Last Tuesday, the 8th of March, was the International Women's Day. On this occassion we would like to share some stories of women in science. We start with this video made bij IFL Science, which was published five years ago, but is still relevant. It shows some great women who changed the world.
"Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Caroline Herschel... These are just a few examples of female scientists who have made world-changing discoveries. Watch the video to hear their extraordinary stories."
Some time ago I also wrote a short blog post about a series of articles from Quantum Universe that triggered my interest. In these articles Sumedha Biswas wrote about women in science, and mostly about women who made major contributions but were acknowledged much later about their work. In the blog I copied some stories from her articles I found very interesting and I had absolutely no idea about!
Furthermore, in her blogs Diletta Martinelli shared some of her thoughts on gender balance in science. Have a look for example at her blog "Words of Women in Mathematics in times of Corona". We read in her blog:
"On the last 12th of May, the International Day for Women in Mathematics, the short documentary Words of Women in Mathematics in the times of Corona was released. It features the reflections of 86 women mathematicians from 37 countries, who share in 25 different languages their experience during the pandemic. It is a moving collection of humanity that gathers together very different points of view. Senior women with a tenured position miss social interactions, but are also benefiting from the slower pace of things that the lockdown has imposed. Younger women are very worried about the long-term impact of the pandemic on the academic job market and consequently their careers. Mothers with children in school years have very little time left for research after long hours dedicated to home-schooling. In developing countries, the pandemic and the economic crisis are even causing food shortages and social insecurity."
European Women in Mathematics
I would also like to say some words about the wonderful organization European Women in Mathematics. European Women in Mathematics (founded in 1986) is an international association of women working in the field of mathematics in Europe. Many countries have a separate local organization, for example for the Netherlands this is EWL-NL.
On their website you can find many interesting articles. In Women Portaits for example you can read interviews with women in mathematics, you can find various Gender Studies, and a collection of many more atricles. EWN also organizes events and talks, if you want to stay up to date you can always register to their newsletters!
During the last decades, many resources have been invested in quantum computing. This research field has grown immensely and amazing results have been obtained. The plans for the future are highly ambitious, but at the same time, there are serious questions that need to be addressed.
With ever-growing possibilities and interconnectivity on the internet, we rely more and more on it being secure. However, our classical internet is not provably secure, could a quantum internet solve our problems?
It is undeniable that natural, integer, rational and real numbers are necessary to explain what happens in our daily life, but in high school some of us also hear about some weird objects called imaginary numbers, also known as complex numbers. What do we need these numbers for?
