Talk:1584: Moments of Inspiration

Needs to explain who Lise Meitner is - I'd never heard of her, she's not on a level with the others in public consciousness. 141.101.70.43 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Using Marie Skłodowska Curie (instead of Lise Meitner) would be more understandable - both of them made groundbreaking discoveries in radioactivity research and Ms Curie is definitely more famous than Ms Meitner. But the author probably did not want to join everyone else in using Ms Curie as "the only one token lady scientist" - as discussed in 896: Marie Curie, where Lise Meitner (as well as Emmy Noether) is mentioned.--141.101.106.77 07:52, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Never let it be said that XKCD doesn't educate! (I think it's a good thing to have used Lise as the example. If everyone knows just about Marie Curie but few people know Lise Meitner, having read the comic they now know two influential women in physics, twice as many as before! Compare and contrast others such as Florence Nightingale and Rosalind Franklin. Ada Lovelace and Dame Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley.) Also, can anyone think of an observation that Marie could have made that wasn't what she did anyway, i.e. the ability of an electrometer to measure radiation, or that pitchblende is more radioactive than uranium.

Anyway, who do you think element 109 was named after? ;) 141.101.98.188 10:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone know who "John and Mildred" might be? --Lou Crazy (talk) 09:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)