Dean Search | For Urry, another ceiling to crack
Before 2001, no woman had ever held tenure in the Physics Department, much less served as the department’s chair.
No one, that is, until Meg Urry.
When Urry, 52, left her senior post at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, for Yale in 2001, she arrived on Science Hill as Physics’ first female tenured faculty member.
By that time, she had already accumulated a substantial list of accolades. She was internationally renowned for her research on supermassive black holes. She had been awarded the Annie Jump Cannon award of the...
It's still a soundbite because in some sense it is still true - otherwise it wouldn't be news. But gender issues are fading without the heavy-handed approach of Scandinavia (mandating women in top positions) - the hard sciences(30/70) are still behind the life sciences(50/50) regarding women but women are ahead in social sciences (70/30) so there are gender gaps on both sides. At least no one can say the gap is because of discrimination now.
There is an effort to Title IX science and that would be disaster.
Urry did an interview with one of our writers (Women In Science: Professor Meg Urry on why there are so few women in physics - http://www.scientificblogging.com/scientific_notation/women_in_science_professor_meg_urry_on_why_there_are_so_few_women_in_physics)a short while ago about this topic so I think she recognizes she is paving new ground in physics.
palin? ceiling. urry? ceiling. who knew hillary's soundbite would have such a long and widely applicable life?