Eugenie Clark and the power of passion

I wonder how many scientific discoveries have been made by people who were just curious about a subject and wanted to know more about it? How does it work? Why is it like that? What else is there like this?

Honestly, I have a special place in my heart for stories about people who first realized their passion as a child and spent their life pursuing it. And especially for those who had to overcome some kind of naysayers, ignoring anyone who said they couldn't or who questioned the value of their work. Imagine the determination needed to just keep going anyway, just "doing your thing" simply because it's just so fascinating. And to then have it pay off in such a huge way with some unexpected discovery that changes everything.

When Eugenie Clark (May 4, 1922 – February 25, 2015) was a kid she visited the New York Aquarium and was immediately entranced. So much so that she returned nearly every weekend to stare at the fish and try to learn as much about them as she could. She wrote school papers about what she learned and followed the doings of other marine scientists of the era. Her hero was the explorer/naturalist William Beebe, famous for his deep dives in a kind of personal submarine off the coast of Bermuda.

Despite her evident passion for the subject and her determination to learn as much as possible, when she told her parents she intended to become a marine biologist, they tried to discourage her. "I told my family, I said, 'I'd like to go down and be like William Beebe,' and they said, 'Well, maybe you can take up typing and get to be the secretary of William Beebe or somebody like him.'"

She did it anyway.

She studied zoology at Hunter College and spent her summers working at the University of Michigan Biological Station. She went on to graduate studies from New York University, and prestigious research opportunities at places like Woods Hole Marine Laboratory and the American Museum of Natural History. She traveled to Micronesia for an Office of Naval Research project to study fish populations. And she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study fish in the Red Sea, which she wrote about in her wildly successful book Lady with a Spear, which brought her to the attention of the wealthy Vanderbilts who built Cape Haze Marine Laboratory along the coast of Florida for her.

It was at Cape Haze where she began to study sharks more seriously. She worked with a local fisherman to catch sharks for research. Through her research many of the dangerous myths about sharks have been dispelled, replaced by newfound respect for their intelligence and understanding of their behavior, which she wrote about in her second book, The Lady and the Sharks.

When she left Cape Haze in the mid-60s, it was to teach college zoology and marine biology classes for another four decades, only semi-retiring at the age of 77. She continued diving until the year before her death, and was still working on research projects right up to the end.

"Not many appreciate the ultimate power and potential usefulness of basic knowledge accumulated by obscure, unseen investigators who, in a lifetime of intensive study, may never see any practical use for their findings but who go on seeking answers to the unknown without thought of financial or practical gain."

I'll say she knew more than most the power and potential usefulness of following one's passion, seeking answers to the unknown. Over the course of her long career, she traveled the world, taught thousands of students, conducted over 70 dives using submersible equipment, led more than 200 field research expeditions, and helped create the very first IMAX film.

And she did it all because she was curious about fish and wanted to know more.

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Louise Pearce - medical trailblazer

A medical pathologist, Louise Pearce (March 5, 1885 – August 10, 1959) was the first female scientists hired at the Rockefeller Institute, where she studied treatments for African sleeping sickness. She traveled to the Belgian Congo in 1920 to carry out trials of the drug she helped develop, which had an impressive 80% cure rate. Her research involved studying disease in rabbit colonies over several generations, where she was able to isolate diseases to study their transmission and immunology.

Education was important in her family. When she was still quite small, her family moved from Winchester, Massachusetts, to southern California. When it was time for her to attend school, she studied at the Girls Collegiate School in Los Angeles, where she took classes in a wide range of academic studies. In 1907, she graduated from Stanford University with a degree in physiology and histology, the study of microscopic anatomy of plant cells and tissues. She continued her studies at Boston University and earned her MD from Johns Hopkins, where she graduated third in her class.

Her attention to detail and dedication to her research made her an ideal pathologist, and in 1913 she was hired as a researcher at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. She was the first woman hired there, and she remained there for her entire career. It was here where she began her important research on treatment for sleeping sickness, an epidemic that was devastating entire regions across Africa.

After performing numerous animal trials her team found that the drug tryparsamide was quite successful in treating the disease in rabbits, the closest animal model to the human course of the disease. They published their results in 1919. In 1920, she traveled to the Belgian Congo, at considerable risk to herself, in order to carry out human trials to determine the drug's safety, effectiveness, and appropriate dosage. At the time, the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was a colony of Belgium, and was controlled through state violence against the native populations who were often conscripted into working to help deplete the natural resources. At the time of her arrival, post-World War I, efforts were underway to improve the country's economic infrastructure to support private companies. The horrific brutality of the Belgium regime of Leopold II is well documented now, but it is unclear if Louise Pearce was aware of it before she agreed to travel, or what her motivations were aside from a humanitarian need.

Working closely with a local hospital and laboratory, her research met with immediate success. For a disease that was nearly always fatal, she was able to cure more than 80% of infected patients, even those with late-stage illness. For her life-saving research, she was awarded the Order of the Crown of Belgium, and elected as a member of the Belgian Society of Tropical Medicine.

After returning to the states, she then turned her attention to the treatment of syphilis, using the same drug. Because the two diseased operated in similar ways in humans, she suspected it would be an effective treatment for syphilis of the brain and spinal cord, as well as the chronic form of the disease. It was, and tryparsamide became the standard treatment until the discovery of penicillin in 1950.

