On the 100th anniversary of Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s record-setting second Nobel Prize, no women are among the nine Nobel Laureates in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics. (On a positive note, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman will share the Peace Prize for their work on behalf of women and women’s rights.) Skłodowska-Curie remains one of only two women to have been awarded the Prize in Physics and one of four to have earned the Prize in Chemistry. Another of the Chemistry prizes was won by her daughter, Iréne Joliot-Curie.

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Women scientists continue to be underrepresented in today’s American science “academy.” Even as more and more American women enter fields that had been historically dominated by men such as business, medicine and law, there are strikingly few women in the “STEM” professions (science, technology, engineering and math). A 2010 report [PDF] by the American Association of University Women and the National Science Foundation, “Why So Few?,” synthesized decades of research to conclude that bias and stereotypes still impede the progress of many female scientists and mathematicians from grade school through academia.The report also suggests that social and learning environments–that is, nurture rather than nature–dramatically shape girls’ interests and achievements in science and math...