On Being Inspired by Women Scientists

I was reading an interview with Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barret, and his description of cool woman astrophysicist who inspired him in high school made me smile:

Well, believe it or not, I was inspired in high school, by my astronomy class, to become an astrophysicist, which I kind of laugh at now. I knew an astrophysicist. And learned -- remember, this is the mind of a teenager -- I knew a lady who worked at Mt. Wilson [Observatory]. She was an astrophysicist. And while she was taking readings at night looking through a telescope, during the day she would chop hot rods and rebuild them and she had this amazing gun collection and flame throwers and she would go to festivals and stuff. I put the two together and thought, “You can be smart AND cool.” And so I figured I could do both. So I thought being an astrophysicist would be cool. Unfortunately, three years into calculus and physics, I realized that it might not be my forte. So I had had a backup, which was photography, and I had been pursuing that in an amateurish fashion ever since.

Amazingly, women don't always have to be wearing cheerleader outfits to interest dudes in science. Even though Roddenberry didn't pursue a career in astrophysics, he has collaborated with NASA, The Kennedy Space Center and other groups to promote space travel and astronomy.

Roddenberry doesn't name the astrophysicist, but she is almost certainly Sallie Baliunas, who indeed has fixed up cars into hot rods and was a friend of Majel Barrett Roddenberry. She also has been involved in some Star Trek-related geekery.

Baliunas is a former Deputy Director of Mt. Wilson Observatory and is currently affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She has gained recent notoriety for her strong skepticism of human causes for global warming.

Tags: astrophysics, Rod Roddenberry, Sallie Baliunas

Caroline Moore: 14-year old Astronomer

One of the things that I find very cool about astronomy is that it is one of the few fields of science in which amateurs can make important discoveries. One such amateur astronomer is Caroline Moore, who, at age 14, was the youngest person to ever discover a supernova.

Here she is featured on the "Moment of Geek" segment of the Rachel Maddow show:


She's great to watch because she's so enthusiastic and does a good job explaining her part of the project. She hasn't decided whether to become a scientist or study medicine or sing or pursue some other career. That's the beauty of being a teenager - her whole life is in front of her.

(I also am amused that they posed her with a small pink telescope, which she explains is not what she used to make the discovery.)

Tags: women in science, astronomy, Caroline Moore

International Year of Astronomy 2009: "She is An Astronomer"

"She is An Astronomer" is a global project created as part of the UNESCO/IAU International Year of Astronomy 2009. Here is the project's mission:

Promoting gender equality and empowering women is one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. She Is An Astronomer will promote gender equality in astronomy (and science in general), tackling bias issues by providing a web platform where information and links about gender balance and related resources are collected.

The aim of the project is to provide neutral, informative and accessible information to female professional and amateur astronomers, students, and those who are interested in the gender equality problem in science. We believe that providing this information will help increase the interest of young females to study and pursue a career in astronomy.

An objective of the project is to build and maintain an internet based, easy-to-handle forum and database, where people regardless of geographical location can read about the subject, ask questions and find answers. There will also be the option to discuss astronomy sector specific problems, such as observing times and family duties.

To that end, there is already an She is an Astronomer Facebook Group. I'm not sure if this is going to be the only forum or one of several, but it already has a bit of discussion about gender equality and astronomy going.

There aren't many details as yet, but apparently there will also be lectures and workshops all over the world in conjunction with the project. I only found a couple of related events by Googling:

• Saturday, January 31 @ the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK: She's an Astronomer: Venus and the Moon
• Tuesday, May 19 @ The Hokulani Imaginarium at Windward Community College in Kaneohe, HI : "She is An Astronomer" Symposium for middle and high school girls
  

Presumably there will be more listings as the year progresses. Here are some event listing pages for different countries participating in the International Year of Astronomy:

• Events in Australia
  
• Events in Canada
• Events in India
• Events in Ireland
• Events in the UK
• Events in the US
  

There is also a Women in Astronomy resource guide (pdf)

(tip of the hat to the Bad Astronomer for the link to the SIAA Facebook Group)
Tags: women in astronomy, International Year of Astronomy, She is An Astronomer

Top Women Scientists of 2008

It's the end of the year and all the magazines are publishing their "best of" lists - including the top scientists. Here's a round-up of women scientists who have been profiled:

Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, co-founders of biotech startup 23andMe were among Popular Mechanics' "The Internet's Top 10 Most Controversial Figures of 2008"

Discover named Senator Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science as one of the "10 most influential people in science". No, she's not a scientist herself, but she regularly fights for federal science funding.

Discover named University of Alaska ecologist Katey Walter, Harvard stem cell biology Amy Wagers, UC Berkeley molecular biologist Nicole King, and MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager among the "20 best brains under 40"

Discover named Anastasia Roda, 19, and Isha Jain, 17, both of Pennsylvania, among their "Teen Genius: 5 Promising Scientists under 20"

Seed profiles physicist and systems biologist Aleksandra M. Walczak, virologist Ilaria Capua , geneticist Heejung Kim, user of "astronomical medicine" Michelle Borkin, and materials scientist Neri Oxman, in their feature on 2008's Revolutionary Minds

Popular Science profiled materials scientist Kristi Anseth, neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe, and chemist Melanie Sanford, in their Brilliant 10 Class of 2008

Tags: women in science

Natalie Batalha: The Thrill of Discovery is a Gateway Drug to Becoming a Scientist

This month's issue of California Monthly profiles Natalie Batalha, an associate professor of physics at San Jose State University and co-investigator on NASA's Kepler mission, which is attempting to detect habitable Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Batalha isn't one of those scientists who had childhood dreams of becoming an astronomer or chemist. She actually started out her undergraduate career as a business major. She did have an interest in NASA and space science though, and considered becoming a mediator between business and science.