Much of her research was performed on rabbits, and it was during this time that she discovered a malignant epithelial tumor that was then transferred to several other rabbits, each showing a variation in malignancy. She began to study these differences in an effort to understand its transmission, growth and remission. This tumor, referred to as the Brown-Pearce tumor, became the standard test material in cancer research. And she spent much of the rest of her career studying the relationship between the basic health of an organism and its probability of developing disease. Her research focused on rabbit subjects, and during her many trials she was able to isolate the rabbit pox virus and study its transmission and immune reactions.

But she did not spend all of her time working in the lab. She was a member of Heterodoxy, a feminist debating group in Greenwich Village. She taught at several prestigious institutions, including Peiping Union Medical College in China, and sat on the board more than 15 medical associations, including the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she also served as president from 1946 to 1952.

She spend the latter part of her life living on a farm in New Jersey with two other women, author I. A. R. Wylie, and public health physician Sara Josephine Baker, who is most well known for having tracked down Mary Mallon (aka "Typhoid Mary), the first person identified as an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever. There is some speculation that they were probably romantically involved, perhaps in a polyamorous relationship, but there is no definitive documentation. Wylie and Pearce are buried next to each other at the farm's little cemetery, though, which supports the idea that they were more than simply platonic friends.

Louise Pearce lived her life on her own terms. She was fortunate to have been able to pursue her education at a time when college education for young women was still quite rare. She was both a groundbreaking medical researcher and trailblazer for other women in medical science, dedicated to improving the lives of her patients and opening new doors to women in all fields.

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For more information:

The Rockefeller University: "Louise Pearce – An Extraordinary Woman of Medicine"

AAUW: "AAUW Member Saves Lives: Dr. Louise Pearce"

Al Jazeera: "Unsung Hero: Louise Pearce"

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Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell - science star

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist with a long and prolific career, who is best known for her discovery of the first radio pulsars in 1967. She served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, and president of the Institute of Physics from 2008 to 2010. She was the first woman to serve as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 2007 she promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Growing up, her father was an architect who worked on the Armagh Planetarium. When she was still quite young, she discovered his astronomy books, which she enjoyed immensely. As a student at the Preparatory Department of Lurgan College, she had to fight to be allowed to take classes in science. The school's policy was changed after several parents complained. Unfortunately, when she was ready to move to secondary school she failed the eleven-plus exam, and was instead sent to study at a Quaker boarding school.

This was a good move, giving her the preparation she needed for her college studies. Still interested in astronomy, she attended the University of Glasgow, where she earned a BS in physics in 1965, and then went on to the University of Cambridge, where she studied quasars with Antony Hewish. It was here where she helped construct the radio telescope that she used to discover the first radio pulsar.

In July 1967, she was recording signals received by the radio telescope when she noticed a little bit of "scruff" in the data. They were looking for more quasars, analyzing data from scanning the sky once every four days. All the data was printed on a kind of chart-reporter -- a device with three pens that tracks input, similar to a seismograph, only in this case tracking radio waves rather than seismic waves. After seeing this "scruff" on her reports enough, she could tell it wasn't from human-made radio transmissions, and it wasn't from a quasar. But what was it?

She set up some new recordings to try to figure out its source, but it wasn't until November that she was able to get a clear chart showing a series of pulses, exactly 11/3 seconds apart. When she showed her data to Antony Hewish, he was skeptical, but agreed to visit the observatory with her to check it out. When it was clear that it wasn't something coming from the earth (not radar bouncing off the moon, satellites in orbit, or other bits of human-made interference) they started to wonder if it was some kind of transmission from an alien world, hence her readings were dubbed "Little Green Man 1" or LGM-1..

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My eureka moment was in the dead of night, the early hours of the morning, on a cold, cold night, and my feet were so cold,
they were aching. But when the result poured out of the charts,
you just forget all that. You realize instantly how significant
this is—what it is you’ve really landed on—and it’s great!

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It wasn't until she was analyzing data from a completely different part of the sky and found a similar bit of "scruff" at the same frequency that she began to suspect it was something else entirely. It was unlikely that the first reading was from aliens, and even more unlikely that there was a second set of aliens transmitting at the same frequency from somewhere else in the universe.

More analysis, and more "scruff," and now there were four different sources. By now they had a term, "pulsar" -- so named because it was a rapidly rotating neutron star that emitted regular pulses -- which they used in a paper in January of 1968. When the news about LGM-1 hit the press, she and the rest of the team were inundated with interview requests from all sides. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the majority of the questions she fielded were along the lines of "How many boyfriends do you have," and whether she was "taller than or not quite as tall as Princess Margaret?" When the excitement died down, she handed off the research to other students while she wrapped up her thesis. She graduated with her PhD in 1969, got married and moved from radio astronomy to gamma-ray astronomy, glad to be able to do some "reliable and solid, undramatic science."

And she has. She worked at the University of Southampton from 1968 to 1973, the University College London from 1974 to 1982, and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh from 1982 to 1991. In addition to her duties on campus, she also worked as a tutor, consultant, examiner, and lecturer for the Open University -- a public distance learning and research university -- from 1973 to 1987, and served as Professor of Physics from 1991 to 2001. She was a visiting professor in Princeton University and Dean of Science in the University of Bath from 2001 to 2004, and is currently Visiting Professor of Astrophysics in the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Mansfield College. In February 2018 she was appointed Chancellor of the University of Dundee.

