Science: Male & Female

For hundreds of years, biologists have used the symbols δ for male and φ for female without really knowing—or caring—why. To the incurious among them, the derivation of these symbols might have remained a mystery had not a curious reader of the British magazine New Scientist demanded an explanation. In a recent issue, Dr. William T. Stearn, a botanist at the British Museum (Natural History), tells how the symbols evolved.

Long before biology was born, says Stearn—who borrowed his explanations from a 17th century French scholar—the ancient Greeks gave human qualities to the planets. Mars, the red planet, was considered male, and the Greek word for Mars, Thouros, was abbreviated to “Th,” or α. In the hands of careless and hasty penmen, this symbol eventually degenerated into δ. The same shorthand fate overtook the female planet, Venus, whose Greek name Phosphorus was reduced to Ph (Φ) and subsequently—perhaps by the same careless Grecians—to ø. When medieval alchemists came upon these symbols, they found them useful: δ (Mars) was associated with hard iron, φ (Venus) with softer copper. Later, the symbols were adopted by Swedish Naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the father of modern systematic biology, who found them so aptly descriptive of the male and female gender that they are still used for the same purpose today.