So we all know about Marie Curie right? My personal hero growing up? (Polish scientist lady? Obviously she was my hero growing up.) Apparently, despite being five kinds of awesome, the French Academy of Sciences did not allow her within their hallowed walls. Despite having won the Nobel prize, being the head of the physics lab at Sorbonne, and being the first-ever woman to earn her doctorate and be a professor of general physics at Faculty of Sciences.
From Wired:
Her “liabilities,” however — Curie was Polish, rumored to be Jewish (an erroneous assumption; actually, her mother was Catholic and her father an atheist), and a woman — outweighed her qualifications, at least among those who counted. As one Academy member, Emile Hilaire Amagat, stated flatly: “Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.”
So instead she went on and got a second Nobel prize instead. Bitches.