She served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, and president of the Institute of Physics from 2008 to 2010. When asked about not being included in the Nobel Prize, she laughs it off good-naturedly, saying, "You can actually do extremely well out of not getting a Nobel prize, and I have had so many prizes, and so many honours, and so many awards, that actually, I think I've had far more fun than if I'd got a Nobel Prize - which is a bit flash in the pan: You get it, you have a fun week, and it's all over, and nobody gives you anything else after that, cos they feel they can't match it."

She's done alright. She's received a dozen or so awards, was the first woman to serve as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1999 she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and then promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2007.

For more reading:

You can read her article about the discovery of pulsars, "Little Green Men, White Dwarfs or Pulsars?"

The Herald article "Face to Face: science star who went under the radar of Nobel Prize judges"

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Katharine "Kay" Way - nuclear scientist

Katharine "Kay" Way (February 20, 1902 – December 9, 1995) was one of the leading female physicists on the Manhattan Project, she did much of her work at the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) in Chicago analyzing neutron flux data as they attempted to create a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. She is best known for the development of the Way-Wigner formula which calculates the beta decay rates of fission products. As a physicist, she spent much of her career working on the Nuclear Data Project, created to standardize the organization and sharing of nuclear data, and which grew out of her work in Chicago where she was collecting and analyzing enormous amounts of data. It was a suggestion she made that sparked the creation of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in 1943.

Her childhood was interrupted by the death of her mother when she was 12. When her father remarried, her new step-mother was an otolaryngologist (an ear, nose and throat doctor), and you can imagine how this career woman influenced Kay's ideas of the possibilities for her own future. In 1920 she began studying at Vassar College, but she had to leave after two years because of illness (likely tuberculosis). After a lengthy recovery, she enrolled in Barnard College, but had to go slowly. She eventually began taking classes at Columbia University where she met Edward Kasner, a renown mathematician. Her fascination with mathematics led her to the study of physics, and she eventually graduated with her bachelor's in 1932.

She earned her Ph.D. in physics at the University of North Carolina, where she focused her attention on nuclear physics -- the field she would dedicate her life to. Thinking she'd find a career as a professor teaching classes and working in the lab, she accepted a position at the University of Tennessee in 1939. But once it became clear the US was headed to war, she looked for ways to become involved. When she heard about the work being done with the Manhattan Project out of Chicago (the same project Leona Woods was involved in), she called her old UNC professor and convinced him to hire her. She performed critical analysis of the deluge of data coming in from early nuclear reactor designs, to help determine whether it would be possible to create a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Her calculations were used to build Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor ever built. It set the foundation for the work of other scientists at Los Alamos building the first atomic bomb.

When many of the nuclear scientists involved in the Met Lab project realized the implications of their work being used to build atomic weapons, they took an important, but ultimately unsuccessful stand by signing the Szilard Petition of July 17, 1945, which was sent to President Truman and the Secretary of War, calling for them to reconsider the use of the atomic bomb against the people of Japan. As a response to the bombings, in 1946 many of these same scientists wrote important essays highlighting their concerns about nuclear weapons, which were gathered in a book she co-edited, One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb.

Her activism wasn't limited to anti-nuclear writings. She was a strong advocate for bringing the work of these important scientists to universities in the Southeast, likely influenced by her time teaching at the University of Tennessee before the war. In 1943, as a direct response to a comment she made about ensuring students and faculty at these institutions had access to the researching being done at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Because of her suggestion, the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies (ORINS), now known as Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), opened up research opportunities and has been a major influence on the development of science and technology in the Southeast.

After the war, she took a position at the National Bureau of Standards (where Chien-Shiung Wu and Charlotte Moore Sitterly, two other important women in physics were also working in their respective fields). By 1953, there was a massive amount of data about nuclear physics being recorded, but it was nearly impossible for scientists to tap into what they needed. During her years of analyzing large amounts of raw information while working in Chicago, she had come up with methods for collating and sorting incoming data in order to find what she needed. From this, she created the Nuclear Data Project (NDP) in 1953 as a way to organize and share this information in sheets and tables making it easy to cross reference, setting the standard for how data is gathered, evaluated and presented in the field of nuclear physics.

For more reading:

"Historically Speaking: Katherine Way and her influence on Oak Ridge"

Atomic Heritage Foundation biography: "Katharine Way"

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Mary Leakey - ground-breaking paleoathropologist

"Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity." Mary Leakey

Mary Leakey (February 6, 1913 – December 9, 1996) was a prominent paleoanthropologist, whose discoveries of important skulls and other fossils, including stone tools and even footprints, of ancient human predecessors and other primates, brought international attention to the scientific search for humanity's origins.

Her interest in ancient peoples was first sparked on a family vacation to France in 1925. French archaeologist Elie Peyrony was excavating a cave there, and 12-year-old Mary was invited visit the site. She was allowed to take home some artifacts that had been discovered there -- scrapers, blades, and points -- and she used them to create her first system of classification.

"For me it was the sheer instinctive joy of collecting, or indeed one could say treasure hunting: it seemed that this whole area abounded in objects of beauty and great intrinsic interest that could be taken from the ground."

Her father took her to visit other caves, where they could view some of the prehistoric cave paintings, further inspiring her curiosity in ancient peoples and their artwork. Tragically, her father died while she was still quite young, but she found other mentors who encouraged her to learn more about anthropology and archeology.