. . . Batalha enrolled in a physics class and was "terrible" at it, she says. But as her professor explained the mathematics behind the formation of rainbows in oil puddles, she was "blown away," she recalls. "It was like a religious experience for me—that the universe is so ordered. That's profound, right?"

Batalha became slowly immersed in the practice of science, first completing a research internship at Wyoming Infrared Observatory and then working in the lab of Gibor Basri, an astronomer at Berkeley. She recalls one day, while they were sitting at a computer looking at observations of young stars, or "baby Suns," from a new instrument at Lick Observatory, when Basri turned to her and said, "Natalie, no one else in the world has data like this." The thrill of discovery, she says, clinched her decision to be a scientist. "It must be, on a much smaller scale, like the feeling Galileo had when he saw Jupiter's moons," she says. "That's the gateway drug."

Batalha received her bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy in 1989, her MS from the Observatorio Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Santa Cruz in 1997. She's been affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center since 2000.

I've often read the argument that the lack of women in scientific fields such as physics and computer science is due to women simply choosing alternative career paths. While I think that's certainly the case - I doubt many women have been forcibly ejected from physics courses - it doesn't explain why women are choosing other fields. Our career choices are influenced by many factors, including our aptitudes and our family's (and society's) expectations of "appropriate" career choices. I think it also depends on our exposure to the field. In Batalha's case, she didn't realize how much she loved physics until she was in college - and I think it's very unusual for non-science majors to even attempt to take a college-level science class. That's why I think programs meant to provide girls with hands-on science experience are worthwhile. Who knows how many potential astrophysicists there are out there who have never taken a physics class?

Tags: Natalie Batalha, astrophysics, Kepler

Trieste Science Prize Winner: Beatriz Barbuy

The Trieste Science Prize is awarded each year to two scientists for "scientific research of outstanding international merit carried out at institutions in developing countries." The prizes are awarded in different fields each year. This year's award in Earth, Space, Ocean and Atmosphereic Sciences went to Beatriz Barbuy, a Brazilian astrophysicist.

Barbuy is a professor in the Department of Astronomy, at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of São Paulo, Brazil and a Vice-President of the International Astronomical Union. According to the award site:

Barbuy's research has shed light on the formation of the Milky Way through studies of its oldest components. She was the first to demonstrate that metal-poor stars in the galactic halo (the faint sphere surrounding the galactic disk) have an overabundance of oxygen, relative to iron. This indicates that the halo was chemically enriched by 'supernova' explosions of massive first-generation stars, which may have been 500 times the size of the sun.

[snip]

Barbuy is an expert in both observational astronomy and the analysis and interpretation of spectroscopic data. Through the use of spectroscopy, astronomers are able to separate light coming from stars into wavelength spectra, from which they can derive the stars' chemical composition and other information. Her skills in spectroscopy have allowed her to assemble a large library of synthetic spectra that has aided many other researchers in their investigations of our own and other galaxies.

There's a 2004 story about her at Folha Online. It's in Portuguese, so I'm unfortunately stuck with a crude translation, but here's a bit:

Shining in one seara where the numbers show certain balance between men and women (in [her] department they are 12 teachers, for a total of 21, and in the Brazilian Astronomical Society, the women represent 42 % of the members), the scientist never says to have suffered discrimination. But thinks: "I believe that the women have to do something more than men to be well recognized like professionals".

If you can read Portuguese, you should definitely read the original.

Image: 2008 winners of the Trieste Science Prize. Beatriz Barbuy, winner in Earth, Space, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences and Roddam Narasimha, winner in Engineering Sciences.
Tags: Beatriz Barbuy, Trieste Science Prize, astrphysics

Women in Science Link Roundup: October 19 Edition

Here are some links I've been saving in my bookmarks, which explains why some are blog posts from a year ago. Yep, way behind in my reading.

About Women Scientists

The 2008 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics was awarded to Deborah S. Jin

There is a great post on MetaFilter about the women who worked as "computers" for Edward Pickering at the Havard Collge Observatory.

Martin Griffiths wrote for LabLit about 17th century natural philosopher Margaret Cavendish: The feminism, fiction, science and philosophy of Margaret Cavendish

Hsien-Hsien Lei at Eye on DNA lists the most powerful women in biotechnology and healthcare

Wired writes that South Korean astronaut Yi Soyeon is "crazy, sexy, cool"

As a counterpoint to Newsweek's "10 hottest nerds" - who all happen to be male and mostly in the field of genomics - Jonathan Eisen listed a bunch of women in genomics who they could have included on their list.

Life in College

Samia at 49 percent writes about networking as a science undergrad

Marina at Objectify This explained how the depiction of the female reproductive system in one of her classes helped her decide to stop being a biology major:
- I Was A Teenage Feminist
- Fly Sex... and I was a Twentysomething Feminist

ScienceWoman comments on an article by Linda Sax on how men and women experience college differently

The Gender Gap

Pat at Fairer Science has the scoop on the ultimate study on the effct of gender on wages: it looked at what happens to men who changes their gender to women and women who change their gender to men. They found "women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more."

