Rockstar biophysicist Eva Nogales says women still don’t get their due in science

Award-winning academic and scientist Eva Nogales, whose experiments on human cells using electron microscopes have enormously helped in treating cancer and other diseases, rues that even today woman scientists find it tough to get recognition for their efforts. The Spanish-origin, US-based researcher feels that much more is required to be done to ensure greater representation of women in science.

Nogales, a UC Berkeley professor of biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology and a Howard Hughes Investigator, has earned a name for herself in biophysics by detecting cellular functions relevant to the treatment of cancer, among other debilitating illnesses. She told a group of journalists on the sidelines of the recently concluded Hong Kong Laureate Forum (HKLF), a biennial science conference, that it’s just very hard to break a certain way of thinking. “I was with Isabel Allende recently and she was saying, you know, to succeed in literature, women have to be twice as good to receive the same recognition. It’s a little sad that this is still happening because, you know, we are living in the 21st century.”

A rockstar in her field, Nogales added that things are changing for the better. She has acquired a halo as a scientist who has done path-breaking research and also for battling odds to make it big in science. Her father was a sheepherder and mother an embroiderer, both school dropouts who worked hard to send their children to school. They lived in the town of Colmenar Viejo near Madrid.

She won the prestigious Shaw Prize, often called “the Nobel Prize of the East”, in 2024. The Prize was established in 2004 by Run Run Shaw, a Hong Kong tycoon producer of legendary kung-fu films that include The Shaolin Avengers and Blade Runner. The Shaw Prize, awarded annually by the Shaw Prize Foundation, honours scientists in three fields – astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences.

Among the luminaries who have won the Prize over the years are 16 Nobel laureates, 10 Lasker Awards winners, 7 Fields Medalists and 4 Abel Prize recipients. Indian-origin astronomer Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, had won it in 2024. He is the brother of Sudha Murty, wife of Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy.

Nogales, after whom a street in Spain has been named, says that emerging nations and countries in the Global South are doing increasingly well in scientific research. As regards China, she says that there are great scientists in that country and that it is prepared to undertake ambitious projects. “There are amazing institutes where the government has put a lot of resources. They are looking for partnerships between the academic world and the biotechnology world. I honestly think that China is doing fantastically well and is on the rise. They’re putting more and more investment at a time when the investment in Europe is kind of plateauing and going down in the US.” She added that developing countries must follow a methodical approach to spend money wisely on education and in disciplines where they can do well.

Nogales regrets sanctions imposed on Cuba, a country known for its advances in biotechnology. “From a humanitarian point of view, these sanctions obviously do not benefit anybody. It’s the same from the economic and strategic point of view. Cuba feels very dear to me because we have a shared culture. The country has to suffer because of these kinds of restrictions. And, you know, whoever is a perfect political country can throw the first stone.”

The celebrated scientist also explained in layman’s language what she actually does: “There is a need to be super-specialised to dig deep and make new discoveries, and we use language that is incredibly dense. But this is what I would say about what I do: I use very powerful microscopes to look at the components of the cell. I’m able to see how they interact with one another and that gives me not only an understanding of these cellular components, but also an understanding of how they can go wrong and how a human mutation changes these interactions.”

She adds that it is this knowledge that helps the pharmaceutical industry make drugs to fight off diseases. “It's like you cannot be a mechanic and fix a car if you don't know how the car works.” She famously used electron crystallography to obtain the first structure of tubulin and identify the binding site of the important anti-cancer drug taxol. Since tubulin, a protein, is essential for cancer cell division, it is a target for many cancer therapies.

Nogales was a speaker at the second edition of HKLF, which saw participation of Shaw Prize winners and 200 young scientists in the four-day event held last week in Hong Kong showcasing the city’s capabilities as a global hub of scientific research.