I sometimes wonder what people think 'untold' means
Because, honestly, I do not think that I am a total outlier in thinking that Mary Anning is not really 'until recently... a little known figure' and that it is only now that she is 'getting the recognition she deserves'. I think the very fact that there is a contemporary painting of this woman of humble origins with her hammer and basket and little dog suggests that not entirely mute and inglorious?
Voila TrowelBlazers for women in palaeontology and other sciences involving unladylike grubbing in the dirt who have, I would guess, a good deal less name recognition than Anning.
(Plz not to get me started on forthcoming movie which - this is so the theme of 2019, is it not? - if it eschews giving her a secret love affair with a bloke, gives her a Sapphic dalliance with an upper class woman instead. Some women just love FOSSILS, right?)
Anyhow, this led me to think about women scientists and Being Known, and that the First Division, i.e. women who would be likely to be named if people were asked to name a woman scientist, would probably consist of Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Ada Lovelace, but that there is a second division of moderately well-known as inspiring examples or else, like Franklin, done out of their just deserts, in which I would put Anning, Caroline Herschel, Lise Meitner...
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