Ada Lovelace Day 2015 - More Passion for Science

This year for Ada Lovelace Day I'm delighted to announce that my essay on Mary Somerville, now titled "Mary Somerville and the Mechanism of the Heaven's" has finally been published, as part of a new eBook, "More Passion for Science: Journeys into the Unknown", edited by Suw Charman-Anderson. It's available for £1.99 (in support of the work of Finding Ada) from Amazon.

I also wrote an accompanying blog post for the Digital Science Blog talking about why I picked Mary Somerville to write about.

I was delighted to attend Ada Lovelace Day Live in London and enjoy the science cabaret. I'm completely biased, but I thought Jen Gupta's set on astronomical spectroscopy and Margaret Huggins was the best. For more on that see this ICG News Item: ICG Celebrates Ada Lovelace Day 2015.

A mentor of Ada Lovelace - Mary Somerville

This year for Ada Lovelace Day I want to write a little bit about Mary Somerville. I'm delighted to be able to say that a full article I have written on her will appear as a chapter in the next Women in STEM Anthology to be published by Finding Ada - the organisation behind the idea of Ada Lovelace Day. The book is being edited and likely to be available sometime next year.

So for this ALD2014 post I want to share a flavour of the fun I had learning about Mary Somerville in order to write that chapter. One coincidence - I happened to be in Edinburgh while I was working on the chapter, and so decided to visit Mary's portrait in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Sadly I couldn't manage a visit her childhood home in Burntisland, but I got a view of from a boat tour on the Firth of Forth.

Me and Mary - her portrait at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Mary is such an accessible character, someone I think many women today could imagine being - I know I could. She was of a similar age to Jane Austen which probably helps. I'm a huge fan of Austen's books (and the many film and TV adaptations) so the environment in which Mary inhabited feels familiar even if very different to today. She was also a working mother (albeit presumably with a lot of help), which I can definitely relate to.

I read two versions of Mary's autobiography as I was writing the chapter, among other shorter descriptions of her life and work. The original "Mary Somerville: Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age, with selections from her correspondence" (available online from http://ebooks.cambridge.org/), was published not long after her death, and edited by her daughter Martha Somerville. Certain passages were removed which Martha felt reflected badly on her mother, so many claim the more recent "Queen of Science: Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville, edited and introduced by Dorothy McMillan is the better version. 

I decided to title the chapter: "Mary Somerville: Thoughts of what she might have been", based on a quote I found in Mary's 1873 obituary (published by the Royal Astronomical Society):

“We shall never know certainly, though it may be that hereafter we shall be able to guess, what science has lost through the all but neglect of the unusual powers of Mary Fairfax’s mind. We may rejoice that, through and accident, she was permitted to reach the position she actually attained; but there is scarcely a line of her writings which does not, while showing what she was, suggest thoughts of what she might have been.” 

Writing about Mary revealed to me both a story of great triumph (she was after all feted in her day - the first women to have a scientific paper read at the Royal Society, one of the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society, and an accomplished author of four popular science books on topics as diverse as calculus, physics, microbiology and geology), and great frustration. I found it too easy to hear in her own words the fury she felt at how difficult it all was for her and other women who wished to be educated. She was largely left unschooled as a girl (while her brothers studied, as was typical at the time), and it was only as an independent young widow that she could begin her proper training in the mathematics she loved. 

"I was intensely ambitious to excel in something, for I felt it in my own breast that women were capable of taking a higher place in creation than that assigned to them in my early days, which was very low. " - Mary Somerville

Many have focussed on the successes of Mary (which were exceptional), but I also felt her sense of loss at what more she might have done.

