Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, from C2RMF retouched

LGBT people in science are students, professionals, hobbyists, and anyone else who is

LGBT ' 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 a ...

and interested in

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

. The sexuality of many people in science remains up for debate by historians, largely due to the unaccepting cultures in which many of these people lived. For the most part, we do not know for certain how people in the past would have labelled their sexuality or gender because many individuals lived radically different private lives outside of the accepted gender and sexual norms of their time. One such example of a historical person in science that was arguably part of the LGBT community is

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

, whose sexuality was later the subject of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

's study.

History of LGBT people in science

Magnus Hirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a German physician and sexologist. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Com ...

, a German physician and

sexologist Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism. Sexologists app ...

, was one of the first advocates for homosexual and

transgender rights A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is inconsistent or not culturally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth and also with the gender role that is associated with that sex. They may have, or may intend to establi ...

. Hirschfeld was most well known for his sexual theories and for activism. In 1897 Hirschfeld created the first sexual rights organization, the Scientific Humanitarian Community, which aimed to explore and defend the rights of

homosexuals Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to pe ...

. As one of the first advocates for homosexual rights, Hirschfeld faced a great amount of backlash from newspapers claiming, for example, that "abnormal propensities" should be distanced from "mainstream medicine". Hirschfeld was attacked by Nazis for being gay and Jewish, and he was beaten, sacked, and had his books burned. He was eventually forced into exile in France.

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

, an English

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

, changed the ideology and practice of

macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

, and his ideas formed the school of thought known as

Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output an ...

. Keynes's romantic relationships early in his life were only with other men. He had many sexual encounters with other men and he was open about these affairs. Several communities, in which Keynes was involved with, such as the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...

, and the

Cambridge Apostles The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...

were accepting towards Keynes's homosexuality. People who opposed Keynes's ideas used his sexuality to attack his work. In Keynes's later years he began to pursue affairs with women. In 1925, Keynes married well-known Russian ballerina,

Lydia Lopokova Lydia Lopokova, Baroness Keynes (born Lidia Vasilyevna Lopukhova, russian: Лидия Васильевна Лопухова; 21 October 1891 – 8 June 1981) was a Russian ballerina famous during the early 20th century. Lopokova trained at the I ...

. Writer, physician, tubercular

radiologist Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiatio ...

, and transsexual

Alan L. Hart Alan L. Hart (born Alberta Lucille Hart, also known as Robert Allen Bamford Jr., October 4, 1890 – July 1, 1962) was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, writer, and novelist. Hart pioneered the use of x-ray photogr ...

made great strides in tuberculosis detection after earning his master's degree in radiology from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1928. Hart sought psychiatric help from his professor, J. Allen Gilbert, for his "abnormal" attraction to women previous to his transition. The treatment of Hart was documented in the case study "Homosexuality and Its Treatment" in 1920. Hart requested a full hysterectomy, claiming he felt that he deserved to be sterilized for his "abnormal inversions". Mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...

was a prominent LGBT English scholar during the twentieth century that led a group of cryptanalysts in cracking the code of the Enigma machine, ultimately helped turning the tide of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Despite his service to the Allied cause, he was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts and had most of his academic work covered up through the

Official Secrets Act An Official Secrets Act (OSA) is legislation that provides for the protection of state secrets and official information, mainly related to national security but in unrevised form (based on the UK Official Secrets Act 1911) can include all infor ...

. At the height of the

Lavender Scare The "lavender scare" was a moral panic about homosexual people in the United States government which led to their mass dismissal from government service during the mid-20th century. It contributed to and paralleled the anti-communist campaign wh ...

, astronomer Frank Kameny was fired by the US

Army Map Service The Army Map Service (AMS) was the military cartographic agency of the United States Department of Defense from 1941 to 1968, subordinated to the United States Army Corps of Engineers. On September 1, 1968, the AMS was redesignated the U.S. Army T ...

in 1957, shortly after his PhD from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. In 1958, he was barred from future employment in the federal government. Subsequently, radicalized, he became "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement. According to chemist

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 ...

, the legendary

porphyrin Porphyrins ( ) are a group of heterocyclic macrocycle organic compounds, composed of four modified pyrrole subunits interconnected at their α carbon atoms via methine bridges (=CH−). The parent of porphyrin is porphine, a rare chemical com ...

chemist Martin Gouterman, only a few years Kameny's junior, managed to escape similar persecution and was able to pursue a successful scientific career at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. Computer scientist

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 ...

worked at IBM and invented a method for issuing multiple out-of-order instructions per machine cycle. She was also a pioneer of microchip design with many high-tech companies today using her work as the foundations for their technology. Conway suffered from

gender dysphoria Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identitytheir personal sense of their own genderand their sex assigned at birth. The diagnostic label gender identity disorder (GID) was used until ...

and underwent a gender transition in 1968. After Conway revealed her intent to transition to IBM, she was fired. After her transition, Conway kept her transition a secret with only a few close friends who knew. In 2000 when her story went public, she began to work in

transgender activism The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health c ...

to advocate for more transgender rights and transgender equality.

