Wikiphysics
Meet Jess Wade, a 34 year old experimental physicist in London who has created 1,750 Wikipedia bios (and counting) for unknown female and minority scientists, as part of her mission to encourage more diversity in STEM.
As the daughter of two physicians, science was the backdrop of Jess’s childhood. Her aptitude for physics was encouraged by her private school teachers, and she encountered few barriers to entering an undergraduate degree. Although Jess knew most girls were not as lucky, it wasn’t until her PhD that she fully grasped how being a minority in a male-dominated industry was shaping her day-to-day experiences. Not one to stand idly by, Jess started giving talks at schools to encourage more girls to take up science.
In 2017, Jess attended a science event where she met American climatologist Kim Cobb. “Massively impressed” by Kim’s achievements, Jess raced home to find out more about her newfound hero. After a quick search online, Jess was stunned to discover there was no Wikipedia profile on Kim, and a few rabbit holes later, realised how many successful female and minority scientists were also unaccounted for. Humanity’s largest-ever encyclopedia was suffering from a lack of diversity, and Jess decided to do something about it.
Over the past five years, in addition to her day job as a materials scientist designing sustainable technologies for the future, Jess has researched and written biographies for pioneering women in science like Magdalena Skipper, the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the journal Nature, and Jo Dunkley, an astrophysicist and science communicator at Princeton University, who could otherwise be lost to the internet.
In the past three years, female biographies on English Wikipedia have increased from 15% to 19%, thanks in part to Jess writing them and, also because she empowers other people to join her mission through her workshops and 'editathons' at conferences and schools.
Jess hopes that increasing the representation of female and minority scientists on a crowd-sourced platform like Wikipedia will start to chip away at ingrained gender bias in STEM and inspire more young girls to follow their lead.
Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have. Our science can only benefit the whole of society if it’s done by the whole of society.
