For decades, in the male-dominated field of science, many female scientists have had to witness their achievements being attributed to their male colleagues, leading to the women being omitted from the corresponding Nobel Prizes.

This erasure of their legacy and place in history was a slight that was never corrected. This changed thanks to the Noble Speech.

In the early 1950s, Dr. Esther Lederberg – for example – was part of a team of scientists who pioneered microbial genetics. Despite her substantial contributions to the field of microbiology, the subsequent 1958 Nobel Prize was only awarded to her male counterpart. She died in 2006.

Furthermore, Austrian physicist Dr. Lise Meitner led the team that discovered nuclear fission. Heralded by Albert Einstein as the Marie Curie of the German-speaking world, Dr. Meitner was excluded from the Nobel Prize awarded in 1944 for the discovery; an omission she considered the most irredeemable sorrow of her life. She died in 1968.

Besides Dr. Lederberg and Dr. Meitner, four more women – Frieda Robscheit-Robbins (pathologist); Marietta Blau (physicist); Chien-Shiung Wu (physicist) and Jocelyn Bell Burnell (astrophysicist) – were also denied the Nobel Prize due to their gender. They are featured in the 2017 book “The Matilda Effect” by Ellie Irving.

In general, in 2021 alone, no woman was awarded a Nobel Prize in Science – something that further widens the gender gap in the field of science. In fact, throughout history, less than three percent of Nobel Prize winners have been women, and only one woman of color has ever received the award – an alarming track record.

Being kept far away from the world stage and removed from sight, the above-mentioned women never had the chance to deliver the award’s acceptance speech. An honor of a lifetime that passed them by. Together with Womanity, we removed these female scientists’ cloaks of invisibility, and turned the dead into laureates by enabling them to finally give their acceptance speech.

On the occasion of the United Nations’ International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Womanity used technology to bring these forgotten female scientists back to life and create their very ‘Noble’, not Nobel, speeches.

To do so, and to make the corresponding Noble Speech film, dozens of previous Nobel Prize ceremonies were analyzed to ensure that the created scenography looked as authentic as possible. The scientists’ hairstyles and apparel that were in vogue in the year they should have won were replicated, making the cast the only real element of the film, while the rest was entirely crafted using technology.

The speeches were written using the scientists’ own words: real quotes from meticulously researched press articles, interviews, notes, books and other academic work.

The Noble speeches enabled late female scientists to bid farewell to the shadows, take the stage and steal the show at long last.

The Noble Speech helps draw the public’s attention to the striking problem of gender inequality in the sciences and drive change. The Noble Speech is an invitation to all young girls out there, who are hearing these women at last, to seek a career in science to make a lasting impact – just like these women did. Beyond the speeches themselves, this idea tells the future generation of women: You don’t have big shoes to fill. You have gigantic shoulders to stand on. So lean on them, as you embark on your own journey towards scientific excellence.

The Noble Speech was awarded Bronze in Film at the 2022 Dubai Lynx Festival of Creativity.