National Science Week is celebrating science and innovation across Australia, with more than 2,000 events taking place around the country - it’s Australia’s annual celebration of science and technology. Alongside the discoveries, some events are also shining a light on the people behind them - from LGBTQIA+ scientists and computer pioneers to First Nations, migrant and female inventors. Advocates say diversity has helped shape science for generations and will be just as important to its future.
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TRANSCRIPT
The people behind scientific discoveries come from all walks of life.
But some communities have not always been as visible in the stories science tells about itself.
For National Science Week, Andy de Groot has been helping bring some of those stories to the fore.
He runs the queer and trans social enterprise Queer Food, which has used food and a walking tour to highlight LGBTQIA+ scientists from every state and territory.
"Oh I guess I'm just really really passionate in general about how like under represented queer and trans people are historically so using I guess an avenue such as national science week to promote queer and trans scientist that don't usually kind of get a platform or like a major platform to be promoted on is just really empowering."
One of the scientists being highlighted is Alan Turing, a British mathematician who worked in the first half of the 20th century.
During the Second World War, he played a major role in cracking Nazi Germany's Enigma code, work credited with helping shorten the war.
His ideas also helped lay the foundations for modern computing and artificial intelligence.
Professor Benjamin Burton is a mathematician and computer scientist at the University of Queensland.
He says Turing's thinking can be traced all the way through to the artificial intelligence millions of people use today.
"The way he actually lays down the blueprint is frighteningly similar to the way that we build large language models and neural networks and the foundations of modern AI, like in a sense he really does lay out a blueprint so really the way modern AI is built quite directly traced back to his work."
But despite those achievements, Turing was persecuted because he was gay.
At the time, homosexuality was illegal in Britain.
He was prosecuted, stripped of his security clearance and subjected to hormone treatment.
For Professor Burton, who is also gay, that history makes Turing's legacy deeply personal.
"My work really builds on what he did way back then I'm working in exactly these areas of mathematics and computer science, I'm partly because like visibility matters we don't have enough role models and he's one in the work he did was amazing the way he was treated with appalling and somehow he didn't hide who he was."
Australia's history of innovation also includes people from a much wider range of backgrounds.
At the National Archives of Australia, Lucie Shawcross has been looking at the stories behind some of the country's inventors.
They include First Nations people, migrants and women.
"The diversity of our different inventors is remarkable. First Nations, people from all over the world, women - we have wonderful inventors who invented, there's Minnie Crab who invented a machine for printing braille - so helping people with low vision. Just the diversity of the inventors, the inventions was really surprising and really exciting.
But representation is not only about recognising people from the past.
Andy de Groot says some queer and trans people still feel pressure to separate their identity from their work or study in science.
"You kind of have to leave your identity at the door when you enter into a lab or a scientific classroom and so I think that that separation of identity when your queer and trans can affect your ability to perform from a mental health perspective but also people don't talk about this stuff and it continues to kind of perpetuate that dynamic where these things aren't researched or spoken about and so you have to be a leader to stand up and overcome that."
And that question of who feels able to build a future in science extends across Australia's research sector.
Dr Saraid Billiards is the Chief Executive of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes.
She says attracting and retaining researchers from diverse backgrounds is critical.
"It's extremely important because you know research requires researchers who come from diverse backgrounds for it to be as effective as it possibly can and and we do see a huge diversity in terms of our researcher cohort but we certainly want them to be able to see a future and being able to attract and retain individuals from diverse backgrounds is really critical for the success of this country."
From the scientists whose stories are only now being more widely told, to the researchers shaping the future, advocates say diversity is part of what drives discovery.
