When looking for information on underrepresented people in any field, it is oftentimes tricky to find people. This is due to a number of factors; in many cases, marginalized people can be reticent to discuss the topic of identity and personal life outside of work. It can be very useful, and indeed vital, to know of people who belong to underrepresented groups in the history of physics: for studying trends and understanding how a field works and how to make it more attractive and a welcoming environment for everyone, for making connections with people still alive, and for having role models.
The Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA) has been quite active on Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia and the 7th most visited website in the world, lately - check out our project page! Due primarily to the success and endeavors of our phenomenal former Wikipedian-in-Residence, Camryn Bell, our Wikipedia contributions have exploded in the last year (check out our other Wikipedia-related blog articles to see more of her work), and we recently hosted an Edit-a-thon, led by our wonderful SPS Intern MJ Keller (blog post on this here!). Continuing this trend, we at NBLA created the category pages LGBT physicists and LGBT astronomers, which did not previously exist on Wikipedia*.