Donna Strickland: the female Nobel winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry
Site moderator rejected submission for Donna Strickland, the first female physics winner in 55 years, in March
When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the Nobel Physics Prize this week, anyone wanting to find out more about one of the three winners would have drawn a blank on Wikipedia.
Until around an hour and a half after the award was announced on Tuesday, the Canadian physicist Donna Strickland was not deemed significant enough to merit her own page on the user-edited encyclopaedia.
The oversight has once again highlighted the marginalisation of women in science and gender bias at Wikipedia.
Strickland is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo and former president of the Optical Society, but when a Wikipedia user attempted to create a profile for her in March, the page was denied by a moderator.
“This submission’s references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article,” said the moderator .
Soon after Tuesday’s announcement, however, the Wikipedia community scrambled to build up a profile, completing sections on her research, biography and – most critically – her awards.