The Rosalind Franklin Society congratulates Board Member Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine!
(http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=64606387)
The Nobel Assembly announced this morning the three joint recipients of the 2009 Prize in Medicine: Elizabeth Blackburn (UCSF), Carol Greider (Johns Hopkins), and Jack Szostak (Mass General). Needless to say, we are thrilled that two out of these three recipients are women. And of course we are especially pleased that one is a Founding Board Member of the Rosalind Franklin Society. Dr. Blackburn is also a winner of the 2006 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and in 2007 Time Magazine named her as one of the year’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
Though it is certainly progress, it is still pitiful that only 37 women, of 792 total recipients, have been awarded the Nobel Prize in its 108-year history…just 4.67%. Only 10 of these women were awarded the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, of 195 total recipients in this one category. The remainder of the female awardees (24 in total) have won the Prize in Literature or Peace. Only 2 women have been awarded the Prize in Physics and 3 women in Chemistry (Marie Curie won both of these Prizes). According to the New York Times, this “is the first time any science Nobel has been awarded to more than one woman.”
So our work is not yet done.