An Italian professor who chose a seminar about physics and gender as his forum to argue that women were naturally less suited to the science has been suspended — several days before Tuesday’s announcement that a woman won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Alessandro Strumia, of the University of Pisa, is now under investigation at CERN, the Switzerland-based European Organization for Nuclear Research, which hosted the convention.
During his speech, Strumia showed a slide that said: “Physics was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation.”
He went on to claim that a greater variability in male IQ meant that one would expect top physicists to be mostly male. Then he added that diverging interests between the sexes meant fewer women would be interested in physics.
In the face of widespread condemnation — female British physicists called his speech “deplorable” — the academic defended himself to the Times in the UK.
“This is what happens every time somebody wants to speak about this,” he told the newspaper. “All these people have been destroyed.”
On Monday, CERN said the presentation on Sunday was “highly offensive.” It added that it had no prior knowledge of the content of the talk and cited its “attacks on individuals” as “unacceptable in any professional context.”
Athene Donald, a senior physicist and master of Churchill College, Cambridge, who supports initiatives to encourage more girls to go into science, told the Times she was “astonished and horrified” by Strumia’s remarks. Among other things, Strumia claimed the scientists being discriminated against were male.
Jessica Wade, from Imperial College London, joined the debate, saying: “What’s really frightening is not that one professor thinks these things, but someone with influence.
“This is someone who could one day be involved with hiring these women, determine whether they’ll get a research grant or referee their academic papers.”
The newly minted winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics is Donna Strickland of Canada, who shares the award with Arthur Ashkin of the US and Gerard Mourou from France. The Nobel recognizes their work in the field of laser physics, developing so-called “optical tweezers” from lasers and improving laser therapy that targets cancer.
Strickland is the first woman to win a Nobel in physics in 55 years. Preceding her were Marie Curie (in 1903, for her research into radioactivity) and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (in 1963, for her discoveries about the nuclei of atoms).
Clearly, they weren’t deterred by professors like Italy’s Strumia.
