How AIP is Giving a Name to Mrs. Scientist

Imagine spotting a photo you’re in online and everyone is named in the caption except you; you’re simply referenced as someone’s spouse. This has been a reality for many women who appear in AIP’s photographic collections. They were previously labeled only as “Mrs. [Husband’s Name]” or left entirely unnamed. AIP’s librarians and archivists are combing through hundreds of images to ensure those women are seen, named, and remembered for who they were, which in many cases was accomplished scientists themselves.

Archivist Elizabeth Wood and librarian Karina Cooper are leading a project to update image descriptions to name people who may have been glossed over. Recognizing that a lot has changed in the decades since many of AIP’s photos were first described, Wood, Cooper, and the rest of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA) team have been engaged in reviewing AIP’s visual archives. They have flagged hundreds of images in which not every person was identified by their name, including many instances of what they refer to as “Mrs. Scientist.” When NBLA embarked on the digitization of the photo archive in the 2000s, which required images to be described online for the first time, metadata concerning the images was usually populated by the details the donor wrote on the back of individual images or other information they may have included in their donor file, which was often decades old. In many cases, the women were labelled simply as Mrs. [Husband’s Full Name].

Since the mid-19th century, the norms around documenting women’s names in archives have evolved significantly. In the past, women’s identities were often based off of their relationship to male family members, but modern archival practices aim to restore individual identities. Referring to a woman using the prefix ‘Mrs.’ before her husband’s full name became common in the 19th century—prior to this, most women rarely had a prefix at all—and Mrs. and Miss later became prefixes that were only used for women of a higher social standing. Other women were either known by ‘[husband’s name]’s wife’ or simply by the woman’s own full name.

Wood and Cooper are part of a dedicated coworking group of 8 people from AIP’s NBLA team focused on this project. AIP’s NBLA team tackles multiple flagged photos on a monthly basis, looking for missing details and unnamed people. Meeting for one hour each month, the group uses that time to work both individually and together to get through multiple flagged photos.

“We flag photos first and then we identify people in the photos. There may be multiple photos of the same person, and all those photo descriptions will need to be changed,” Wood says about their approach to tracking their progress. “So far, we’ve identified over 200 photos, and a few of those include the same people in them.”

Most of the 205 photos date from the 1930s to the 1950s.

For Wood, this project came to life during Hispanic Heritage Month in 2024 while doing research on an image of Juan Roederer and his wife, who was not named in the metadata. She discovered not only his wife’s name—Beatriz Susana Cougnet de Roederer—but that she was also a pioneer in physics in Argentina. Wood also found out that this image is one of the few available online of Cougnet de Roederer, and now, one of the only images where she is fully recognized by her name.

As a result of a generous $220,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, AIP’s library and history team is building on this project to launch a major initiative documenting and celebrating women’s contributions to the physical sciences.

The research usually starts with a simple Google search of the husband’s name and finding their Wikipedia page. Often, the team finds the name(s) of the wife, or wives, of the scientist mentioned somewhere on their page. If that method doesn’t work, they then search for obituaries or other newspaper articles that might state the name of the scientist’s wife. A final step is taking one last look at the information that was included in the original donor file to ensure no information was missed when it was first entered into the ESVA. The team often uses this research to improve Wikipedia articles about physical scientists and their families.

By recovering, sharing, and celebrating these women’s stories, we are helping to realize one of the core goals of our research efforts: fostering a more welcoming culture and reducing barriers to access in the physical sciences.

“It’s critical that we represent a fuller and more accurate history of women’s participation in science,” said Trevor Owens, AIP Chief Research Officer. “This initiative is a powerful example of how AIP’s research team is working to advance positive, lasting change across the scientific community.”

This important work will continue until the group is able to identify as many people as possible, with a goal of identifying every person.

You can explore more than 30,000 photos in the ESVA here , and we encourage you to consider donating your own photos to help us continue documenting and preserving photos of physical scientists.