Her interests in art and archeology continued to grow, but her predisposition to learning on her own -- even when it meant blowing up a school science lab, twice, -- as well as her general disinterest in studying for exams meant her school performance precluded attending college in the traditional manner. Instead, she attended lectures in archeology, prehistory and geology as a non-student, and even worked at the London Museum, where she was invited to participate in summer excavations throughout Europe.

Louis Leakey who hired her to illustrate his book Adam's Ancestors, and the two hit it off both professionally and romantically. They traveled the world working on research projects as long as their donated funds would allow. Eventually, they attracted the attention of the National Geographic Society, who gave them enough money to focus their attention on research full time.

Louis and Mary published most of their findings as a team, although professionally he received credit for many of her contributions. After his death in 1972, Mary continued to work solo, earning a reputation as a preeminent paleoanthropologist in her own stead.

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Michelle Simmons - 2018 Australian of the Year

"I found that the more difficult the challenges I took on, the more rewarding it was and I thought 'wow this is a phenomenal world to be in.'" Michelle Simmons, 2018 Australian of the Year

Last month physicist Michelle Simmons was named the 2018 Australian of the Year for her ground-breaking work in Quantum mechanics -- a booming field for scientific research in Australia at the moment. Determined to specialize in atomic electronics and quantum computing -- basically, using the properties of atoms to create extremely small devices that can crunch enormous amounts of data much faster than traditional computers -- she moved from her home in Britain to Australia in 1999.

"It made me think 'wow he didn't really expect me to be able to do this' and that really got me thinking 'there must be other things that people don't expect of me, let me find out what they are.'"

She got her start in math and science as a young girl. A unexpected win over her father at a game of chess, sparked an interest in determining other areas where she might be able to surprise those who may underestimate her. That desire to push the boundaries of her own knowledge drove her to seek out other challenges, eventually leading her the cutting edge of science -- quantum physics.

In the two decades since she arrived in Australia as a brash young post-doc -- so sure of her future success, she only purchased a one-way ticket -- she has pushed the research on quantum computing forward by leaps and bounds. In addition to her teaching and research duties as Scientia Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of New South Wales, she has been named Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow and ARC Federation Fellow twice, and was a founding member and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology. And she is the editor-in-chief of npj Quantum Information -- a scientific journal focused on the field of quantum information science.

"The best part about my work is the amazing variety and the constant challenge. There is always more to learn and I constantly look forwards to those moments when I have a little extra time to read and think."

Her research group was the first to develop a working single-atom transistor as well as the thinnest wires made from silicon.

The Australian of the Year award is one given each year to an Australian citizen who has been deemed to be a national role model across a wide variety of industries. Michelle Simmons is the 13th woman to earn the title of Australian of the Year.

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Marianne Grunberg-Manago - biochemist

Marianne Grunberg-Manago (January 6, 1921 – January 3, 2013)

Marianne Grunberg-Manago was a biochemist, born in the USSR, but moved to France as a child. Her discovery of the first nucleic-acid-synthesizing enzyme in 1955 was the first important step in cracking the genetic code.

Grunberg-Manago was the first woman to direct the International Union of Biochemistry, and she was also the first woman to preside the French Academy of Sciences from 1995 to 1996.

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Leona Woods - visionary scientist

Leona Woods (August 9, 1919 – November 10, 1986) is best known as the only female physicists on the team that built the world's first nuclear reactor, which is a worthy memorial. But it was what led her to be on that team, and what she did afterward, that is truly worth celebrating.

Her intelligence was evident early in her life when she graduated from high school early and then earned her BS in chemistry at the age of 18. Her doctoral thesis on silicon oxide bands earned her the respect of fellow post-doc researchers, who hired her to be a part of Enrico Fermi's team studying nuclear physics as part of the Manhattan Project in the early years of World War II. In fact, they were working on building a nuclear reactor underneath the abandoned football stadium at the University of Chicago (the same one she had played on as a student), hoping to beat the Germans to unlocking the power of the atom.

They did, with her help. It was her idea to build and use geiger counters during experiments to analyze the results. And she was there when their reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, went critical, setting the foundation for the work of other scientists at Los Alamos building the first atomic bomb which, in turn, helped end the war.

After the war, she continued her research in high-energy physics, astrophysics and cosmology, moving from laboratory to laboratory, teaching physics and publishing papers. Over the course of her career, she continually showed her visionary brilliance tackling a wide range of subjects using science to try and solve problems facing humanity. She wrote over 200 papers, including one on how to create an atmosphere on the moon.

Later in her career, she applied her experience teaching classes on environmental studies, engineering, engineering archaeology, mechanical aerospace and nuclear engineering. Her interests included using nuclear science to understand and protect the environment. She created a method to study tree rings using isotope ratios in order to learn more about prehistoric climate fluctuations. In fact, her research has contributed to our own understanding of human-caused changes to the climate.

Leona Woods was a forward-thinking scientist whose contributions to science are still influencing our understanding of the world around us. She is truly a Self-Rescuing Princess Society role model worth celebrating.

Check out this great interview she gave in 1986 about her time working on the Manhattan Project.

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Guiding Stars in Astronomy: Williamina Fleming

In celebration of the solar eclipse later this month, I am sharing stories of amazing women in astronomy in my series of Guiding Stars in Astronomy. Today's post shares the story of Scottish-American astronomer Williamina Fleming, who went from being a single mother working as a maid to one of the most proficient astronomers of the late-19th century.

Williamina Fleming (May 15, 1857 – May 21, 1911)

Williamina Fleming was the first member of the all-female team of Harvard computers, the women who calculated so many of the early astronomical discoveries and who are just now beginning to get the attention they deserve.

