Born: 10 September 1925, France
Died: 30 April 2022
Country most active: France
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
In a story reminiscent of Rosalind Franklin, Marthe Gautier was studying Down Syndrome when she noticed an extra chromosome while studying cell samples from a patient. Due to her poorly equipped lab—she had only a low-power microscope—she couldn’t identify or photograph the chromosome. The following month, June 1958, she “naively” accepted an offer from another Downs researcher, Jérôme Lejeune, to take her slides and have them photographed. Months went by without hearing from him, and suddenly she learned that her discovery was about to be published without her input or consent—and Lejeune didn’t even spell her name correctly. Gautier agrees that Lejeune identified the 47th chromosome as an extra copy of chromosome 21, but she maintains that she was the first to notice that there was a 47th chromosome. More than 50 years later, Lejeune’s foundation intimidated the French Federation of Human Genetics into cancelling a 2014 speech by Gautier because it believed she would “tarnish” his reputation (he had already been dead for 20 years by that point). The speech had been meant to be part of a ceremony where she was presented with a medal for her role in the discovery. Per Science, “the federation also said it “bitterly regretted” the cancellation and condemned the use of legal power to put pressure on a scientific meeting.”