Hearsay, Not-So-Big Data and Choice: Understanding Science and Maths Through the Lives of Men Who Supported Women

For centuries now, a great deal and large variety of quantitative data from anthropological and biomedical research on women has been conducted, collected, classified and interpreted. How is it that some (male) scientists read this same data and research as indicating that women are intellectually inferior to men while others see a form of ambiguous diversity and still others equality? Following the invitation extended by this project’s editors to build a bridge between women’s past and present in maths, in this chapter I move forward and back in time to discuss how, by interweaving arguments about present-day data with a gendered history of experts in maths (and science), we might achieve a better understanding of both the history of men andwomen inmaths and science, and of maths and science as cultureswhich are socially constructed. To face the problems lying in wait for humanity, from migration in a climate-changed world to the challenge of providing energy for billions of people, we need good, abundant maths, science and technology embedded in good, abundant politics. It would appear that the only way forward is to train young people—men and women—to reason freely about science as a social culture. And indeed, this is probably the same path that will allow us to overcome sex and race, as well as gender, ethnicity and class, in science. More realistically, young people engaging with science through this approach will be able to appreciate how such elements may affect both the collection and the interpretation of data: a phenomenon we need to keep abreast of given that it is just as relevant for mathematicians and natural scientists as it is for historians and social scientists.