Slatyer, 33, is soft-spoken but talks quickly and animatedly. Beneath her quiet demeanor, “there’s a fierceness,” says MIT colleague Jesse Thaler. Growing up mostly in Canberra, Australia, Slatyer read voraciously. As she pored over A Brief History of Time, she realized physics sought to answer hefty questions about the universe largely through math, for which she had a natural knack. After majoring in theoretical physics, she earned a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard, did a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study and joined MIT in 2013.

Once factors such as postdoctoral experience and age are accounted for, the gap between the salaries of men and women is, on average, 6 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics. Before accounting for such factors, the data showed that men in physics earned, on average, 18 percent more than women.

Only 6 per cent of winners in medicine since 1901 have been women, while the proportion falls to 2.3 per cent in chemistry, 1.3 per cent in economics and 1 per cent in physics, according to an analysis conducted in 2015, the year in which chemist Youyou Tu was the last female winner.

“Become fully educated women and promote the understanding of science in any way you can,” she said. “Our country needs your help. My generation has played its part. It is up to you to carry on.”