In the article, Mr Fishman says we need to "break the cycle of talented women opting out of science because there are no women in science." I don't want to wholly dismiss this idea, but it may not even be a major factor. Instead, we should focus on the discriminatory (intentionally or otherwise) demands of a career in science.

My wife is a perfect example. Stellar grades, a PhD from a top 3 university, impressive publications...and zero interest in academic research. After 10 years of long hours and hard work to get her PhD, and putting off kids until her 30s, she now faces the prospect of more long hours in a low-paid, 6-8 year post doctoral fellowship, the long wait due to lack of principle investigator postitions because of low funding. If she's lucky enough to get her own lab after that post-doc, she'll have 7 years of intense pressure to produce big results (and big grants) so she can get tenure.

Somewhere in there she's supposed to raise a family. Or not have one, as many female researchers choose. Others choose to let their husbands or nannies raise the kids and see them when they can. One of my wife's mentors finally had a kid at 37 and literally brought her into the lab in a playpen. That worked until the kid could walk.

My wife is a great scientist who could cure diseases and contribute to man's knowledge of our world. She just also wants a family.

Nah, there are lots of PhDs from "top 3" universities (not sure what ranking you're using here - outside of law and business there is not much standardization in rankings of grad schools) who lead perfectly ordinary lives and don't do anything truly remarkable - even men who obsess over their work. Only a very few phenomenally brilliant minds actually contribute in a special way to humanity. Going to a top school with good grades may be necessary but it definitely is not sufficient for such achievements (I say "may" because many brilliant minds are academic slackers - Einstein the most notorious example). Those people's brains just work differently. I'm not even sure somebody with a mind that "beautiful" would even be capable of leading an ordinary family life.

If you're a true Newton/Einstein/Feynman/Salk, something like "family" is not going to stop your brilliance from being obvious to everyone around you or from you producing remarkable, paradign-altering work.

Don't get me wrong - it may be that some women are deterred from an obsessive life devoted to academic research because of lack of child care of socially discriminatory demands on women to care for children. But the notion that this is preventing truly brilliant minds from maximizing their potential and changing the world is wrong.

There are definitely rankings in science and engineering departments. To find out what they are, just look at where faculty in a given field at any university got their PhD. 99% will be from the same 3-5 institutions. For example, in Chemical Engineering the top schools are (in nor particular order) MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Tech, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

The OP was pointing out that his wife had the academic cred to compete for faculty positions, but chose not to do so. There's no need to be the next Einstein in order to become faculty, or to change the world for that matter.