In this exhibition you will meet scientists and academics who have had a significant impact on teaching, research, and the city of Berlin itself. Over one hundred years since the first female student was able to officially matriculate at university, Berlin now has the highest proportion of female professors in the country and can boast of being the capital for women scientists. This exhibition promotes language learning with the help of social themes.
The Goethe-Institut is offering learning and teaching materials at A1 and A2 level on the topic of women in science and gender equality. There are 22 work sheets with grammar and language exercises on offer, each on a different woman in science. There is also a lesson plan in English and answers to the exercises available.
„That Cécile Vogt was nominated13 times for the Nobel Prize but never won it demonstrates the low status of women researchers at the beginning of the 20th century.”
Dr. Cécile Vogt (1875 – 1962) was a doctor and neurologist, who worked unpaid for 18 years in a neurobiological laboratory in the Friederich Wilhelm University founded by her husband. Over the course of her life, she was nominated 13 times for a Nobel Prize for her work on the anatomy of the cerebral cortex, but never won. Despite her own achievements she was often seen as an assistant of her husband: during her lifetime she received very little recognition for her career.
Gesche Joost (*1974) has also made a way into a sphere traditionally considered to be reserved for men: information and design. Prof. Dr. Gesche Joost is a front-runner in research on artificial intelligence.
Since 2017 she has been in the steering committee of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence where she leads the research group for interactive textiles. She is also the first “Digitial Champion” of the German government at the European Commission. Moreover, she is a professor of design research at the University of Arts, Berlin, whereby she shows the importance of interdisciplinary work on AI in art and science.
You'll find more profiles on the website of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité
Imagine: You want to become a scientist, but you are not allowed to study. You work in research, achieve groundbreaking results, but don't get paid. You are nominated for the Nobel Prize more than a dozen times, but you don't receive it because you are not a man. This exhibition gives the women who once defied all odds and paved the way for many generations of successful women scientists the recognition they deserve. And it also shows examples of the work of some of today’s outstanding women researchers. But don’t just use it for information, use it for inspiration.
In this exhibition, you will get to know women scientists who have had or continue to have a significant impact on teaching, research and the city of Berlin. More than a hundred years after the first female student was officially enrolled, Berlin can now present itself as the capital of women scientists with the highest proportion of women professors in Germany and counts a total of more than 15,000 women scientists, from doctoral students to university presidents.
The exhibition is part of the project "Berlin - Capital of Women Scientists", an initiative of the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, which was carried out in 2021 by the Berlin Institute of Health with the support of the Berlin Senate Chancellery. The starting point was Wikipedia edit-a-thons with interested amateur researchers, from schoolchildren to senior citizens. Together they edited and wrote more than 50 Wikipedia entries about women scientists in Berlin.
