Margaret W. Rossiter, a historian whose trilogy, Women Scientists in America, documented in sharp detail the ways women were excised from the annals of science — and who coined the term the Matilda effect, named for the 19th-century suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, to describe the age-old practice of attributing scientific achievements of women to their male colleagues — died on Aug. 3 in Salem, Mass.

Among the scientists Dr. Rossiter wrote about was Lise Meitner, who with the German chemist Otto Hahn developed the theory of nuclear fission. He won the Nobel Prize for that discovery; she did not.

The Matilda effect was but one of the many career blows that were queasily familiar to female scientists. So was the harem effect, a term Dr. Rossiter coined to describe male scientists’ habit of surrounding themselves with, as she put it, a “bevy of competent female subordinates who would not be as threatening as an equal number of bright young men.” (And who would presumably stay put, because their opportunities were so limited.)