‘We woz robbed!’

COMPARATIVELY FEW women have ever won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Even fewer have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Fewer still — a paltry two, in fact — have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. The current tally of female laureates in the three Nobel science categories stands at just 17. That's low considering that the awards were first given out in 1901 and new laureates are announced annually. In recent years there has been a clamour for changes to the system of selecting winners of what are considered the world's foremost intellectual gongs. Pressure on the Swedish Academy, the secretive organisation in charge of the Nobels, is unlikely to abate amid the fallout from a sexual assault scandal that led to it postponing this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.