At The Intersection Sheril Kirshenbaum talks about the gender gap in response to emailer "Gabe"

Geeky Mom writes about housework and the gender gap

The Boston Globe reports on a recent study that shows the effect of culture on girls' and womens' math achievement:

The study, to be published in next month's Notices of the American Mathematical Society, identifies women of extraordinary math ability by sifting through the winners of the world's most elite math competitions. It found that small nations that nurtured female mathematicians often produced more top competitors than far larger and wealthier nations.

Lise Eliot and Susan McGee Baily had an opinion piece in USA Today about the (lack of ) gender differences in kids' brains: "Gender segregation in schools isn't the answer" (via Fairer Science)

A study from UNM looked at why many girls avoid math:

Overall, however, parent support and expectations emerged as the top support in both subjects and genders for middle- and high-school students. Also powerful for younger girls were engaging teachers and positive experiences with them.

The study confirmed that old stereotypes die slowly. Both boys and girls perceived that teachers thought boys were stronger at math and science. For boys this represented a support, while for girls it acted as a barrier.

Cognitive Daily had an excellent three part post about recent studies from the journal Psychological Science in the Publish Interest on the "science of sex differences in science and mathematics"

• Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 1
• Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 2
• Why aren't there more women in science and math? Part 3
  

Chris at Mixing Memory reviews a paper that looked at wstereotype threat and women in math, science and engineering

Last October Dr. Confused, who has a doctorate in aerospace engineering, had a series of guest posts on Feministe about her experiences in science, the leaky pipeline, gender roles, sexism in everyday professional lives, and being a mom.

Miscellaneous Other Posts

Life v. 3.0 hosted the September Praxis Carnival on "scientific life". The October carnival was hosted by The Other 95%.

Elle, PhD. spots more gendered science kits for kids.

Virginia Gewin writes for NatureJobs about a possible upside to the "two-body problem" of academic couples

Sylvia Ann Hewlett in the Harvard Business Publishing blog: The Glass Cliff : Are women leaders often set up to fail?

In the The Independent's Career Planning section: "Women in science and engineering: Two successful women in science give their views on how to best break the glass ceiling". The two women are Emma Sanderson, director of "value added services" at BT and Anne Miller, "one of the world's most successful female inventors"

The BDPA Foundation writes about a recent survey of Fortune 1000 STEM executives that found "women, African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and that the result could hurt the nation as a whole." (via The Urban Scientist)

Omaha Science Examiner blogger Meg Marquardt writes about her own experience as a girl interested in science, and science communication.

A father was making a wild attempt to placate a gaggle of second grade girls. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" he asked. There was a litany of typical answers: a teacher, a mom, etc. But I stood up and proudly announced that I was going to be a scientist. The man gave me a stern look over his glasses and very firmly said, "Women ain't scientists." This was my first introduction to ignorance in science communication.

As part of the NatureJobs Podcast series:

The Source Event Part 7
Jan Bogg, Director of the Breaking Barriers Programme at the University of Liverpool, offers advice for women considering a career break, including how to stay in the loop while on maternity leave.

There's also an (old) discussion on the Naturejobs forum about the following questions:

1) Is the tendency for women to prefer people-oriented careers over science inherent or shaped by society?

2) Does anyone think “Title Nining” science is a good idea? Is it fair to punish research institutions if women just aren’t as interested in science as men are? Are there better ways of discouraging sexual discrimination, without discriminating against other successful scientists, both male and female?

Derek Low at In the Pipeline looks at a recent report in Science that followed up on the 1991 members of Yale's Molecular Biology and Biophysics PhD program. Out of 26 PhDs that year, only one of them currently has a tenured academic position.

DrugMonkey on self-perpetuating GoldOldBoys.

Green Gabbro hosted the Carnival of Feminists, and rounded up the science blog discussion about women, sexiness and the workplace.

And speaking of sexiness, Sociological Images posted a commercial featuring a woman scientist who makes a wonderful discovery - a fabulous bra!


Tags: women in science

Penny Sackett Appointed Australia's Chief Scientist

Australian National University (ANU) Professor of Astronomy Penny Sackett has been appointed Australia's first full-time Chief Scientist. Sackett is a native of Nebraska, who earned a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Pittsburgh. She came to ANU in 2002 as Director of its Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Mount Stromlo and Sliding Spring Observatories. She stepped down from that position last year to fogus on research and mentoring roles.

In an interview with ABC Sydney she talked about how she was inspired to study science, and how she hopes to similarly inspire Australian students:

PENNY SACKETT: Well I'd always been interested as a child in understanding the world around us. Just curious in the way most children are.
And originally I thought I would pick a biological field, perhaps medicine. But I had a wonderful teacher in physics in year 11 who made me realize that physics was much more than pulleys and levers as I'd been previously told and I think that was a turning point for me.
MONICA ATTARD: So you were basically lucky enough to be inspired as a child to study science?
PENNY SACKETT: Indeed. I had very supportive parents and excellent teachers and I suppose that is why I have such a high regard for teachers.
MONICA ATTARD: Well clearly that's the kind of inspiration that was important to you but you've also taken up the cause of getting young Australians into the study of science as well and viewing that as being vital.
PENNY SACKETT: Yes, I hope that that is something that I can do in my new post is create a dialogue with young people in this country so that they can understand how much we look to them in shaping the health and wealth of Australia going forward through the fundamental information that can be provided by science.

