ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Recovering the Histories of Women in Quantum Physics 1

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Marking a century since the birth of quantum mechanics, this symposium re-examines how the history of modern physics has been written, and how gender has shaped both its making and its remembrance. Long portrayed as the achievement of a few exceptional men, quantum theory in fact emerged from collaborative, transnational, and deeply gendered networks of scientific labor. The papers in this symposium explore how the making of quantum physics was intertwined with the making of its history: how ideals of genius, abstraction, and objectivity came to be aligned with masculinity, while women’s theoretical, experimental, and organizational contributions were relegated to the margins or erased altogether. By revisiting key episodes in the formation and institutionalization of quantum science, the symposium reveals how collaboration, mentorship, and intellectual partnership were structured by cultural expectations surrounding gender and domesticity. Tracing these dynamics across shifting geographies and generations—from interwar Europe to postwar research networks—the symposium considers how they shaped who could participate in, and be remembered within, this foundational field. Beyond historical recovery, it asks how the very languages, institutions, and epistemic values that constitute physics have been historically formed through exclusion. In revisiting women’s roles in quantum research and its philosophical extensions, the symposium invites a broader reflection on how the gendered organization of knowledge has shaped scientific practice. Bringing together work on the formation of physical knowledge and on gender studies, it aims for a mutual enrichment of both fields.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Patrick Charbonneau, Duke University

Individual Presentations

• Feminism and societal expectations: Paul Ehrenfest, Tatiana Afanassjewa, and the limits of escaping an androcentric physics - Margriet van der Heijden, Eindhoven University of Technology

• The Work of a Great Physicist? Heisenberg’s Erasure of Women’s Work in his History of Quantum Mechanics - Elena Elena Schaa, University of Basel

• Networks of Support, Collaboration, and Mentorship in Physics - Michelle Franck