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Comment by jrd259 | Hacker News Reader

I find the Smithsonian's title regrettable. In the USA, the "First Lady" is the wife of the President, typically someone who is important only for what her husband is (although some have used that power for positive ways.) Wu was important on her own.

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Sigh... it's a well-known nickname of hers, see for instance:

Caijian Jiang, Tsai-Chien Chiang (2014) Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research. World Scientific.

In many, many textbooks she's referred to as Madame Wu. No, no one called Maria Goeppert Mayer, Nobel Prize in physics 1963 Madame Goeppert-Mayer. That's something of a peculiar term of endearment/respect (idk) for Chien-Shiung Wu that caught on for some reason.

I was curious about the history of that nickname.

The oldest reference I could find is: Gloria Lubkin, 'Chien-Shiung Wu, The First Lady of Physics Research', Smithsonian, Vol. I (January 1971), 52-57.

I am unable to find an online copy of that issue.

There are only a few publications with that phrase before ~2000, and only as citations to the Smithsonian article.

The nickname became popular with the publication of "Wu Jianshong, The First Lady of Physics", a 1996 biography by Caijian Jiang. https://www.worldcat.org/title/wu-jianshong-the-first-lady-o... . It's in Chinese - I believe the citation you give is for an English translation.

For example, in 2000 there was a talk titled 'Wu Chien-Shiung the First Lady of Physics" at the Overseas Chinese Physics Association, see https://books.google.com/books?id=1FRhDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR7&ots=7... . The speaker borrowed the title from the book.

This isn't generally true at all. Ella Fitzgerald has been "the First Lady of Song" since forever, various women have been called the First Lady of rock, pop, this or that sport, etc.

In general I think I've only heard "First Lady of X" refer to a spouse when X is a country. In any other case it's always somebody famous in their own right.

Even accepting that, just put her name in the headline too. It's not the first article I've seen about someone who hasn't gotten the recognition they deserve that also fails to put their name in the title.

It's intentional clickbait, providing a cliffhanger in the title ("first lady of physics? Who is that?") so you click through to the article for the answer.

This is a perpetual problem for which there is no good solution because historically women typically were known primarily as someone's wife. So we don't really have a well-developed set of words and rubrics for how to show our respects for women in a way that is both clearly feminine in character and also clearly indicates they made it on their own merits and not as someone's wife/mom/daughter/whatever.

I don't know how this will be solved. Some people don't even like the idea of needing it to be clearly feminine or female nomenclature.

Actually this is your own misconception. First Lady as a title means the highest ranking woman in a field or art as well. In a way the wives of heads of state are the highest ranking women in the political field also. That's why the title makes sense in both cases.

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