Women in Science Oxford Editathon: Ada Lovelace Day 2014
About the Event
The University of Oxford’s IT Services, Bodleian Libraries and Wikimedia UK are organising an editathon focused on women in science to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day on 14 October 2014. The editathon will take place at IT Services on Banbury Road, Oxford, and will include some basic training by a trainer from Wikimedia UK.
Ada Lovelace is widely held to have been the first computer programmer, and Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. This international day of celebration helps people learn about the achievements of women in STEM, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike.
A Wikipedia editathon celebrates the spirit of Ada Lovelace Day by helping people learn about the contribution of individual women to the world of science, and the aim of our editathon is to add to and improve the coverage of individuals, events and resources related to women in science.
Come along to learn about how Wikipedia works and contribute a greater understanding of the role of women in science!
Date: 2-5pm, Tuesday 14 October 2014
Venue: IT Services, University of Oxford (directions)
Participants: All welcome! The event is open to anyone who wishes to help preserve women’s science history. No Wiki editing experience is necessary, though experienced editors are very welcome; tutorials will be provided for Wikipedia newcomers. Female editors are particularly encouraged to attend. Can’t be there the whole time? No problem. Join us for as little or as long as you like.
Can’t get to Oxford? Virtual participation is welcome. Stay tuned for details of how to chat with us on the day.
The event is wheelchair accessible and there is a hearing loop. More details about disability access are here.
Friendly Space Policy
Please note that we have a friendly space policy and do not tolerate harassment of any attendees. Please notify the event organiser if you feel unsafe during the event.
The following is a small sample of topics and women to work on. Feel free to come up with your own ideas! Helpful updates could be as simple as: Making sure reference links are still appropriate and functional; Adding new inline citations/references; Adding a photo; Adding an infobox; Adding data to more fields in an existing infobox; Creating headings; Adding categories; etc.
Suggestions for this year include (but are certainly not limited to!):
Interesting articles to expand, all with an Oxford twist:
Anne McLaren, a leading figure in developmental biology. Her work helped lead to human in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Dorothy Hodgkin, a biochemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.
Mary Cartwright, a mathematician who was the first woman to: receive the Sylvester Medal, serve on the Council of the Royal Society and to be President of the London Mathematical Society (in 1961–62).
Dorothy Bishop (psychologist), a Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental psychology at the University of Oxford.
Ursula Martin, a computer scientist, with research interests in theoretical computer science and formal methods. She is also known for her activities aimed at encouraging women in the fields of computing and mathematics.
Audrey Arnott, a medical illustrator who worked with the neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns (surgeon) at the London Hospital and followed him to Oxford when he was appointed Nuffield Professor of Surgery in 1936/37. She founded the Medical Artists’ Association of Great Britain from her home in Wolvercote in 1949.
Louise Johnson, a biochemist and protein crystallographer.
Antoinette Pirie, a biochemist, who worked with Ida Mann investigating the effect of mustard gas on the cornea.
Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald, a physiologist and clinical pathologist best known for her work on the physiology of respiration.
Marian Dawkins, a biologist who is Professor of animal behaviour at the University of Oxford. She is married to the controversial evolutionary biologist and writer Richard Dawkins.
Rosa Beddington, a scientist whose career had a major impact on developmental biology. A talented artist, she designed the Waddington Medal, awarded for outstanding performance and contribution to the field of developmental biology.
Helen Muir, a rheumatologist. She is best known for pioneering work into the causes of osteoarthritis.
Janet Vaughan, a physiologist who discovered that, as a female doctor, she had difficulties gaining access to the patients and experimented on pigeons. Virginia Woolf described her as 'an attractive woman; competent, disinterested, taking blood tests all day to solve abstract problems'.
Anne Treisman, a psychologist currently at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. She researches visual attention, object perception, and memory. One of her most influential ideas is the feature integration theory of attention, first published with G. Gelade in 1980.
Lorna Casselton, a biologist. She was Professor Emeritus of Fungal Genetics in the Department of Plant Science at the University of Oxford, and was known for her genetic and molecular analysis of the mushroom Coprinus cinereus and Coprinus lagopus.
Frances Kirwan, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Her fields of specialisation are algebraic and symplectic geometry.
Kay Davies, a human geneticist. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and in the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying the condition.
Joanna Haigh, a physicist who is known for her work on solar variability, and also works on radiative transfer, stratosphere-troposphere coupling and climate modelling.
We will provide a variety of reference books on the day. Editors will also have access to some University of Oxford e-resources, including the Dictionary of National Biography.
We have a selection of Women in Science podcasts [1]
Some of these women's papers are in the Bodleian Library. Although not all are available to researchers yet, we will provide some reproductions of archival material for those interested in working on related articles. Editors are welcome to make use of the Bodleian Library's collections before or after the event but will need to ensure they have a Bodleian Reader's Card (see Bodleian Admissions for information).
Note: Wikipedia pages that include lists of important women are all missing plenty of key people, so feel free to add to those lists
