Why Women Haven't Won a Physics Nobel Prize in 50 Years

Throughout her life, theoretical physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer was asked why girls should even bother studying science. She often answered with a question of her own: "Do girls only have to learn how to read just to study cookbooks?"

The answer, of course, was no, and she proved as much when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 for her "discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure." Little did Mayer know, however, that she wasn't only the second female Nobel laureate in physics (after Marie Curie, in 1903), but she'd also be the last for more than 50 years — and counting.

See also: Women, You Don't Have to Be Loud to Be Good Leaders Read more...

More about Features, Women, Science, Nobel Prize, and Feminism