500 Queer Scientists is a visibility campaign for
LGBTQ+ people working in the sciences.
Queer
''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...
scientists submit short descriptions of their lives to the organization; these are manually checked and proof-read before being posted to the group's website. In collating submissions, the organization intends to show queer people currently working in science that there are others like them, to provide role models for future generations of researchers, and to create a database that can be used when planning events to ensure representation.
History
The group was founded in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
on 4 June 2018,
[ by Lauren Esposito, an ]arachnology
Arachnology is the scientific study of arachnids, which comprise spiders and related invertebrates such as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, and harvestmen. Those who study spiders and other arachnids are arachnologists. More narrowly, the study of sp ...
professor at the California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...
Journal of Homosexuality
The ''Journal of Homosexuality'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering research into sexual practices and gender roles in their cultural, historical, interpersonal, and modern social contexts.
History
The founding editor-in-chief was Char ...
'' that found that, in 2013, more than 40% of respondents to a survey who identified as LGBTQ+
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is ...
had not revealed that they were to their colleagues.[ The campaign was inspired by the group ]500 Women Scientists
500 Women Scientists is a non-profit group dedicated to making science open, inclusive, and accessible. To achieve this mission, they work to increase scientific literacy through public engagement, advocate for science and equity, and provide self ...
;[ At launch, the site contained 50 scientists' stories; within a week this had reached 250, and by 26 June there were 550. The first stories were all written in English.][
In June 2019, they held an event with publisher ]Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
to mark World Pride
WorldPride, licensed by InterPride and organized by one of its member organizations, is an event that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ pride) issues on an international level through parades, festivals and other c ...
. The site had over 900 profiles by July 2019; in that month, the group was involved in organizing the second LGBTSTEM Day.
Recognition
For founding 500 Queer Scientists, the awarded the 2019 Walt Westman Award to Lauren Esposito.
Notable people included
* David Adger
David Adger, (born 23 September 1967) is a Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Adger is interested in the human capacity for syntax. Adger served as president of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 2015 t ...
* Clara Barker
* Cynthia Bauerle
* Alex Bond
Alexander L. Bond is a Canadian conservation biologist, ecologist, and curator. He is a senior curator at the Natural History Museum at Tring.
Education
Bond completed a B.Sc. with honors in biology from Mount Allison University in 2005 and ...
* Ben Britton
Thomas Benjamin Britton (born 18 April 1985) is a materials scientist and engineer based at The University of British Columbia. He is a specialist in micromechanics, electron microscopy and crystal plasticity. In 2014 he was awarded the Si ...
* Peter Coles
* Lynn Conway
Lynn Ann Conway (born January 2, 1938) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer and transgender activist.
She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order ...
* Rochelle Diamond
* JJ Eldridge
JJ Eldridge is a theoretical astrophysicist based in New Zealand. They are the head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland and co-author of ''The Structure And Evolution Of Stars.''
Education and research
Eldridge obtained ...
* Lauren Esposito
* Michael Francis Fay
Michael Francis Fay (born 1960) is a British geneticist and botanist currently serving as Senior Research Leader, Conservation Genetics, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Life
After studying at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, Fay wa ...
* Jon Freeman
* Sam Giles
Sam Giles is a palaeobiologist at the University of Birmingham. Her research combines modern imaging with fossils to understand the evolution of life, in particular that of early fish, and in 2015 "rewrote" the vertebrate family tree. She was a 20 ...
* Abhik Ghosh
Abhik Ghosh is an Indian inorganic chemist and materials scientist and a professor of chemistry at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, Norway.
Early life and education
Abhik Ghosh was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, in 19 ...
* Lisa Graumlich
* Renée Hložek
Renée Hložek (born 15 November 1983) is a South African cosmologist, Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and an Azrieli Global Scholar within the Canadian Ins ...
* J. David Jentsch
* Autumn Kent
* Nathan H. Lents
Nathan H. Lents is an American scientist, author, and university professor. He has been on the faculty of John Jay College since 2006 and is currently the director of the Cell and Molecular Biology program and the former head of the honors progra ...
* Katie Mack
* Anson W. Mackay
* Jessica Mink
Jessica Mink (formerly Douglas John Mink) is an American software developer and a data archivist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. She was part of the team that discovered the rings around the planet Uranus.
Early life a ...
* Shaun O'Boyle
* Jonathon Rendina
* David K. Smith
* Jessica Ware
* Tristram Wyatt
* Jeremy Yoder
See also
* LGBT people in science
LGBT people in science are students, professionals, hobbyists, and anyone else who is LGBT and interested in science. The sexuality of many people in science remains up for debate by historians, largely due to the unaccepting cultures in which m ...
*500 Women Scientists
500 Women Scientists is a non-profit group dedicated to making science open, inclusive, and accessible. To achieve this mission, they work to increase scientific literacy through public engagement, advocate for science and equity, and provide self ...
References
{{reflist
External links
500 Queer Scientists
2018 establishments in the United States
LGBT organizations in the United States
Science advocacy organizations
Sexual orientation and science
Organizations for LGBT science