Ever heard of Dora Lush? She was an Australian microbiologist working in the 1940s on developing a vaccine for a deadly disease known as scrub typhus. She accidentally pricked her finger with a contaminated needle. Three weeks later she died from the very disease she was trying to tame.

Hailed as a martyr for science by her contemporaries, she kept donating blood samples from her death bed at the Royal Melbourne Hospital until she died in May 1943.

But you would not read about her on the global go-to site Wikipedia. This remarkable researcher is one of an unknown number of Australian women scientists with scant or no presence on the online encyclopaedia.

According to web information company Alexa, WIkipedia is the sixth most popular website globally. Yet even Wikipedia admits to a systematic bias when it comes to women in science, describing the subject as ''woefully underrepresented''.

Next month the Australian Academy of Science plans to change that, hosting a Women of Science ''Wikibomb'' event inspired by a similar call to arms by the Royal Society, London.