In celebration of the sixth international LGBTQIA+ STEM Day, RS is proud to profile six largely lesser known but hugely impactful queer STEM icons. History is filled with STEM contributors from the LGBTQIA+ community, and today we’re proud to celebrate them and the many people that carry on their legacy through their work and actions.
November 18th is the International Day of LGBTQIA+ People in STEM and is a holiday that should be celebrated by everyone, regardless of their gender or orientation. While virtually every contribution to the STEM field is worth celebrating, many queer contributors have had to endure discrimination and hostility to pursue their passion and make their mark, which has caused at least 28% of them to consider leaving their jobs at some point. So, LGBTQIA+ STEM Day gives us an opportunity to recognize queer people working in STEM for the sacrifices they’ve made and the barriers they’ve broken on their path to making the world a better place, as well as to raise awareness of the challenges they face and to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusivity both in our organizations and worldwide. After all, STEM is about breaking barriers and changing the world for the better — together.
Although 2023 only marks the sixth annual LGBTQIA+ STEM Day, that doesn’t mean that queer people have only recently become involved in STEM. Far from it, in fact! If you trace the evolution of any given STEM field back to any given point, chances are you’ll find a member of the queer community somewhere at the forefront of it.
So, in celebration of this year’s LGBTQIA+ STEM Day, RS is proud to highlight some of the brilliant, largely lesser known, and hugely impactful queer STEM icons that changed — or are actively changing — the game in their respective fields.
Mechanical Engineering
Charles Beyer (1813–1876)
The son of a weaver in Germany, the young Charles Beyer arrived in the U.K. penniless and knowing next to no English. Despite his humble beginnings and struggles with discrimination due to his German heritage, Charles earned recognition as one of the leading minds of Beyer, Peacock & Co. Ltd. and established a towering legacy in the automotive industry. Under this banner, he created a wide range of locomotive designs for clients across Europe. His most famous design, the D. Luiz for the South Eastern Railway of Portugal, was awarded a medal at the 1862 International Exhibition. He was also a philanthropist who co-founded the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, founded three parish churches, and is still to this day the single largest donor to the University of Manchester.
Charles Beyer was a private man, so little is known about his personal life, but several personal letters between him and fellow engineer Gustave Steiler strongly imply that their relationship was intimate at a time when homosexuality was
Elena Rodriguez-Falcon (1972–)
Elena Rodriguez-Falcon began her mechanical engineering career at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico and, from there, forged a trailblazing path that eventually led to a position at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., where she taught and developed degree programs in mechanical engineering with business and enterprise and quickly became renowned as an academic force. Many of the products developed by students under her direction have gone into production, including the mind-blowing “talking glove” — a device that helps stroke victims communicate by translating words from hand gestures.
Elena was awarded the prestigious Women Into Science and Engineering Award in 2014, recognized as Woman of the Year in Technology by FDM everywoman in 2020, and named a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2022. She also identifies as a gay woman and has been a vocal advocate for diversity in STEM throughout her career, both as a speaker and a writer in publications such as The Guardian. According to her, “There are no limits to who an engineer can be,” and we totally agree.
Software Engineering
Alan Turing (1912–1954)
No list of historical LGBTQIA+ icons would be complete without a mention of Alan Turing, the truly brilliant mathematician who almost singlehandedly cracked the Enigma, the seemingly uncrackable code device used by the German military in World War II, and undoubtedly the most well-known of the icons we’re honoring here. However, Alan’s contributions to society stretch far beyond his wartime work. Today, his pioneering research — and particularly his seminal 1935 paper, “On Computable Numbers,” which introduced the concept of the theoretical machine — is considered the foundational pillar of both computer science and artificial intelligence (AI). He earned way too many accolades to share here, but one of the most recent and likely not universally known, is that, in 2021, the Bank of England began featuring him on their £50 note.
Unfortunately, despite his many valuable societal contributions, Alan Turing met a tragic end that was likely fueled by the discrimination historically faced by far too many in the LGBTQIA+ community. Arrested for gross indecency in 1952 after confessing to having a relationship with a man, he was forced to choose between prison or government-mandated hormonal therapy (i.e., chemical castration). He chose the latter and, a year after beginning treatments, died from cyanide poisoning, which was ruled a suicide; although, that has since been debated. Today, Alan’s story inspires many in the queer community to strive for a future where such a fate isn’t experienced by anyone ever again.
If you’d like to learn more about Alan Turing, the biographical film about his life is a great watch.