Sackett has long been interested in education and has certification to teach science and mathematics at the primary and secondary school level.

The primary focus of her new position is to advise politicians on the science behind the issues. She also hopes promote international scientific collaborations.

(thanks to Julie Clutterbuck for the tip!)

Tags: Penny Sackett, Australia

Nobel Snubs

The Nobel prizes have often been controversial, in part because it can only be awarded to three people in each category, and it is only given to living scientists. However, sometimes a scientist is simply left out. Scientific American has put together a list of 10 scientists who deserved a Nobel prize, but did not receive one. Three of the scientists who were "snubbed" are women:

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943- ) detected the first pulsars as a graduate student working under Antony Hewish at the University of Cambridge. Both she and Hewish were recognized for that work, so it came as a surprise to some in the astronomy community that when the first Nobel prize in physics was awarded to astronomers in 1974, it went to Hewish and his colleague Martin Ryle.

Many prominent astronomers expressed outrage, whereas others argued that she only collected data for Hewish to interpret. Burnell never contested the omission, but most reports indicate she contributed more than just the initial observations.

More info:

• Jocelyn Bell Burnell @ Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics
• Video of Jocelyn Bell Burnell answering student questions

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian-born Jew who became only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. Early in her career she worked with chemist Otto Hahn on radioactive elements. She had continued success in her career, rising to the position of acting director of the Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. Her position became precarious when Adolf Hitler came to power, and evenutally fled Germany, ending up in Stockholm. She continued to correspond with other German scientists, and met with Hahn to plan experiments in nuclear fission. The political situation, however, made it impossible for her to publish jointly with Hahn. Meitner made a number of contributions to nuclear physics in addition to that collaboration: and her nephew Otto Frisch were the first to describe how the nucleus of an atom could be split into smaller parts, and she was the first to realize that nuclear fission could lead to an enormously explosive chain reaction.

Historians say that Hahn initially indicated that he intended to credit Meitner when it was safe to do so but that, in the end, he took sole credit, claiming that the discovery was his alone. Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Meitner was nominated multiple times in both the physics and chemistry categories, but the award always eluded her. Many Nobel omissions are debatable, but, most physicists today agree that Meitner was robbed, says Phillip Schewe, chief science writer for the American Institute of Physics.

More info:

• "The Woman Behind the Bomb", Washington Post, March 17 1996
• Chemical Heritage Foundation: Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Friz Strassmann
• Atomic Archive: Lise Meitner
  

Last, but not least, is probably the best known non-recipients of a Nobel, Rosalind Franklin. In the early 1950s Franklin was a research associate studying the structure of DNA by X-ray diffraction at King's College London. James Watson and Francis Crick at Cambridge University used some of her data, along that of her colleague Maurice Wilkins, to derive their three-dimensional model of DNA structure that was published in 1953. She wasn't really snubbed for her contribution, because she died in 1958, four years before Watson, Crick and Wilkens were awarded the Nobel in Physiology or Medicine.

In his book, The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige, Burton Feldman suggests that, had she been alive, Franklin almost assuredly would have received the prize over Wilkins, whose contribution was deemed nominal by most in the field. In a 2003 interview with Scientific American, Watson suggested she and Wilkins might have shared a separate prize for chemistry, thereby allowing all four of them to receive the award.

More information:

• Elkin LO. "Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix" Physics Today, March 2003
• NPR: Rosalind Franklin: Dark Lady of Science
  
• PBS's A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries: Rosalind Franklin
  

---

While nominations for the Nobel Prize are made in secret, the Nobel Foundation has released a database of nominations made for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine between 1901 and 1951. A search of the database by gender turns up a list of other women scientists who were nominated by never received an award (if you do a search, note that the database is a bit wonky because there are some men who have been indexed as "female".) A sampling:

• Cécile Vogt (1875-1962) was a French neurologist who studied the structure of the brain. She was nominated along with her husband Oskar Vogt.
• Gladys H. Dick was a Chicago doctor and bacteriologist, who, along with her husband George F. Dick, worked on the "etiology, prevention and cure of scarlet fever". It has been speculated that they were not awarded the Noble prize because the fact that they obtained a patent for their scarlet fever test was frowned upon by the Nobel selection committee.
  Read their paper: Dick GF and Dick GH "Scarlet Fever" Am J Public Health (NY) 14(12): 1022-1028 (1924).
  
• Helen B. Taussic (1898-1986) was a professor of petriatrics at Johns Hopkins Medical School. She and Alfred Blalock developed a pioneering cardiac surgical procedure, the Blalock-Taussig shunt, to treat infants suffering from blue baby syndrome. She received the Presidental Medal of Freedom in 1964 and was the first female president of the American Heart Association.

Hopefully the Nobel Foundation will also share the nomination information for physics and chemistry.

Tags: Nobel Prize, women in science

Teaching Science With Crafts

The National Museum of American History has a beautiful example of a 19th century quilt depicting the solar system. It was crafted by Sarah Ellen Harding Baker of Cedar County, Iowa in 1876. Baker didn't select the design simply because it's pretty:

Ellen used the quilt as a visual aid for lectures she gave on astronomy in the towns of West Branch, Moscow, and Lone Tree, Iowa. Astronomy was an acceptable interest for women in the 19th century, and was sometimes even fostered in their education.

