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Top 10 Famous LGBTQ Scientists


 

The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons and cultures around the world can be traced back to the earliest known examples of same-sex love and sexuality in ancient civilizations. Only in more recent decades have efforts been made to investigate and incorporate what endures after centuries of persecution resulting in shame, suppression, and secret. The annual LGBTQ History Month celebration was started in the US in 1994, and it has since spread to other nations. This commemoration emphasizes LGBTQ rights, related civil rights struggles, and human history.
LGBT STEM Day, an effort organized by a coalition of associations working to encourage LGBT+ rights in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, was observed for the first time on July 5, 2018, on a global scale (STEM). The event aimed to increase exposure for LGBT+ scientists, more than 40% of whom operate incognito. According to a 2015 American Physical Society survey, nearly half of the transgender or gender non-conforming physicists said they had experienced workplace discrimination. LGBT students have a lower chance than their heterosexual peers of earning a degree in the STEM fields. In honor of the historic event, let’s recognize 10 LGBTQ scientists that altered the world. This is by no means a comprehensive list, as many more LGBTQ+ scientists continue to advance human knowledge on a daily basis.

Read also; 10 Most Famous Historical World Events of the 1970s

Famous LGBTQ Mathematicians

1. Isaac Newton

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Sir Isaac Newton-by Sir Godfrey Kneller-Wikimedia Commons

Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and novelist (described in his time as a “natural philosopher”)who was born on December 25, 1642, and died on March 20, 1726, or 1727. The laws of motion and the theory of gravity were two of Newton’s most notable contributions. In the 1600s and 1700s, he most likely never came out as gay in public but in the twenty-first century, there has been nonstop conjecture about it. Newton never wed and didn’t appear to have any romantic partners. He had a nervous breakdown in 1693, presumably as a result of excessive stress brought on by a friend’s attempt to fix him up with a woman. It has been suggested that Newton was asexual more recently as asexuality has gained popularity as an orientation.

2. Paul Erdős

Paul Erdős, a Hungarian mathematician was born on March 26, 1913, and passed away on September 20, 1996. He was among the 20th century’s most productive mathematicians and creators of mathematical conjectures. Erdős was rumored to be asexual and never dated or got married. He talks about falling in love with numbers and calls them his dearest friends, especially prime numbers. His biography is actually titled “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers.”

3. Sara Josephine Baker

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S Josephine Baker MD-by Unknown photographer-Wikimedia Commons

American physician Sara Josephine Baker, who lived from November 15, 1873, to February 22, 1945, is renowned for her work in promoting public health. Baker, who was famous for finding Typhoid Mary, was out as gay. She made significant contributions to New York City’s public health and showed a special concern for immigrant neighborhoods. She worked to ensure that everyone in the city had access to healthcare and supported the education of new medical specialists.

Famous LGBTQ Physicists

4. Alan L. Hart

Born on October 4, 1890, to July 1, 1962, Hart was an American physician, radiologist, researcher on tuberculosis, author, and novelist. In particular, Hart developed the X-ray technique to identify cases, which saved countless lives. Hart, who was given the gender of a woman at birth, underwent a hysterectomy in 1917 and is thought to be one of the first recorded cases of gender reassignment surgery. From 1925 until his death, he lived the remainder of his life as a man, married Edna, and they both played important roles in their Connecticut community. Katz referred to Hart as a lesbian in his book Gay American History from 1976. Others have classified him as transsexual or transgender because of his efforts to conceal his past life before 1917 and his decision to live only as a man after that.

5. Sally Ride

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Sally Kristen Ride, an American astronaut, and physicist was born on May 26, 1951, and passed away on July 23, 2012. The first American woman in space was Ride. She was hired to be in the first class of NASA astronauts to ever include women despite having a background in physics. Ride left NASA after two space trips aboard the Challenger shuttle, during which she used the robotic arm to place satellites into orbit. She founded Sally Ride Science to encourage young people to pursue careers in STEM sectors and wrote several books for children about space exploration and the solar system using her celebrity as an astronaut to further science education.

From 1982 until 1987, Ride was wed to astronaut Steve Hawley. When Ride passed away in 2012, it was revealed in her obituary that she had been with Tam O’Shaughnessy for the final 27 years of her life. She had never spoken to the media about her relationship with O’Shaughnessy. This was partly due to NASA’s culture and her concern that disclosing her orientation may jeopardize her career. She did, however, tell O’Shaughnessy before she passed away that she was no longer required to keep it a secret, and when her obituary was published, it was made public.

Read more on; Top 10 Facts about Sally Ride

6. Elena Long

Elena Amanda Long is an advocate for LGBT individuals in science and an assistant professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire. She was referred to as a “diversity pathfinder” by the magazine Nature in their 2016 edition of Nature’s 10: Ten People That Mattered. Long received the 2015 Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Promising Young Scientist Award for her work on the internal structure of nucleons. She founded the LGBT+ Physics organization and participated in the APS Committee on LGBT Issues, both of which have significantly improved the inclusion of underrepresented researchers and students. 

Famous LGBTQ Biologists

7. Rachel Carson

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Rachel Louise Carson, an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist who was born on May 27, 1907, and passed away on April 14, 1964, is credited with helping to advance the environmental movement around the world through her seminal book Silent Spring (1962) and other writings. Although a number of letters between Carson and her friend Dorothy Freeman that were discovered after Carson’s passing have sparked rumors that they were in love, it is unclear what Carson’s orientation was.

The letters make evident that there was a strong love between them, but we won’t know exactly how that love manifested itself because it appears that Carson destroyed some of the letters just before she passed away, making it impossible to know what those letters included. We can’t know for sure, but some claim that the fact that she felt she had to destroy them is proof of a loving relationship in a traditional community.

8. Ben Barres

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Dr. Ben Barres-by Myelin Repair Foundation-Wikimedia Commons

Ben A. Barres, an American neurobiologist at Stanford University who was born on September 13, 1954, passed away on December 27, 2017. His studies concentrated on the relationship between glial cells and neurons in the neurological system. Barres was born with a gender assigned to a female and switched to a male in 1997. In addition to conducting neurological research, he also used his position as a professor at Stanford University to promote gender equality because he had first-hand knowledge of the disparities in society after having lived both as a woman and a male. 

9. Bruce Voeller

Born on May 12, 1934, and passing away on February 13, 1994, Bruce Raymond Voeller was an activist for LGBT rights as well as a biologist who specialized in the study of AIDS. He helped form the National Gay Task Force in 1973. First, openly gay and lesbian leaders were invited there and the topic of gay and lesbian rights was first officially discussed in the White House when the now-renamed National LGBTQ Task Force met with President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Voeller first used the term acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which is still in use today, in the early years of the AIDS pandemic.

Famous LGBTQ Scientists in Medicine

10. Mark Harrington

Mark Harrington a dedicated advocate for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis awareness who was born in San Francisco in 1959 or 1960, is the co-founder and policy director of the Treatment Action Group(TAG) and an HIV/AIDS researcher. Harrington, an HIV-positive gay male, served as the director of the Science Club, one of ACT UP’s branches. He and the Science Club made a significant contribution to HIV therapy through their activism and research, despite not having had formal training as lab scientists.

To address the disappointing response of the scientific community, they studied the biology of AIDS, the virus that causes it, and the disease. They read everything, including textbooks on immunology and virology as well as the most recent papers that were published. In talks with experts, committee members gave presentations outlining which medicines should be made available to patients and where research efforts should be focused. Harrington continues to work on the AIDS epidemic even after receiving a MacArthur “Genius” Award for his efforts.

Read also; 15 Brightest Scientists of All Time

 

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