13 LGBTQ+ scientists you should know (2024)

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It's LGBTQ+ STEM Day, so we're celebrating the queer pioneers who have expanded our knowledge across the years.

From the first woman in space to the man who discovered gravity, here are some of the major LGBTQ+ scientists you should know.

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Carolyn Bertozzi

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Carolyn Bertozzi, a lesbian who's a chemistry professor at Stanford University in California, shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry with Morten Meldal, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, and Scripps Research professor and 1968 Stanford alum K. Barry Sharpless in 2022. Their prize was for "the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry," the Nobel organization announced back then.

Bertozzi's research group "profiles changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, and uses this information to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most recently in the area of immuno-oncology," the Stanford website explains.

Sally Ride (1951-2012)

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Ride was a physicist and the first American woman in space. She was part of the first class at NASA to include women, and went on two missions to space on the Challenger shuttle. Ride was married to astronaut Steve Hawley for five years in the 1980s, and had a woman partner for the last 27 years of her life, Tam O'Shaughnessy, which was revealed in her obituary after he death in 2012.

Bruce Voeller (1934-1994)

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Voeller was a biologist and gay rights activist who coined the term acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which replaced the previous stigmatizing term gay-related immune deficiency disorder. Voeller took a hiatus from his career as a researcher to focus on his advocacy work and co-found the National Gay Task Force in 1973, serving as its executive director for its first five years.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

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Carson, a marine biologist and conservationist, is credited with starting the environmental protection movement. Her 1962 book, Silent Spring, changed how pesticides were used and regulated, also inspiring a grassroots political movement that would eventually lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Carson wrote around 900 letters over 12 years to Dorothy Freeman, and though she destroyed most before her death, surviving letters obtained by Freeman's family suggest a romantic relationship between the two.

Alan Turing (1912-1954)

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The father of theoretical computer science also played a pivotal part in defeating the Axis powers in World War II, intercepting and cracking messages that led to several victories. Turing was prosecuted and convicted in 1952 under a British law that criminalized male homosexual acts as “gross indecency.” Turing chose chemical castration over prison, and died by cyanide poisoning two years later. He was officially pardoned 59 years after his death.

Mark Harrington (1959-)

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Harrington was the head of ACT UP's Science Club, a group of researchers who were not formally trained but whose dedication to learning about virology and immunology helped the scientific community understand HIV and AIDs. As an HIV-positive out gay man, Harrington's personal experiences helped highlight what more needed to be done to treat the virus.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

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Though best known for his philosophical works, Bacon is one of the founders of the scientific method and is considered the father of empiricism. He was one of the first to attempt to preserve meat by freezing it, though his experiment in the snow led to his death by pneumonia just days later. He had 75 attendants in his home, dozens of whom were known as "gentleman waiters" that Bacon adorned with lavish gifts. He was particularly fond of one, Henry Godrick or Goodrick, though debate still remains over the nature of his relationships.

Alan Hart (1890–1962)

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Hart saved countless lives through his pioneering use of X-ray technology to identify tuberculosis cases, which is still used as the gold standard today. He had a hysterectomy in 1917, becoming one of the first transgender people to undergo gender reassignment surgery. He married his wife, Edna, in 1925 and the two remained together until his death in 1962 from heart failure.

George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

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Carver was born into slavery in 1864. 30 years later, he would become the first Black person in the U.S. to earn a bachelor of science degree. Not only the inventor of peanut butter, Carver's crop rotation and other farming techniques became a solution to soil depletion. Carver is another figure whose sexuality is heavily debated, though he is largely believed to have been bisexual due to his close relationship with his research assistant, Austin W. Curtis Jr., with whom he shared the revenue from his 1943 biography.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)

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Known as the founder of modern nursing, Nightingale trained and managed British nurses caring for soldiers in the Crimean War. She laid the foundation for the modern profession with her establishment of the nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. While it was never confirmed by Nightingale that she was in fact a lesbian, she refused marriage proposals from men and made it known she preferred the company of women.

Walter Westman (1945-1991)

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Westman was an ecologist who helped write amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which would become the Clean Water Act in 1972. He also founded the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists, now called Out to Innovate, and served as its director until 1988 when he resigned to focus on AIDs activism. He died a few years later due to the virus.

Svante Paabo

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Isaac Newton (1643–1727)

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Newton is best known for formulating the theory of gravity and his laws of motion, but what not everyone knows is that he has long been speculated to be gay and/or asexual. Newton never married, and is believed to have died a virgin. He was close friends with Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier until their correspondence suddenly ceased in 1693, when Newton had a nervous breakdown shortly after his friends tried to set him up with a woman.