It makes me wonder whether Baker or the children she taught had access to a telescope, and whether any of them dreamed of professionally studying the stars. Baker's story is also a reminder of the hardships of the 19th century. She died of tuberculosis in 1886 at the age of 39, leaving behind her husband and seven children.

(via label-free via CRAFTzine blog)

Tags: astronomy, quilts, Ellen Harding Baker

Our Humongous Sky and Other Topics

For some smart and interesting woman-on-woman science discussion, check out yesterday's edition of Bloggingheads.tv, where science writer Jennifer Ouellette (Cocktail Party Physics) and University of Washington Associate Professor of Astronomy Julianne Dalcanton (Cosmic Variance). They discuss the Hubble Space Telescope, astronauts, the comet named after Julianne, corpse museums, science on TV and teaching science.



They mention the following links:

• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Jennifer: Prime Time Science
• Julianne: Awful Hubble News
• Jennifer: Plastic People
• Jennifer: Exquisite Corpses
  

(If you can't see the embedded video, you can view and download the discussion at blogghingheads.tv)

Tags: bloggingheads.tv, Jennifer Ouellette, Julianne Dalcanto, astronomy,

Portraits of Women Scientists From the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution has been uploading some of their extensive collection of historical photographs to Flickr. One of their sets is a collection of portraits of scientists and inventors. While most of the pictured scientists are bewhiskered men, there are a few women in the set:



Agnes Mary Clerke was born in 1842 in County Clerke, Ireland. While she did not make astronomical observations herself, she instead interpreted and summarized the results of current astronomical research. She was a member of the British Astronomical Association and made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. A number of her books are available through Google Books:

• A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century (first published in 1885)
• The System of The Stars (first published 1890)
  
• The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (first published 1895)
• Problems in Astrophysics (first published 1903)
• Modern Cosmogonies (first published 1905)

***

Tatiana Ehrenfest (also known as Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva and Tatjana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa) was born in Kiev in 1876. At that time women were not allowed to enroll in the universities in Russia, instead there were special programs which allowed women to take courses in engineering, medicine, and teaching. Tatiana attended such a program in St. Petersburg. She later studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen, where she met her husband, Paul Ehrenfest. In 1912 they moved to Leiden, where Paul succeeded Hendrik Lorentz as a professor at the University of Leiden. They worked closely together and Tatiana published a number of papers on statistical mechanics, entropy and the role of chance in physical processes. She was also interested in methods of teaching mathematics - perhaps it isn't too surprising that one of the Ehrenfests' daughters, Tanja van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician. A couple of Tatiana's publications:

• Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa T. "On the Use of the Notion "Probability" in Physics" Am. J. Phys. 26: 388 (1958)
  
• Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa T. "Exercises in Experimental Geometry" (originally published in German in 1931). This is a treatise on how to teach geometry to children.
  

***

Last, but certainly not least, is a portrait of Marie Sklodowska Curie, one of the most famous women in physics. She was born in Warsaw in 1867 and received a general education there. She eventually ended up at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she earned degrees in physics and mathematical sciencies - and met her husband, Physics Professor Pierre Curie. The Curies initially worked together in their research on radioactive elements, but after Pierre was killed in an accident in 1906, she continued the research on her own. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre and Antoine Becquerel for their "research on the radiation phenomena". Maria Curie also received the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery and characterization of radium. She died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia, likely caused by radiation exposure, missing by only a single year the award of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie.

===

The Smithsonian definitely selected portraits of an illustrious group of scientists. There are more portraits in the collection available at “Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library”

Tags: women scientists, Agnes Mary Clerke, Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva, Marie Curie, Smithsonian

Women Scientist win MacArthur "Genius" Fellowships

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation just named the recipients of the 2008 MacArthur Fellows. Twenty-five winners of the so-called "genius" fellowship will receive $500,000 with no strings attached over the next five years. Among this year's winners are several women scientists:

Andrea Ghez is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA who helped provide evidence for the first time that the center of our Milky Way galaxy is an enormous black whole. Since that discovery in 1998, she has continued to study the stars to help understand the evolution of galaxies. She commented on what the award means to her and her research:

"I am really thrilled," Ghez said. "I will be able to take more risks with my research than I could before. The current shortage of federal funding for science can lead scientists to take fewer risks, but my selection as a MacArthur Fellow will allow me to pursue new ideas and take risks."

The mother of two sons -- Evan, 7, and Miles, who will turn 3 in October -- says the MacArthur funding is "particularly exciting" for women in science.

"The MacArthur Foundation funding will allow me to be much more effective and flexible and will definitely help with the balancing act," she said.

Read Ghez's MacArthur Fellow profile.

Plant molecular biologist Kirsten Bomblies is a senior postdoctoral research associate in the laboratory of Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany. Her research has focused on how new plant species originate. From her MacArthur Fellow profile:

Her findings provide a surprising molecular genetic mechanism linking developmental and evolutionary biology, and thus may represent a key advance in both disciplines.

Rachel Wilson is a an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, who studies how sensory stimuli such as the sense of smell are encoded in the fruit fly brain. She told the Boston Globe:

"We study fruit flies partly because when you sit back and think about it, a little fruit fly is an amazing little creature," she said. "Nobody in the world can build a robot that does everything a fruit fly does."

