I just read in today's issue of Nature (correspondence pages):

"The prizes [awarded by the UK Biochemical Society] include the annual Colworth medal, given to a promising scientist under 35: only one has been awarded to a woman, out of 44 recipients, between 1963 and 2007. The statistics for the other prizes, up to 2007, are the Novartis medal, 2 of 39; Jubilee lecture, 1 of 23; Wellcome Trust award for research in biochemistry related to medicine, 1 of 11; AstraZeneca prize, 1 of 5; Frederick Gowland Hopkins memorial lecture, 0 of 24; Keilin memorial lecture, 0 of 21; Morton lecture, 0 of 14; Biochemical Society medal, 0 of 3; and GlaxoSmithKline medal, 0 of 2. This translates into 3.2% of the prizes being given to women, a truly lamentable record."

I happened to be working with the one and only female recipient of the Colworth medal, Sheena Radford, in the years leading up to the award (1993-96), and  I remember the little speech Sheena gave when she got the news. Couldn't have done it without you guys and so on.

I knew that she was the first woman to get it, but to think that she's still the only one in 44 years, now that is well and truly scary in a whole range of ways.  makes me shiver.  If I had anything to do with the Biochemical Society, I'd ask for the prizes to be scrapped.

oh well ...