Williamina didn't set out to have a career in astronomy. She married James Fleming in Scotland in 1877, and when she was 21 they emigrated to Boston, where shortly thereafter he abandoned her with their small child, leaving her to fend for them both. She'd worked as a teacher before, but as a single mother, she was ineligible for any teaching position -- those were only for men and unmarried women. Instead, she took a position as a maid.

It was a placement that turned out to be a happy accident that changed the course of her life. Her employer happened to be Edward Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory. She performed her duties efficiently, and earned his respect as a housekeeper. He was having trouble with the computers he'd hired to process astronomical data, running the seemingly endless computations needed to analyze the information from the photographs taken with the observatory's telescope. Frustrated with them one day, he scoffed, "My Scottish maid could do better!"

As it turns out, she could. In 1881 he taught her how to analyze stellar spectra -- the emissions of the stars they were studying -- as shown on the photographic plates, and to make the necessary calculations to understand what they were looking at. By 1886, she was in charge of a large group of women hired to run these calculations -- the Harvard calculators, as they've come to be known. Many of them are some of the brightest women in astronomical history, such as Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and Anonia Maury.

Harvard Computers hard at work. Photo Caption: Williamina Fleming (standing) presides over women computers at the Harvard College Observatory, 1891. Photo source: Harvard University Archives.

She devised one of the earliest systems for classifying stars, using the information about their relative amount of hydrogen observed in their spectra. It was a brilliant beginning of trying to organize stars by type, and was the predecessor for Annie Jump Cannon's classification system later on.

Over the next nine years, she catalogued more than 10,000 stars and other astronomical phenomena -- a significant contribution to the Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra, published in 1890, a substantial project undertaken by Pickering in honor of his predecessor Henry Draper to survey of the sky and to catalogue the stars. Perhaps her most notable discovery was the Horsehead Nebula in 1888, although there were many more discoveries over the next 20 years. She became so well respected in the astronomical field she was the first American woman to be named as an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1906.

Her outstanding contribution to astronomy is even more remarkable when you consider that, unlike many of her computer colleagues, she never studied astronomy. In response to her skillful research she was given the position as Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard in 1899, a role she cherished. She continued her research until her death in 1911, discovering an astounding 310 variable stars, as well as 10 novae and 52 nebulae. In 1910 it was her research that led to the discovery of the first white dwarf star.

You can read her journal on the Harvard University Archives.

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You may also be interested in:

Annie Jump Cannon - astronomer
Over the course of her remarkable career, Annie Jump Cannon (December 11, 1863 - April 13, 1941) analyzed and measured more stars than any other astronomer before or since, created a classification system that is still in use today, and did more to further our understanding of the universe than anyone else of her era. Plus, you know, she has a pretty darn awesome name!

Chien-Shiung Wu - courageous hero and brilliant scientist
Chien-Shiung Wu, a Chinese-American experimental physicist, spent her entire life thinking about and solving complex problems in physics. Because of her absolute dedication to performing nearly perfect experiments and her reputation as a thorough and brilliant experimentalist, she quickly became known as the "Queen of Nuclear Research," and the "First Lady of Physics."

Role Model: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, theoretical astrophysicist, is still often referred to as "the 63rd black woman in American history with a Physics Ph.D." even though there have been a few more joining her since she graduated in 2010. But only just a few. And she's working on fixing that.

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Guiding Stars in Astronomy: Helen Sawyer Hogg

In celebration of the solar eclipse later this month, I am sharing stories of amazing women in astronomy in my series of Guiding Stars in Astronomy. The first post featured Maria Mitchell, the first woman to work as a professional astronomer in the United States. Today's post shares the story of Canadian-American astronomer Helen Hogg, who spent her career researching variable stars and spreading the love of astronomy to students and the general public throughout her remarkable career.

Helen Sawyer Hogg (August 1, 1905 – January 28, 1993)

I love that Helen Sawyer Hogg's middle name was Battle. What a great middle name, right? I can't help but wonder what kind of role it played in her life. Did she feel a little bit extra inspired to keep fighting when things got hard? Did it give her an extra burst of energy when she was pushing for more opportunities for women in astronomy, both when she was a young researcher who couldn't get a paid position, and again when she was an established icon of science working to open doors for younger women to follow their own guiding stars?

Helen Sawyer was a smart young woman who graduated from high school at the age of 15, and went off to Mount Holyoke College at the age of 17. She had originally planned on becoming a chemist, but her career path changed dramatically in her junior year after attending introductory astronomy classes with Dr. Anne Sewell, and then an event with Annie Jump Cannon, the acclaimed astronomer from Harvard. She was inspired by these two women and their love of the stars, and changed her major to astronomy in her junior year. Despite a late arrival to the subject, she graduated magna cum laude in 1926.

(Photo of the cast of Harvard Observatory's production of H.M.S. Pinafore, dated December 31, 1929. Harlow Shapley is in the center of the back row. The women in the front row are (left to right) Mildred Shapley, Adelaide Ames, Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin, Henrietta Swope, Sylvia Mussels Lindsay, and Helen Sawyer Hogg. Source: Harvard College Observatory History in Images)

With the help of Dr. Cannon, she found a place at the Harvard Observatory for her graduate studies, although she was technically a student at Radcliff College because Harvard didn't allow women to earn graduate degrees in science at the time. She work with internationally renown astronomer Dr. Harlow Shapley -- a task master who expected precision work from his students. Helen performed well, spending long hours studying globular clusters, measuring their size and brightness and cataloging them as part of her research. Through her intense dedication she earned her master's degree in two years, and three years later she had a Ph.D. All while also teaching classes at both Mount Holyoke and Smith College.