According to Wilson's MacArthur Fellow profile her research is groundbreaking:

By developing experimental models that integrate electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, molecular genetics, functional anatomy, and behavior, Wilson opens new avenues for exploring a central issue in neurobiology – how neural circuits are organized to sense and react to a complex environment.

Developmental biologist Susan Mango is a Professor in the department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Her lab studies the development of the pharynx (or foregut) in the nematode C. elegans in order to better understand the formation and physiology of organs. Her research has also uncovered a relationship between calorie restriction and the regulation of genes that may effect lifespan. According to her Fellow profile her research combines approaches from genetics, genomics, ecology and embryology:

Through her multifaceted exploration of the integrative biology of nematode development, Mango provides critical insights into the complex process of organogenesis.

Finally, Sally Temple is the Scientific Director of the New York Neural Stem Cell Institute in Albany, New York. She studies how embryonic neural progenitor cells develop into the diverse types of neurons that form the adult central nervous system. She told the Albany Times Union that being a mother fit well with her scientific career:

Temple said her best creative ideas come to her unexpectedly, when she's relaxed and immersed in her quotidian routine: watching her kids' sporting events, scrambling to put dinner on the table, walking through her neighborhood.

"Being a scientist is a good career for mothers, because you can work at midnight while feeding babies," she said.

Watch her video interview:

Read Temple's official MacArthur Fellow profile.

Two women physicians also were named fellows:

• Diane Meier is "a geriatrician who is shaping the field of palliative care and making its benefits available to millions of Americans suffering from serious illness.": profile, video
• Regina Benjamin is the founder of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic. "With a deep, firsthand knowledge of the pressing needs and health disparities afflicting rural, high-poverty communities, Benjamin is ensuring that the most vulnerable among us have access to high-quality care.": profile
  

(hat tip to Steinn Sigurðsson at Dynamics of Cats for noting the awards had been announced)
Tags: MacArthur Fellowships, Andrea Ghez, Kirsten Bomblies, Rachel Wilson, Sally Temple, Susan Mango

Margaret B. Bailey: Winner of the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award

"In my younger days when I was pained by half educated, loose and inaccurate ways which we all had, I used to say, 'How much women need exact science.' But since I have known some workers in science who were not always true to the teaching of nature, who have loved self more than science, I have said, 'How much science needs women.'"

-Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)

Most of you readers have likely heard of Maria Mitchell, the 19th century astronomer who became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was a professor of astronomy at Vassar College, where she was the first director of the Vassar College Observatory, a position she held until the year before her death in 1889. But she was born and raised on the island of Nantucket, where she first learned astronomy from her schoolteacher father, and where she opened her own school in 1835.

Today the Maria Mitchell Association of Nantucket honors her memory every year with the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award, which is given to "an individual whose efforts have encouraged the advancement of girls and women in the natural and physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, computer science and technology." This year's winner is Dr. Margaret B. Bailey, Kate Gleason Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology. From the award announcement:

Dr Bailey is the founder and executive director of WE@RIT (Women in Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology) where she leads a dynamic organization that aims to improve the retention of current women engineering students, as well as expand the pipeline of future women engineers through the delivery of a series of outreach programs for girls and women in K-12 grades. Mentoring is at the core of the WE@RIT programs from linking first-year with upper-level engineering students, utilizing undergraduate engineering students in the K-12 outreach programs, and a bi-weekly workshop series for RIT female engineering students. Dr. Bailey has also created a two week engineering camp for 4^th-9^th graders, “Everyday Engineering,” led by RIT women engineering students, and a shadowing program RIT undergraduates with professional engineers. Clearly a catalyst for improving gender diversity at RIT, Dr. Bailey’s programmatic ideas and initiatives are easily replicable at colleges, universities, schools and workplaces. Dr. Bailey plans to use the $5000 MM-WISA cash award, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, to work with a small group of science and math teachers to improve the quality and transferability of the “Everyday Engineering” curriculum to other universities and/or 4^th-9^th grade classrooms.

Earlier this year the WE@RIT program was awarded the WEPAN Women in Engineering Program Award, as "a model for other WIE organizations demonstrating best practices in comprehensive pre-college outreach, recruitment, and community building initiatives."

Bailey feels strongly that increasing the number of women engineers is an important goal:

The United States needs to double the number of female engineers—to three in 10—in order for the nation to capitalize on the intellectual capital of women and attain its true potential for innovation.

That forceful advice comes from Margaret Bailey, the Kate Gleason Chair and professor of mechanical engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering in remarks on the RIT news podcast Studio 86. The specificity of her call to action—that we need three in 10 women engineers in this country—is what makes it such a compelling point (as opposed to a wishy-washy phrase saying the world needs more female engineers). [...] Bailey says reaching a “critical mass” of 30 percent female engineers (more than twice the current number)—along with achieving other diversity goals—will lead to more and greater technological advances.

The point she seems to be making is not so much that women have special skills that men do not (even though that's the impression given by the article I linked to above), but that the engineering community is missing out on a large pool of potential new ideas and expertise when women chose to pursue careers other than engineering. Listen to the full interview, in which Bailey talks about women in engineering and the university's engineering and mentoring programs for girls.

