Gagnon, Pauline
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Time: 12:00
Place: ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HPF G 6
Host: Klara Berg & Shima Rajabali (Faist group)
What's wrong with me?
Pauline Gagnon
Retired Senior Research Scientist, Indiana University (USA) and CERN (Switzerland)
Why are sexism, homophobia and racism still so prevalent in physics? I start from my personal experience to demonstrate that in fact the personal is political. CERN, the largest physics laboratory in the world, welcomes scientists from 102 nationalities but still 80% of them are white and 80% are male. I examine why this is so by reviewing many contributing factors and suggest a series of easily applicable measures that could greatly improve the situation. These measures would benefit all scientists, regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation, physical ability or religion. It has been established that diversity benefits science by increasing the creativity potential, a key ingredient to in scientific research.