After graduation, she married Frank Scott Hogg and together they moved to British Columbia where he had a position with the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. Because Dominion, like many other research organizations of the era, would not hire both husbands and wives using the excuse of avoiding accusations of nepotism, Helen was forced to work as a volunteer, with only a small stipend to help pay for childcare. While it wasn't the situation was completely unfair to female scientist who were married to men who worked in the same field, she made the best of it, pushing forward to make a name for herself. Using their 72-inch reflecting telescope she photographed variable stars and tracking their cycles of change in brightness. Overall, she found a whopping 132 new variable stars in the Messier 2 globular cluster, and published her findings in astronomical catalogues that are still in use today.

In 1935, the Hoggs moved to the University of Toronto, working at the David Dunlap Observatory. She continued her research on globular clusters, but also used began studying Cepheid variable stars based on discoveries by another pioneering female astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavittin, with the idea that they could help scientists understand the age, size, and structure of the Milky Way Galaxy.

She also took several international trips to work at different observatories where there were better views of her globular clusters. She was one of the first astronomers who did so, and through her travels she was able to build an extensive network of international astronomers. Over the next few years, she established herself as a leading authority in astronomy with her dedication to precise measurements and detailed reports. Among other prestigious awards, in 1950 she was awarded the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy, a prize named in honor of her former mentor.

But her work as an astronomer was only one aspect of her remarkable career in science. She was also passionate about sharing her love of astronomy with others, both as a teacher as well as a public figure. Upon the outbreak of World War II, she took over classes that had originally been reserved for male professors who were now off serving in the military. These classes were her opportunity to pass on the spark of inspiration she had received so many years before in that first astronomy class she took at Mount Holyoke.

Over the course of her 60 year career, she published over 200 papers, as well as more accessible publications for non-astronomers. She wrote a wildly popular weekly column in the Toronto Star, "With the Stars," as well as a series of columns in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada filled with historical astronomical information.

In the 1970s, she expanded her outreach efforts. Her 8-part series on Canadian television in 1970 and the publication of her widely successful book The Stars Belong to Everyone in 1976 sparked an even greater interest in astronomy by the general public, and she used her notoriety to continue advocating for better science education and increased understanding of astronomy. She served as board-member or president of nearly every Canadian society associated with astronomy, often as the first woman in whatever position she held. And when she realized there wasn't an organization dedicated solely to promoting astronomical research and education she founded the Canadian Astronomical Society.

There's no telling how many countless future scientists were inspired by her teachings, writings and outreach efforts. In particular, it would be difficult to judge how many young women entered science research based on her tireless efforts to promote better opportunities for women in astronomy. For this, she is considered an exceptional Self-Rescuing Princess Society role model!

Check out this great television interview from 1981

For more info about her life, you can read "She Walks in Beauty" from the University of Toronto Magazine 

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Guiding Stars in Astronomy: Maria Mitchell

Later this month, folks all across the US and most of Canada and Mexico will be treated to a total or near-total solar eclipse, the first time since 1918 according to the news reports I keep seeing about it. In honor of this exciting event, I'm declaring August to be a month full of guiding stars in Astronomy. I have a long, long list of women who have contributed to our understanding of how the universe works, and I'm planning on running special posts all month celebrating them.

It's especially appropriate to start off with Maria Mitchell, whose birthday was August 1, 1818.

Maria Mitchell (August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889)

The 19th century was full of amazing women who blazed trails in science, math, medicine and literature. Many of these women had parents who fought convention to make sure their daughters were given a good education and supported them in their interests. Others lived in a community that encouraged women to be independent or self-sufficient.

In Maria Mitchell's case, she had both. Her parents were Quakers, a religion that valued education and required equal opportunities for girls and boys to learn. Her father was a teacher, and Maria would attend classes at his school during the day, and then learn astronomy from him at night as the two gazed at the stars through his personal telescope. In fact, when she was 12, she and her father calculated the exact moment of an annular eclipse -- the kind where the moon is centered over the sun, giving the appearance of a ring of fire around it.

Living in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Maria was surrounded by the wives of sailors who spent much of their time running the household and whatever business interests the family was involved in. This atmosphere of relative equality must have certainly played an equally important role in her understanding of what women were capable of as well as giving her the self-assuredness needed to pursue her passion for astronomy and to take a stand when she encountered injustice. She spent her life doing both -- looking at the stars at night, and looking at the world around her during her days. She was a ardent abolitionist, giving up wearing cotton to protest slavery, and opening the first desegregated school in the area.

She also had strong feelings about the rights of women, and was the friend of many suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. During her tenure as professor of astronomy at Vassar College she learned that, despite her decades of work in the field and her international reputation, she was earning less than many male professors with less teaching experience. She insisted on an increase in her salary and, incredibly, won.

Her reputation was well deserved. In 1847, while working as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, she spent her evenings looking through her own telescope, taking note of what she saw. On October 1, at 10:30 pm (we know because she took notes), she made a tremendous discovery: a new comet. "Miss Mitchell's Comet," as it became known (modern designation: C/1847 T1), was a "telescopic comet, meaning it could only been seen through a telescope. Her discovery earned her a gold medal from the King of Denmark, and brought international fame, launching her astronomy career. (She wasn't the first woman to earn one of these prestigious medals, though. She was preceded by astronomers Caroline Herschel and Maria Margarethe Kirch.)

