02/24/99

Women Scientists ... Meet the Cernettes

"Name me a woman scientist other than Marie Curie," the Significant Other said one night, hands perched expectantly over her keyboard. I paused, suspecting treachery. Not being able to name a female scientist off the top of my head would probably cost me the hard-earned Boyfriend Points I had earned with a strong dinner effort just hours before. I was defeated.

"Can't," I mumbled, then mounted a defense. "If you had asked me any other time, I would have ..."

"That's OK," she interrupted. "I can't, either."

I was off the hook and should have been relieved.

But I wasn't. I was thinking already that it was a BAD thing that two grownups could not name a woman scientist other than Marie Curie. And the Internet was sitting right there in front of me, and suddenly I remembered something in my inbox from the Interesting People mailing list. And there I was.

I had discovered the Cernettes.

Now, anyone who has ever fired up a web browser should be able to find women scientists and their deeds on the Internet. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to locate women Nobel Prize laureates, or find the 4,000 Years of Women in Science page. But the Cernettes -- excuse me, now Les Horribles Cernettes -- are a true Internet find, a geek sensation.

For the uninitiated, CERN is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, where a then somewhat obscure computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee more or less dreamed up the World Wide Web in 1990. Tim, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude, probably did not imagine the Cernettes in even his wildest dreams.

If you visited the aforementioned link, you already know that we have ventured a teensy bit off track from the quite serious topic of women scientists, and are speculating that I am once again being reckless with accumulated Boyfriend Points. Because the Cernettes are a girlz rock band, the darlings of the particle physics set, sort of like "The Bangles" meet "Revenge of the Nerds."

But it is OK with Significant Other, who knows I am neither Rocket Scientist or Particle Physicist; and besides, she likes kicky nerd music, too. Who can resist tunes such as "Daddy's Lab," "Microwave Love," "My Sweetheart is a Nobel Prize" and the anthemic "Surfing on the Web?"

Oh, yeah. Women scientists. I forgot.Christiane Nusslein-Volhard. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. There. Boy guilt salved. Now let's crank up the volume on the Cernettes.

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