In addition to directing the WE@RIT program, Bailey also directs graduate students, performs research in the field of energy conservation, and teaches several courses.

Bailey will be presented with the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award at a ceremony on September 19th.

Tags: Margaret B. Bailey, Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award, women in engineering

Resources on Women in Astronomy

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has put together a collection of resources - both online and off - on women in astronomy. From the intro:

This guide is not meant to be a comprehensive or scholarly introduction to the complex topic of the role of women in astronomy, but simply a resource for those educators and students who wish to explore the challenges and triumphs of women of the past and present. It's also an opportunity to get to know some of the key women who have overcome prejudice and exclusion to make significant contributions to our field. To be included among the representative women for whom we list individual resources, an astronomer must have had something non-technical about her life and work published in a popular-level journal or book. This explains why so many talented women are not covered; their work is mainly known through journals that students cannot read. Suggestions for additional non-technical listings are most welcome, however.

Some of the online resources include:

• A list of web resources on the general topic of women in astronomy
• Bibliography and links about women astronomers of the past:
  
• Part 1: from Annie Cannon to Henrietta Leavitt
• Part 2: from Antonia Maury to Beatrice Tinsley
• Bibliography and links about living women astronomers
• Part 1: Jocelyn Bell Burnell to Jane Luu
• Part 2: Sally Ride to Sidney Wolff

The Society's web site also has other good resources for astronomy lovers, including topics such as astronomical pseudo-science, science fiction with good astronomy, astronomy in non-western cultures, SETI and web sites for college astronomy instructors.

(via Mike Brotherton)

Tags: women in science, astronomy

Blog Roll Update

More women blogging about science and engineering:

Engineering

(Female) Assistant Engineering Professor says:

I'm an assistant Engineering Professor starting down the tenure track road this year (2008). And I'm female. As my life is becoming exponentially hectic, I thought that my experiences might be helpful to others, and other's advice might be helpful to me.

Angineer is written by Angie in Colorado:

A female professional engineer who defines herself by the groups and activities she joins--I am a leader in the Society of Women Engineers, adult Girl Scout volunteer, and proud sorority alumna and adviser.

Physical Sciences

The Musings of a Life Long Scholar: A new blog by geologist Life Long Scholar, which is about "musing about her love of learning and the joys of life in the sciences."

One Astronomer's Noise is the blog of Nicole, "Astronomy grad student, skeptic, atheist, libertarian, and belly dancer."

Life Sciences

The Minority Scientist blog has two goals:

*Share useful information to assist minorities, including women and underrepresented peoples, in science navigate a career in scientific research.
* Explore the world of science through the eyes of a single parent pursuing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences.

A Neotropical Savanna is the blog of Mary Farmer:

The posts in this blog are my own experience working through the learning of plants in the area where I now live. Even though this area happens to be in Panama, the principles I use for learning these plants apply to the learning of all plants. Most interesting may be the mistakes I make! And I make plenty, believe me.

Farmer also runs the web site Learn Plants Now!

Microbiologist XX says she is "finishing my PhD in microbiolgy. This consumes most of my time. I also enjoy listening to music, reading, laughing at my cats and shopping for shoes."

S. of More Than a Permanent Student is in grad school studying ecology.

Tags: women in science, women in engineering, blogs

Astrophysicist Sarah Bridle

One of this year's UK winners of a L'Oreal For Women in Science Fellowship is astrophysicist Sarah Bridle. Bridle is a Lecturer and Royal Society Research Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London, where she is working on "extracting information about cosmology using weak gravitational lensing."

Last month she was interviewed on The Guardian's Science Weekly podcast:

This week, the Science Weekly team discuss dark energy and the even darker matter of the gender gap with astrophysicist Sarah Bridle - recipient of a Women in Science fellowship. It's sponsored by a well-known cosmetics company - is it worth it? Do awards like this actually help to de-beard science? And isn't this a wider societal problem anyway?

Listen to the interview (mp3).

To learn more about her research, you can download PowerPoint lectures from her recent talks from her web site.

Tags: women in science, Sarah Bridle, astrophysics

Ice Stories

The Exploratorium has collected a bunch of blogs under the heading "Ice Stores: Dispatches from Polar Scientists", which showcases scientists working at the poles. Not surprisingly the research is seasonal: scientists work in Antarctica during the Northern Hemisphere's winter (so summer at the South Pole), while research in the Arctic is going on now. A number of women scientists are part of the effort.

In the Arctic:

• Anne Jensen "lives and works in Barrow, Alaska. Anne’s field studies have taken her throughout much of Alaska for the past 25 years. Her research in human adaptation in the Arctic includes a long-term project at the prehistoric village site of Nuvuk, where the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas come together. Historic Nuvuk is also the site of a 1,000-year-old burial ground. Hundreds of gravesites are endangered there by erosion, which sometimes removes 50 feet of coastal frontage in a single storm."
• Amy Breen "has studied the impacts of climate change on Arctic plant communities for nearly a decade. She is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, and a member of a team of circumpolar scientists participating in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). In July 2008, she’ll begin blogging from the Toolik Field Station, her field site in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in Alaska."
• Laura Thomas "is an archaeologist and full-time resident of Barrow, Alaska. As the Field and Lab Director for the Nuvuk Archaeology Project, Laura devotes her time to the long-term excavation of a 1,000-year-old burial ground significantly threatened by erosion. Born and raised amongst the rich geological history of Ontario, Canada, Laura has held a lifelong interest in prehistory and how past peoples adapted to their environments. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto, and describes her archaeological work in the Arctic as 'living the dream.'"
• Zoe Courville "studies snow and ice in polar regions. She received her PhD in material science from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in 2007. She is currently employed as a research mechanical engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in Hanover, New Hampshire. She loves working in the polar ice caps and sharing her experiences with others."

