Celebrating the Women's History Month, this iconic photo has been doing the rounds on Twitter. Not only the photo has world's most renowned inventors and forefathers of science, it also shows Marie Curie, the only woman to stand out in the crowd.
With International Women’s Day having passed us by just recently, and we continue to rally the cause of women empowerment, there are still so many disappointing incidents that make us realise that gender equality is far from being a reality. Be it the wide pay gap between Indian male and female cricket players that irked people just days ago or the everyday sexism women face in their lives. But it cannot be negated that we have come a long way since our previous generations, and for that we have to thank those women who lay the first path for modern-day women to walk on. And among those at the top of the list is Marie Curie. Yes, the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize way back in 1903, she was surely a woman in a man’s world. She was also the first scientist ever to have won two Nobels and is still one of only two to have won in two different scientific disciplines.
Though there can be no one way of representing the contribution of Curie, this one photograph from 1927 comes quite close. In the wake of this year’s Women’s Day, this extremely rare photograph has resurfaced on social media and has been doing the rounds on the Internet.
The iconic photo captured at the Solvay Conference in the year 1927, shows some of the world’s most respected scientists, including Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Planck and what makes it particularly significant is that there is only one woman in the group — Curie. The historic photo is often regarded as the ‘most intelligent photo of all time’ was taken in October at Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons, where the world’s most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory.
According to reports, here are how the scientists have been placed:
Back row L-R: A Piccard, E Henriot, P Ehrenfest, Ed Herzen, Th. De Donder, E Schroedinger, E Verschaffelt, W Pauli, W Heisenberg, RH Fowler, L Brillouin
Middle row L-R: P Debye, M Knudsen, WL Bragg, HA Kramers. PA M Dirac, AH Compton, LV De Broglie, M Born, N Bohr
Front row: L-R: Angmeir, M Planck, M Curie, HA Lorentz, A Einstein, P Langevin, Ch E Guye, CTR Wilson, OW Richardson
While this photograph has been around for a while, this year’s resurfacing around March 8 (Women’s Day) has been hailed by many.