khushmand

Thanks, Will go with that. Am hoping that, if there are enough names (and across all fields), it will be worth interviewing them. Perhaps that way they get some attention a little earlier on the fame cuve rather than wait for them to get institutional recognition before highlghting their work. .

While spectroscopy was in vogue, I read that she settled all doubt about it (http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/02/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin.html). As MigL pointed out, Cecilia Payne is a well-known example of someone given her due after an embarrassing delay. Only pieople within the field, perhaps those who cite the work, might know who is doing great work even if they aren't well-known. Accolades might mean less after a few decades, when they are well past their peak. Which is why it would be great to know of some people who are still alive and/or working.

People like Alfred Wegener, who came up with the idea of continental drift, for one; fossil collector Mary Anning, Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin, who first said stars were made up primarily of hydrogen and helium; chemist Douglas Prasher who was a car salesman when his colleagues won a Nobel (he's alive and back in reseearch, thanks to the publicity he got)..Arogyaswami Paulraj missed the bus because after a lifetime of unrecognized work he received the Marconi Prize for his work in developing LTE and WiMax. Well, people like that who only those in the field will know as not being given sufficient recognition. Hope that helps...

Will live with that until someone who does comes around : )

We know of people like George Zweig and Jocelyn Bell Burnell who, despite having very solid credentials and helping to transform physics, did not get the recognition they deserved. It would be great to know of other transformative thinkers/researchers who are still alive and are underfunded/unrecognized for whaterver reason.