In the Antarctic:

• Cassandra Brooks "is a graduate student in Marine Science at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) in California who has studied Antarctic marine resources for the last four years both at MLML and with the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program (AMLR). Cassandra’s work focuses on life history and population structure of Antarctic toothfish. Her goal is to provide information on their age, growth, and spatial distribution in order to facilitate sustainable management of this important Antarctic species."
• Christina Riesselman "has traveled to Antarctica three times in pursuit of fossil diatoms that can unlock the secrets of past climate change. She's a Ph.D. student at Stanford University's Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and a member of the international team of scientists working on the ANDRILL sediment coring project."
• Nadine Quintana Krupinski "studies the dynamics of ice sheets and the waterways that exist under glaciers. She's a glaciology Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and enjoys working on isolated glaciers in the world's polar regions."
• Maria Vernet "has been a primary investigator on thirteen research cruises off the Western Antarctic Peninsula, exploring one of the coldest marine ecosystems on earth. She's a marine biologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. During winter 2008, she studied the ecology of phytoplankton and its role within the marine ecosystem at the Palmer Station Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER). From May 31 to June 20, 2008, Maria is on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker in the northwest Weddell Sea, collecting plankton samples from under and around large free-floating icebergs that have broken off from the Antarctic Ice shelf."
• Kathryn Schaffer Miknaitis "dreamed of becoming an artist but fell in love with physics in graduate school. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and pursues questions about the origin and history of the universe on the South Pole Telescope team. She arrived at the South Pole in November 2007 and blogged about her work on the telescope until she left in February 2008."

If you click on the scientists' names, you'll not only get to their blogs, but you can learn more information about the projects they are working on. It's an interesting glimpse into doing scientific research under extreme environmental conditions.

Tags: women in science, Arctic research, Antarctic research, blogs

SheSource.org: Closing the Gender Gap in the Media

Despite their growing ranks as experts in fields ranging from national security and military spending to technology and health care, women continue to be drastically underrepresented in the news media as policy shapers and leading voices of authority on critical issues. We've heard from journalists that say the main reason they do not quote women as experts on a range of topics is simply because they do not know how to find them.

SheSource.org is a site that attempts to "close the gender gap in news coverage" by providing a database of women experts as an easily-searched resource for journalists. While it looks like most of the listed women have expertise in policy, social sciences, or journalism, there are Ph.D. scientists and engineers too. Most of them are involved in policy and politics, though, rather than academic research. A few examples:

• Jane Rigby is a Spitzer Space Telescope postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution. She has a particular interest in demystifying science for the public, and to that end co-founded the first Penn State Astrofest, served on the editorial board of Odyssey, a science magazine for children.
• Lisa Haverty applies her Ph.D. in cognitive science to the tricks of advertising. She works for Arnold Worldwide as their "brain whiz", providing "expertise in how people think and learn provides new and unique insights into how people perceive and remember – or don’t remember - ads."
• Judith Hand is an evolutionary biologist, author, and futurist who has created A Future Without War, a series of essays on strategies for ending war.
  
• Sonja Ebron has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, with special expertise in power systems and utilities. She has been an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Hampton University. She is currently the CEO of blackEnergy, an organizer of energy bying groups that help people use their utility bills to support Black communities.
• Climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel is a former faculty member in the University of Arizona departments of Hydrology & Water Resources and Geosciences. Currently she leads the Union of Concerned Scientists' climate science education work "aimed at strengthening support for strong federal climate legislation and sound U.S. climate policies."
• Mathematician Cindy Williams is a Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program where she "focuses on U.S. budgets for national security and the policies that surround military personnel in the United States and Europe." Prior to joining M.I.T. she was an Assistant Director of the Congressional Budget Office.
  

If you would like to recommend someone as an expert (including yourself) you should contact SheSource.org.

Tags: women in science, experts, SheSource.org

Lectures on Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has made a podcast of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, including several by women scientists:

• Dr. Jill Tarter (SETI Institute): "The Allen Telescope Array: The Newest Pitchfork for Exploring the Cosmic Haystack". Tarter is the "the leader of the main project looking for radio signals from alien civilizations", and the model for Jodie Foster's character in the movie Contact. Listen to the MP3.
• Dr. Janice Voss (NASA Ames Research Center): "A Scientist in Space" and "Searching for Earth-like Planets: NASA's Kepler Mission". Voss is an astronomer and astronaut who has flown on five space missions, and is currently the Science Director of NASA's Kepler Space Observatory. Listen to the MP3.
• Dr. Nathalie Cabrol (SETI Institute): "The Mars Exploration Rover Mission: A Year of Exploration and Discovery" Cabrol is a planetary geologist who specializes in "environments favorable to Life on Mars, their exploration (robotic and human) and the study of terrestrial analogues." Listen to the MP3.
  

(via Bad Astronomy)
Tags: astronomy, podcast, lectures