The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[xoxoxoBruce]

Old broads are helpful too.

Judith Jarvis Thomson, 85, another of MIT’s professors emeriti, is a philosopher best known for the elaboration of thought experiments called “trolley problems,” which test our moral intuitions. In the most famous trolley problem of all, Thomson asks her readers to imagine pushing a fat man onto a track in order to stop a runaway trolley from running over five people. She remains keenly interested in questions of rights and normativity (whether, ethically, one ought to do or refrain from doing something). Trolley problems are useful in thinking how autonomous vehicles and military robots could be programmed to behave in ways consistent with most people’s moral intuitions.

Helen Murray Free, 92, developed a series of self-testing kits for diabetes while working at Miles Laboratories in the second half of the last century. The tests transformed the way people with diabetes monitor their disease, helping make it into a manageable condition. Since retiring in 1982, she has devoted herself to promoting science education, particularly for young women and minorities.