In 1848, she was appointed a computer for the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, a paid position calculating the tables of positions of Venus, making her the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer, and was presented with a new telescope by a group of American women in recognition of her achievement.

That same year, she was the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1850 she was the first woman to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And in 1869, the American Philosophical Society opened its doors to women, electing Maria Mitchell along with Mary Somerville, astronomer and mathematician, and Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, naturalist.

Not content to simply do her own research, she wanted to improve the opportunities for other women to study science as well. In 1865, she was the first person appointed to the faculty in the newly developed Astronomy Department at Vassar College, where she also served as the director of the Vassar College Observatory.

Later in life, continuing her push to include more women in the sciences, she co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW), where she served as president in 1875, and founded and chaired its Science Committee.

"Does anyone suppose that any woman in all the ages has had a fair chance to show what she could do in science? ... The laws of nature are not discovered by accidents; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds; they are not born of the hurry and worry of daily toil; they are diligently sought, they are patiently waited for, they are received with cautious reserve, they are accepted with reverence and awe. And until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss the question of their capacity for original work."
"The Need for Women in Science," presented by Maria Mitchell at the 1876 Congress of the AAW.

Indeed. Just think what could women achieve in science if given a fair chance! While I'm sure Maria Mitchell would be absolutely thrilled to see how much things have changed for women in science in the last 141 years, I'm sure she would join with us in demanding even greater representation.

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SRPS Women in STEM: Margherita Hack - "Lady of the Stars"

Margherita Hack (12 June 1922 – 29 June 2013) was born in Florence on a street named "via delle Cento Stelle" or "street of a hundred stars." An appropriate beginning for the astrophysicist who would go on to be known as the "Lady of the Stars."

She excelled in school, but when it came time to take her graduation exams, they were canceled due to the outbreak of WWII. That didn't stop her education, though. She attended the University of Florence where she enrolled in classes and participated in track and field events, specializing in both the long jump and the high jump. Initially her goal had been to study literature, but her fascination with the stars led her to the field of physics. In 1945 she graduated having written a thesis on Cepheid variables -- pulsating stars.

As an astrophysicist she worked closely with scientists around the world researching stellar spectroscopy and radio astronomy, as well as with the general public to foster a better understanding of the importance of science. She took a teaching and research position at the University of Trieste, where she eventually served as the director of the Astronomy Department. In 1964 she became the first female administrator at the Trieste Astronomical Observatory.

Over the course of her career, she was the author of more than 200 scientific papers, and even founded a magazine, L'Astronomia, as well as acting as director for Le Stelle, another magazine with a focus on popular science and astronomy. She was a popular figure on Italian television, where she discussed important scientific findings in a way the average non-scientist could understand. So popular, indeed, that she was nominated for regional elections in Lombardy, where she earned a seat in the provincial government. She gave up the seat to another politician so she could dedication her time to her research.

In probably the best way to honor an astrophysicist, an asteroid discovered in 1995 was named 8558 Hack in her honor.

After her death, in keeping with her dedication to astronomy and education, she left to the city of Trieste her remarkable personal library containing over 24000 books on astronomy.

You can read an interesting interview with her from 2011 where she talks about the importance of scientific research.

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SRPS Women in STEM: Mary Jane Rathbun - carcinologist

Mary J. Rathbun (June 11, 1860 – April 14, 1943) was a zoologist who worked at the Smithsonian Institution for nearly 60 years studying crustaceans. Over the course of her career she described more than a thousand new species and subspecies, and wrote or co-wrote 166 papers.

Mary Rathbun was born in Buffalo, New York, where she excelled in school. Unfortunately there weren't many options of attending college for women, so she pursued her own interests after graduation. In 1881, her brother took a position with zoologist Addison Emery Verrill, and Mary tagged along with him on a working trip to the ocean. This was her first time seeing the sea, and she was hooked. She spent the next three years volunteering to help label, sort and record specimens.

Her efficient and diligent work brought her to the attention of Smithsonian curator Spencer Fullerton Baird, who offered her a clerkship position. She remained with the Smithsonian Institute for nearly 60 years, working almost exclusively with crustaceans. In 1891 her first paper was published. During her time at the Smithsonian, she wrote or co-wrote 166 papers, describing 1147 new species and subspecies of crustaceans.

Although she was not able to attend college, because of her achievements during her remarkable career she was granted an honorary master's degree by the University of Pittsburgh in 1916, and in 1917 she qualified for a Ph.D. at George Washington University.

You can read more about her life and work on the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History blog post.

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Chien-Shiung Wu - courageous hero and brilliant scientist

Who better to celebrate on the last day of Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage month than Chien-Shiung Wu (May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997), a Chinese-American experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the field of nuclear physics. She was born in a small town in China at a time when girls weren't sent to school, and yet she spent her entire life thinking about and solving complex problems in physics. Because of her absolute dedication to performing nearly perfect experiments and her reputation as a thorough and brilliant experimentalist, she quickly became known as the "Chinese Madame Curie," the "Queen of Nuclear Research," and the "First Lady of Physics."

