About the project, acknowledgements and collaborations

Science, as well as other areas of knowledge, is a reflection of society and that is why the scientific communications and, science itself, presents a ´Western, white, ableist and patriarchal´ approach. The Ball World project was created in November 2022 with the intention to get far away from this approach and build a safe, inclusive and diverse space for the scientific community and the general public. The project was funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and its Inclusion and Diversity Fund.

The aim of The Ball World was to create a data base where people could check for the biography and scientific contributions of scientists that are not well known by the general public and/or the scientific community. We called them invisibilised scientists. What do they have in common? They have been discriminated against because of their gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilities, and/or others. What we also wanted with this project was to unify and collect the information out there in just one website and one that it is easy to use and accessible for everyone.

Why is it called The Ball World? The project is named after the African American chemist and scientist Alice Ball, who developed an effective treatment for leprosy during the 20 th century. Many people were cure thanks to the discovery until the antibiotics. However, one of her colleagues stole her findings and publish it without acknowledging her or credited her work. It was not until the 70s that her work was not found. You can find her profile on the map. Moreover, her name helped us to come up with the idea for the website design, a world ball where you could find the profiles just clicking on the country. They are classified by nationality and by the group they belong (Women, Others, Race, LGBTQI+, and Diversity (World)).

Unfortunately, Alice´s case is not the only one and there are many other scientists which contributions have been stolen or that they are not known by society. There are others that you may known their names and what they have done, but we want also to capture their reality and the difficulties they have to go through during their lives (such as Marie Curie or Alan Turing). With this project, we want to put on the map their stories and to make pretty clear that science is not just made by white, cisgender, western men. Science, as well as society, is diverse, we just need to make it more inclusive. We hope this project helps to create a better world.

P.S.: As the project is originally funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry, most of the profiles you will find on the map are scientists that have work in the chemical science field. We keep working to expand The Ball World and to include scientists from different fields.