For more than 137 years, the Eiffel Tower has featured the names of 72 prominent French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians engraved in a relief on the exterior of its first floor. The golden engravings are meant to honor French science, progress, and human achievement, an initiative by Gustave Eiffel himself. There is only one problem: every single name is male.
This will change soon. On 26 January 2026, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo unveiled 72 proposed names of women scientists to be added to the Eiffel Tower, beside the existing male names. The project aims to give women scientists their rightful place in one of the world’s most famous monuments. France’s major scientific academies are now reviewing the proposed list before final approval.
The absence of women’s names from the Eiffel Tower is part of a much larger historical pattern: women made scientific discoveries and developed knowledge, but were not recognized for them.
One of the most famous women now proposed for the Eiffel Tower is Marie Curie (1867- 1934). Born in Warsaw and later naturalized French, Marie Curie worked on radioactivity and discovered polonium and radium with her husband, Pierre Curie. She remains the only person to have received Nobel Prizes in two scientific categories: Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911. Yet, Curie’s recognition was not automatic. When the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics was discussed, French academics did not propose Marie Curie. However, Pierre Curie insisted that her contribution was honored alongside his own. Perhaps, without Pierre’s intervention, one of the greatest scientists might not have gotten the deserved recognition.
“[T]he systematic undervaluation and denial of recognition of women’s contributions and achievements, particularly in the scientific field”, is called the Matilda effect. The term was coined in 1993 by science historian Margaret Rossiter, who named it after Matilda Joslyn Gage. In 1870, activist Matilda Joslyn Gage published a pamphlet titled Woman as Inventor, criticizing that female inventors’ discoveries were ignored, suppressed, or credited to men.
The Matilda effect has many names and biographies.
Dr. Lise Meitner (1878-1968), an Austrian-born physicist, helped discover and explain nuclear fission together with Otto Hahn. In 1944, Otto Hahn alone received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, while Meitner’s contribution was long pushed into the margins of scientific memory. Dr. Esther Lederberg (1922-2006), an American microbiologist and pioneer of bacterial genetics, discovered lambda phage, helped develop replica plating, and made crucial contributions to the understanding of genetic exchange in bacteria. However, her findings were primarily attributed to her husband, Joshua Lederberg. Another well-known example is Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943), who discovered pulsars as a graduate student at Cambridge. In 1974, however, the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of pulsars went to her male supervisor, Antony Hewish, and Sir Martin Ryle, not to her.
The individual stories differ but follow the same pattern. Women discovered, researched, and contributed, but were often disregarded when it came to recognition and accreditation.
Why did this happen? For centuries, women were excluded from higher education and scientific careers despite their professional abilities and qualifications. Many could only enter science through informal roles such as assistants, wives, collaborators, or students. This enabled their contributions to be treated as secondary. Most notably, the Nobel Prize reflects this imbalance. Between 1901 and 2025, women received only 6.6 percent of all Nobel Prizes, and in the category of Physics, women made up only 2.2 percent of Nobel Prize winners.
However, it is important to be precise: Not every gender imbalance in science is automatically the Matilda effect. The Matilda effect particularly points out a specific form of underrecognition, but the broader underrepresentation of women in science is a structural problem. A persistent gender gap in science remains, as “women only make up one-third of the global scientific community”. In some countries, less than 10 percent of researchers are women.
These disparities are important to address, since they come with consequences. Women belong in science not only as a question of fairness, but because science itself depends on the widest possible range of talent, ideas, and perspectives. If women, who make up approximately half of the world’s population, are excluded or discouraged from scientific careers, potential is wasted. After all, scientific talent is essential for innovation, medical progress, technological development, and solutions for global challenges. Dr. Laurel Smith-Doerr from the University of Massachusetts Amherst argues that diversity in a scientific team alone does not lead to innovation, but that “equity is a necessary condition for diversity to produce innovation”. For instance, excluding women from clinical translation efforts can harm drug safety and women’s health.
Equal recognition and support are therefore essential for advancing scientific quality and progress. At the same time, the presence of more women in science provides a role model for younger generations. Therefore, supporting women in science is not just about correcting historical injustices, but making science more useful and representative of whom it aims to serve: the people.
Science was never only male. More than a century later, the Eiffel Tower makes room for female scientists. Who we honor matters, as public recognition shapes collective memory and teaches future generations. Adding 72 women scientists to the Eiffel Tower will neither undo centuries of exclusion nor the denial of recognition. It also will not return lost prizes, lost salaries, lost professorships, or lost opportunities. Yet, symbols like this are meaningful. Monuments are public textbooks: they teach us who a society considers worthy of recognition. For 137 years, the gold plaques on the Eiffel Tower have suggested that scientific greatness only has male names. By including women scientists, France’s history of science will be represented in a more accurate and complete manner. Hopefully, this long-overdue correction will inspire broader public recognition and support of women’s contributions in all fields – past, present, and future. But it must not stop at symbolic correction. Equitable conditions must be strengthened in schools, universities, laboratories, and funding systems around the world, so that scientific talent is supported regardless of gender. After all, the brightest minds can only contribute when given opportunities.
Amelie Fischer
- Amelie Fischer
