Today, by my (likely inaccurate) count, I created my 1000th Wikipedia article on women in mathematics, statistics, computer science, and other areas of science and technology. This is something I’ve been doing since 2008, with several goals in mind. Of course, I want to improve Wikipedia’s coverage in an area that has historically not been covered well. But I also want to counter the perception that there have only been a few heroic figures in this area (say, Hypatia, Lady Lovelace, and Emmy Noether) and show that, instead, it is becoming commonplace (although not yet frequent enough) for men and women to work as equals in science and technology. I want it to be the case that, when readers go to Wikipedia to see who did what in these areas, the names that they see include a representative sample of women, and that those readers can go to articles on those women to find out more about what they went through to do what they did.

The 1000th article (by my count) is Catherine Meadows, a cryptographer at the Naval Research Laboratory. As highlights from the earlier articles, the women listed below (in roughly chronological order of birth) all made the front page of Wikipedia in its “Did you know?” section.

(Discuss on Mastodon)