philosopher), whose only known writing is a letter on the need for wives to be "modest and virtuous". I doubt most modern readers would understand any of these women as scientists. If they are to be included, we should make it clear what we mean by "female scientists"!

There are various other ancient women whose inclusion on this list I find deeply suspect. To name a few:

• "Agamede (12th century BCE), physician in Ancient Greece (possibly mythical)" – I am not sure there is any possibility she is not mythical. She appears in Homer's Iliad and Hyginus' Fabulae, in which she is described as a consort of the god Poseidon. Should mythical figures be included on this list?
• "Agnodike (4th century BCE), first woman physician to practice legally in Athens" – also generally agreed to be fictional. If we are to include, we should at least make it clear that most scholars believe the story of Agnodice to be fiction.
• "Anyte (300 BCE), Greek physician and poet" – Ogilvie et al. describe "Anicia or Amyte" [sic] as "described by Pausanias as a woman doctor of Epidaurus who was also a poet". He says no such thing. The story about Anyte reported by Pausanias at 10.38.13 clearly describes her as a poet, not a doctor, and the healing that she was involved in is portrayed as the miraculous gift of a god.

The more I look at this list, the more questions I have... Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:11, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Okay, as there's been no support for keeping these entries I am removing all of those for philosophers where I can find no reason to think they have every been associated with natural philosophy or mathematics. Surviving the cull are Melissa (philosopher) (Ogilvie et al. speculate that, like other Pythagoreans, she was interested in mathematics but she's on thin ice because as far as I can tell that's just a guess that they have made), Myia (Ogilvie et al. describe her as a natural philosopher and say that she wrote about "the nourishment of the child", though calling what she wrote scientific is a stretch), and Perictione (Ogilvie et al. say that Perictione II discusses arithmetic, geometry and natural science). I'm still not convinced that these three should be included either, (or or Ogilvie et al. as a source on ancient figures in general!) but this gets rid of many of the most dubious entries on this list. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:32, 4 October 2023 (UTC)