Audrey Tang (1981–)
To call Audrey Tang’s rise in the global consciousness meteoric would be an understatement. A self-described post-gender civic hacker with a 180 IQ, Audrey formed their own Silicon Valley company by the age of 19 and quickly became known in tech circles as a major free software contributor. In 2014, they became involved in Taiwan’s Sunflower Student Movement demonstrations, volunteering to help the protestors occupying the parliament building by broadcasting their message. And while you might think this would result in some kind of punishment, the prime minister instead invited them to develop a media literacy curriculum for Taiwan schools, which was officially implemented in 2017.
In August 2016, Audrey was invited to join Taiwan’s Executive Yuan (the executive branch of government) as a minister without portfolio for digital affairs, which made them the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwanese history (35) as well as the first transgender person and the first non-binary official in the executive cabinet. In 2020, they raised their profile even further by playing a key part in Taiwan’s handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, which used cutting-edge tracking technology to flatten the curve and minimize infections and deaths. In 2022, they became the first ever Taiwanese Minister of Digital Affairs, tasked with ensuring Taiwan’s digital resilience and addressing both the risks and opportunities that AI poses for the fledgling democracy. And most recently, in January of 2023, they additionally became Chairperson of the Board at the National Institute of Cyber Security (NICS) in Taiwan. So, it’s little wonder that Audrey’s remarkable impact, along with their journey of self-discovery and the inherent radicalism of their ideas on transparency, anti-capitalism, and outright anarchism, continue to inspire millions of members of the STEM community in Taiwan and around the world.
Chemical Engineering
Martin Gouterman (1931–2020)
If you ever wondered how blood and grass get their color, you can thank Martin Gouterman for the answer. As a chemist at the University of Washington, Martin dedicated his career to the understanding of porphyrins — large ring molecules formed when four carbon molecules are combined with one nitrogen. A key component in the creation of life, porphyrins carry oxygen in bloodstreams, harvest light, transfer electrons in plants, and give blood and plants their unique pigment. And the concept he developed to explain the absorption spectra of porphyrins, called the Gouterman Four-Orbital Model, is still used today. Later in his career, with funding from NASA, Martin also helped conceptualize pressure-sensitive paints to map pressure on flight wings.
For all his contributions, however, he is even more beloved in academic circles for the positive, inclusive culture he created around learning. Although he lived closeted early in his career, he lived as an openly gay man at the University of Washington at a time when few scientists could, and throughout his life, he used his position to be a strong activist in the gay community. For example, in the 1960s he helped found the Dorian Society, the first organization of its kind in Seattle dedicated to promoting understanding and tolerance of the gay community. During the AIDS epidemic, he was also known for opening his home to ailing gay men who had nowhere else to go
Carolyn Bertozzi (1966–)
For young LGBTQIA+ chemists in search of a role model in the modern era, it’s hard to find a better one than Carolyn Bertozzi. Equally renowned in both biology and chemistry, she is credited with the creation of the term “bioorthogonal chemistry,” which refers to any chemical reaction that can occur inside of a living system without interfering with native biochemical processes. She earned a MacArthur Fellowship, often casually referred to as a MacArthur Genius Grant, in 1999, was the first woman to receive the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2010, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022.
As a lesbian, Carolyn also prides herself on being a mentor and advocate for anyone in the queer community seeking a place in STEM. In a 2020 interview for the chemist blog ACS Axial, she discussed the struggles she’s personally faced in her field, as well as how important it is that the future of chemistry be a more diverse and inclusive one, saying, “Anyone who leads an organization or unit aiming to make a major impact in science is probably already managing LQBTQ chemists and will want to recruit and retain them as part of their top talent mission.”
Celebrate and Advocate for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEM
The six largely lesser known but hugely impactful queer STEM icons profiled here are just some of the many impressive scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, and medical professionals who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. And while a 2019 study by the U.K.’s Royal Society of Chemistry reported that a majority of queer scientists think that the working environment is improving, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) reported that, by May 31, 2023, more than 520 bills aiming to strip LGBTQ+ Americans of their dignity, history, and very existence were introduced in state legislatures, and more than 70 were enacted, prompting the organization to declare the first-ever national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community. So, this LGBTQIA+ STEM Day, it’s more important than ever to celebrate and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM.
This June, RS signed the HRC’s new “Count Us In” pledge, which brought businesses big and small together in allyship with the LGBTQ+ community and sent a powerful message to extremist lawmakers advancing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that allyship doesn’t end on June 30th, the current bills and laws restricting queer people’s freedoms harms businesses, and equality for all is not negotiable. To learn more about the RS commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, check out our press releases about earning a spot on the HRC Foundation’s 2022 Corporate Equality Index, the nation’s foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ workplace equality, and the enhanced employee benefits we launched in 2022. To learn more about advocating for inclusivity in the workplace, check out the HRC’s workplace resources, SHRM’s “Ensuring Workplace Inclusion for LGBTQ+ Employees,” and Forbes’ “How to Build Inclusivity Within Your Company.”
