Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, the author of a new database that aims to make stars of Black women in physics.
photograph by Chanda Prescod-WeinsteinIt doesn’t take an astrophysicist to see the lack of representation in the world of scientific research, but it took one to do something about it.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who has a PhD in cosmology, said Black women who study physics have long been overlooked and under-cited, especially if they lack ties to prestigious institutions. So Prescod-Weinstein led a multi-year effort to create a list of all the professional publications by Black women with PhDs in physics-related disciplines with the goal of helping illuminate them and their work.
The database, released last month, has about 4,000 entries with links to published works by nearly 180 women and gender minorities, Prescod-Weinstein told Forbes. It covers 50 years of research and is believed to be the first database in any field of science focused on the work of Black women.
“Part of it is saying, ‘We’re here and we’ve been making intellectual contributions,’” said Prescod-Weinstein, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. “Specifically, I want Black students to be able to find this resource and to be able to see themselves.”
The database could help Black women with PhDs in physics better tap into a market for U.S. startup funding that reached $216 billion in 2022. Black women received less than 1% of that pie, according to Crunchbase, and while graduate students tend to start more companies and raise more money than undergraduates, women represent only a small slice of that population.
Jami Valentine Miller, founder of African American Women in Physics
COURTESY JAMI VALENTINE MILLER“Often, we hear that employers and search committees can’t find qualified candidates. This database will help to alleviate that issue.”
Physicists are called on to innovate everything from semiconductors to medicine to makeup products, said Jami Valentine Miller, the first Black woman to earn a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University and founder of the African American Women in Physics group. If they’ve done research that could be applied commercially, Miller said, the database could help them get discovered by potential cofounders or help them launch and fund their own startups.
“Being able to verify and see that track record of research, I think, will help people have a stronger package when they’re seeking venture capital,” Miller told Forbes. Most PhD physicists end up going into business or government jobs and not academia. Even for those who don’t start their own companies, the database could help them get discovered by companies that are looking for diverse talent. “Often, we hear that employers and search committees can’t find qualified candidates,” Miller said. “This database will help to alleviate that issue because it will now be much easier to find more diverse candidates based on their publication records.”
Willie Hobbs Moore
University of MichiganThe database, dubbed the “Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography,” focuses on Black women PhDs who are either from the U.S. or did graduate training in the country. The list includes research from the likes of Willie Hobbs Moore, who in 1972 became the first Black woman to earn a PhD in physics, and Nadya Mason, one of America's leading materials physicists who leads the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
About 2,000 physics PhDs are awarded in the U.S. every year, Prescod-Weinstein said, and typically less than 0.5% of those — between five and ten annually — go to women of African descent. That number used to be less than 10 per decade. Prescod-Weinstein said she wanted to make it easier for folks to intentionally build on the work of Black women physicists.
“The way that people pick research directions is not at all scientific,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “So why not add the social factor into it where people can say, ‘Actually, I’m going to go build research programs from citing Black women’?”
Prescod-Weinstein said she drew some inspiration from the #CiteBlackWomen movement on social media, which was founded by Christen A. Smith, a professor of anthropology and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Smith said she’s unaware of another such database and that it makes “significant strides” towards correcting the historical subduing of Black women's voices in science, technology, engineering and math.
“In many ways, the historical refusal to pay close attention to race, gender, ethnicity in STEM reifies structural inequalities that perpetuate discrimination against marginalized communities, particularly Black women,” Smith said.
Nadya Mason
Della Perrone Beckman Institute/University of Illinois at Urbana ChampaignPrescod-Weinstein is a self-described activist for equality in science and an outspoken critic of how science gets done in America. She helped organize a “Strike for Black Lives” in 2020 following the killings of several unarmed Black people, including George Floyd, a protest that drew support or participation from more than 4,500 academics and scientific institutions. In 2021, she was among a group of researchers who called on NASA to rename the James Webb telescope because of alleged improprieties of the namesake former NASA official. NASA ultimately dismissed those calls after the agency said an investigation yielded no evidence of wrongdoing.
Prescod-Weinstein and two research assistants spent about two years compiling the database, primarily working from a list maintained by African American Women in Physics. Prescod-Weinstein said one of the more difficult aspects of the project was seeing the names of people she knows faced racism and sexism in their academic journey — and then having sobering conversations with her research assistants, both women, about it.
“We all come to physics because we’re enthralled by the beauty of the universe and the physical laws, and then there are these social elements that are just grotesque,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “And I think that looking at the story of Black women in physics gives you a holistic look at both of those pieces in a dynamical relationship with each other.”
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