She was set on her path to physics from an early age. Much of her love of learning and the study of physics, and her unrelenting determination, came from her father, who railed against the tradition in their region that prevented girls from attending school. In fact, he started his own school just so he could make sure girls in his area could attend. When she'd grown past what she could learn at her father's school, she was sent to a boarding school where she developed her life-long passion for mathematics, science, and especially physics. When she worried about being away from her family for so long at such a young age, her father told her to "Ignore the obstacles. Just put your head down and keep walking forward." Perhaps he knew she was destined for greatness when they named her Chien-Shiung, a name she translated as "Courageous Hero."

"I have always felt that in physics, and probably in other endeavors, too, you must have total commitment. It is not just a job, it is a way of life."

She didn't intend to move to the United States permanently.
Instead, she had planned a short tour before enrolling in the Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. When she first arrived in San Francisco in 1936, she took a trip to Berkeley where she met pioneering American nuclear scientist and winner Ernest Lawrence, who was working on building the first cyclotron (for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1939), and that changed everything. She stayed at Berkeley for two years, working as a research assistant, and creating a name for herself as a brilliant experimental physicist.

"These were moments of exhilaration and ecstasy! A glimpse of this wonder can be the reward of a lifetime. Could it be that excitement and ennobling feelings like these have kept us scientists marching forward forever?"

Even as a research assistant she was provide valuable insight for well-established physicists.
Enrico Fermi, who would go on to create the world's first nuclear reactor, and his team was working on producing a large-scale, self-sustaining plutonium chain reaction, but their reactions would sputter out without explanation after running for a few hours. They were stumped, until someone suggested they ask Chien-Shiung Wu, who looked at their research notes and was able to determine that it was a problem with a buildup of xenon, which would trap the stray neutrons needed to keep the reaction going.

“You come in order to work and to find your way. You must work very hard at the beginning. It is hard to push the door open and to get inside a subject. But once you understand it, it is very interesting.”

She was one of the hundreds of female scientists working on the Manhattan Project.
She left Berkeley after getting married to fellow physicist Luke Yuan when he was offered a job at Princeton. At first, she took a job teaching young women at Smith College, but that position didn't offer any lab time, which she missed dearly. Since it was the early years of World War II, many positions were left empty at colleges around the country, and she was able to find an opening at Princeton. In fact, she was the first female professor there. That position led to her joining the Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories at Columbia University in 1944 as part of their work to support the Manhattan Project's efforts to beat the Germans in the race to build the world's first nuclear bomb. She commuted between Princeton and Columbia for the rest of the war.

"These are moments of exaltation and ecstasy. A glimpse of this wonder can be the reward of a lifetime."

After the war, she returned to her lab, and worked on solving problems for other physicists.
She found a critical flaw in experiments being performed to prove Fermi's Interaction -- Enrico Fermi's theory explaining the process of radioactive decay in which a beta ray (fast energetic electron or positron), and a neutrino are emitted from an atomic nucleus. Until she stepped in, no one had been able to duplicate anyone else's research findings, and thus the theory was still unproven. In her research into their methods she was able to deduce that the problem was a result of each experiment was using radiation sources of different thicknesses. She was able to control the thickness of her radiation sources, and prove once and for all that Fermi's theory was correct after all.

"Science is not static but is dynamic and ever-improving. It is the courage to doubt what has long been believed and the incessant search for verification and proof that pushes the wheels of science forward."

After that success, she barely paused before going and disproving a fundamental "law" of nature.
For nearly 40 years, physicists had treated the idea of conservation of parity as an absolute law, akin to the law of gravity. Conservation of parity held that when something happens in nature, it isn't random whether it happens in one direction or another -- left or right, so to speak -- but in both directions equally. When one of her colleagues suggested it might not be true, she took it upon herself to test it. By now she was working at Columbia full time, but in order to complete this experiment she had to travel back and forth between New York and Washington, D.C., where she worked with the Low Temperature Group of the US National Bureau of Standards. Her experiment required working with material at near zero Kelvin, the point at which all atomic movement ceases. She and her team worked tirelessly, carefully recording the decay of Cobalt-60 and tracking the gamma rays emitted to see whether they went left or right. If conservation of parity were true, there would be exactly the same number on each side. Two weeks later, they were able to conclusively report that conservation of parity was incorrect when they could prove that there were definitely more gamma rays emitted on one side than on the other.

"I sincerely doubt that any open-minded person really believes in the faulty notion that women have no intellectual capacity for science and technology."

She was a fierce advocate for women in science and engineering.
After she finally retired from the lab -- after even more impressive research -- she spent her time traveling the world to talk about her successes and about her experiences as a woman in a male-dominated field. She attended a symposium at MIT in 1964 to discuss issues around equality -- American Women in Science and Engineering -- where she joined other notable STEM women to speak to students from around the world, professors, deans and even high school guidance counselors.

What an amazing scientist and strong woman! She's certainly a Self-Rescuing Princess Society role model, for her remarkable work in the field of physics, plus her dedication to improving the representation of women in STEM fields back in the 1960s and 70s. And there was still so much more interesting things about her I want to share with you. Stay tuned!

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For further reading:

Scientific American article "Channeling Ada Lovelace: Chien-Shiung Wu, Courageous Hero of Physics"

Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne (Amazon / Library)

A to Z of Women in Science and Math, by Lisa Yount (Amazon / Library)

Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 5: Completing the Twentieth Century, edited by Susan Ware and Stacy Braukman (Amazon / Library)

The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science, by Julie Des Jardins (Amazon / Library)

Women of Science: Righting the Record, Edited by G. Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes (Amazon / Library)

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