George Washington Carver George Washington Carver ( 1864 – January 5, 1943) was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the ea ...

was an agricultural scientist who developed several plant-based products and promoted the start of peanut farming. Although Carver did not make any comments on his sexuality a previous partner suggested that he was bisexual, and it is known that he lived the remainder of his life with Curtis Austin Jr.

Sara Josephine Baker Sara Josephine Baker (November 15, 1873 – February 22, 1945) was an American physician notable for making contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York City. Her fight against the damage that widespread ur ...

was a physician known by the name Doctor Jo who developed many programs for disease prevention. She created the Federal Children's Bureau which significantly contributed to the improvement of hygiene. She was known to have lived with

Ida Alexa Ross Wylie Ida Alexa Ross Wylie (16 March 1885 – 4 November 1959), known by her pen name I.A.R. Wylie, was an Australian-British-American novelist, screenwriter, short story writer, and poet and suffragette sympathiser, who was honored by the journalisti ...

for the later part of their lives.

Sally Ride Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts V ...

was an astrophysicist known for being the first American woman in space. She developed a foundation in her name dedicated to improving science education, particularly for young girls. After she died, it was announced that she and Tam O'Shaughnessy, who she had lived with for 27 years, were partners. This made Ride the first LGBT astronaut as well.

Challenges for LGBT people in science

There are traditions and expectations that LGBT people should not study or have careers in science, according to

Manil Suri Manil Suri (born July 1959) is an Indian-American mathematician and writer of a trilogy of novels all named for Hindu gods. His first novel, '' The Death of Vishnu'' (2001), which was long-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize, short-listed for th ...

. In 2016 the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

published a list of ways in which LGBT physicists have a more difficult career experience than their non-LGBT counterparts. Studies have shown that many LGBT faculty and researchers are not out in their departments, and coming out may negatively affect retention. This is of particular issue in the STEM field as the work cultures and professional environments within this field of work can often exclude or alienate the existence of the LGBT community and the individuals within it. A 2021 study identified various inequalities for LGBT people in science. Chemist David Smith speculated that the visibility of more LGBT

role model A role model is a person whose behaviour, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by younger people. The term ''role model'' is credited to sociologist Robert K. Merton, who hypothesized that individuals compare themselves ...

s in science would make it easier for other LGBT students to join the sciences, and conducted a survey which seemed to support this view. A report on a 2015 survey of United States undergraduate students found that gay students of science were more likely to change their major to a subject outside of science than non-LGBT students. Some academic commentators who study LGBT issues commented that LGBT students face social barriers to studying science which non-LGBT people do not experience. Various activist organizations used this study as supporting evidence that social changes could bring equal opportunity for LGBT people to study and have careers in science.

Organizations & Campaigns

United States

In recognition that LGBT people are underrepresented in the sciences, various universities have programs to encourage more LGBT students to join their science programs. The organization is oSTEM (Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has a network of about 90 student chapters at universities across the United States. oSTEM has an annual conference and aims to provide a place for LGBT science students to gather, whether they are out or not. Other professional organizations for LGBT people in science include the

National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals Out to Innovate, previously the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP), is a professional society for professionals in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering. Each year, Out to Innovate g ...

(NOGLSTP). NOGLSTP educates professional communities about LGBT issues and offers two scholarships annually. In 2018, Lauren Esposito, curator of

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 ...

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 ...

, created the campaign 500 Queer Scientists, which aims to promote inclusivity in science. NASA employees annually holds

LGBT pride LGBT pride (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to sham ...

parade A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, float (parade), floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually ce ...

events.

United Kingdom and Europe

Pride in STEM, a charitable organization based in the United Kingdom, co-founded the International Day of LGBTQ+ People in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. In Germany, a similar movement was founded under the name LGBTQ STEM Berlin. The first interdisciplinary conference in the UK for LGBTQ+ people working in STEM fields was the LGBTSTEMinar hosted at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

in 2016. It has been hosted annually since then and in 2020 the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Athena Prize was awarded for this work.

References

External links

National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals500 Queer Scientists CampaignOut in STEM ConferencePride in STEMLGBTQ STEM Berlin Twitter account