Produced by Good to Know (Paris), Science’s Forgotten People is a 20 x 5-minute animated doc series that tells the amazing stories of scientists who, despite their brilliance, their brains and their groundbreaking discoveries, were not recognized by their peers. Many of these scientists were, inevitably, women. The Sunny Side pitch was made with the assistance of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the discoverer of the pulsar.
Company co-founder Quentin Lazzarotto described Good to Know as an “an incubator, bringing scientists and creative talents together to understand which scientific stories need to be researched and brought to today’s audiences.” He added that the company is “powered by a multidisciplinary scientific committee.”
The roll-call of ignored geniuses is long and while the stories in Science’s Forgotten People aren’t all about women, the most dramatic ones are. Such as Chinese physicist Chien-Shiung Wu who helped prove the theory of the radioactive process of beta decay, but who was conveniently ignored when it came her work led to a Nobel Prize. Likewise, Rosalind Franklin, whose Photograph 51 led to the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of DNA’s double helix. When Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin proposed that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium she was laughed at by male colleagues, as was Danish seismologist and geophysicist Inge Lehmann who discovered that the Earth had a solid inner core inside an outer molten core.
“We will present their discoveries and the key roles they played in science’s history and evolution,” the project notes underline. “This series, accessible to all, sometimes a bit offbeat, full of fresh humor, will be produced with the upmost rigour and scientific accuracy, thanks to its one-of-a-kind board of scientific advisors, which oversees all Good to Know productions.”
During the presentation in La Rochelle director Laurence Thiriat added that “the series will present world-changing scientific discoveries through a variety of angles,” and that she intends to give the stories “historical context, but also political context, and most importantly sociological context because it’s a way to understand why they were forgotten.”
“But my goal is also to be a pedagogue,” she added, stressing that while girls and boys show similar interest in science at school, the number of women studying science at university tails off dramatically. “That’s why I think it’s very important for me to convince young women…to follow their ambition for this despite obstacles.”
In her recorded pitch, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell explained the febrile atmosphere at university that female students had to endure in her day. “It was the tradition that women entering the lecture theater were greeted by everybody stamping, banging their desks, whistling, cat calling. Many of the journalists would ask my supervisor about the astrophysical significance, and then they turned to me for what they called the human interest. How many boyfriends did I have? What my vital statistics were, my bust, my waist, my hip measurements. It was very sexist.”
Years later she instigated an innovative fund (the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund) to encourage greater diversity in physics by assisting PhD physics students from under-represented groups.
The project is budgeted at €367,841 with €315,000 yet to be raised. The production team is looking to deliver the series in December 2024. Confirmed partners on Science’s Forgotten People are The Space Consortium (USA) and the Science History Museum (Switzerland). At Sunny Side, Good to Know is looking to attract sales agents, private funds/banks and broadcast interest.