"I never made a discovery myself, [] I had no originality" - Mary Somerville

Although I think in that she was a bit harsh on herself (considering she invented the idea of physics as a combined subject, as well as bringing calculus to common use in the English speaking world). It seemed to me she was also frustrated by the pressure she felt as a successful science writer to cover topics she was less keen on than her favourite:

"Mathematics are the natural bent of my mind. If I had devoted myself exclusively to that study, I might probably have written something useful" - Mary Somerville

As a professional astronomer I also could resist this one last quote from Mary recollecting when she first discovered astronomy as a mathematical subject:

I perceived, however, that astronomy did not consist [of just] stargazing* - Mary Somerville

with the delightful footnote, expressing so common a sentiment among professional astronomers today: 

* "Many people evidently think the science of astronomy consists entirely in observing the stars, for I have been frequently asked if I passed my nights looking through a telescope, and I have astonished the enquirers by saying I did not even possess one."  - Mary Somerville.

Mary was more that 30 years older than Ada Lovelace, who she did know, and appears to have been somewhat of a mentor for. The two women met at a party held by Charles Babbage in 1833, and Mary at that time advised the then 18 year old Ada to study mathematics. Over the next 19 years Ada stayed with Mary and her family several times and wrote to her regularly until her death in 1852 (extraordinarily Mary went on to outlive Ada by 20 years). It's a pity there's no picture of the two women together (although I did find this comic book depiction of them).

Anyway my chapter is all finished and the book is in the editing process right now and expected to be published some time next year, so stay tuned for that.

If you want more (from me) about Mary before that comes out, I have also written about her online before as part of Ann Martin's Speaking Up campaign (which has now successfully pointed out to Google Doodles how few women they have profiled): Midpoint Series: Karen Masters on Mary Somerville. In fact it was working out who I wanted to write about for that series that introduced me to Mary in the first place.

Wiki-a-thon for Women in Science

On Friday I participated via Twitter in the Wiki-a-thon hosted by the Royal Society to improve/create articles about women scientists in wikipedia.

Ever since I heard about this I thought it was a fantastic idea, and while I couldn't make it to London on Friday I was happy to participate online via the Twitter hashtag #WomenSciWP

During the event I improved the article about Martha Haynes (my former thesis advisor), notable especially as a Henry Draper Medal Winner, and made a new article for Lisa Kaltenegger, a young astronomer (with a dual posting at Harvard and MPIA) who works on exoplanets, and is already notable - she has an asteroid named after her, and was named "America's Young Innovator in Science and Technology in 2007 - and will I'm sure become more notable in the future.

What I missed on the day was the page with the list of scientists the Royal Society suggested needed pages. This is an excellent resource to keep plugging away at improving this area of wikipedia. As soon as I found the list I made two new articles about women astronomers on it who are featured in a book I have on "Women in Early British and Irish Astronomy" (by Mary Bruck). These are Anne Walker and Isis Pogson. I was delighted to notice this morning that the article on Isis has already been expanded beyond the start I made.

During the event @edyong209 tweeted to ask me some questions (and said he was writing an article for Nature about the event). He quoted me in that article which was a nice surprise: Edit-a-Thon Gets Women Scientists into Wikipedia (a note for any twitter skeptics - if I wasn't on twitter I would neither have known about this event, connected with Ed to have this "interview", or been quoted in Nature - an event which got picked up this morning by my University's media stream and emailed to me by my head of department.....).

There's been several other articles about the event too. It seems to have struck a chord which is great.

Throw off the Cloak of Invisibility (by Athene Donald, also in Nature)
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Brings Women Scientists out of the Shadows (in the Guardian)

And as I write this my book on early British and Irish women astronomers sits on the table next to me, and I'm itching to dig into it to add more women to wikipedia. This might turn out to be a bit addictive!

Ada Lovelace Day Post: Nobel Prize Winning Women in Science

This post is for Ada Lovelace Day, and will appear on Finding Ada as a book reveiw.

Celebrated annually on 16th October, Ada Lovelace day is a day for sharing online inspiring stories of women scientists, engineers or mathematicians. The Guardian covered it yesterday (article). And if you don't know who Ada Lovelace is, well then she's just one of the amazing women you need to read about on this day.

I've been asked to write a book review about "Nobel Prize Women in Science", by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. It's a book in which you can read chapter long biographies of 15 women who have won (or significantly contributed to the science of) a Nobel Prize in one of the science fields. Certainly a good theme for a day about celebrating inspirational women scientists. 

When I first read this book several years ago, the thing which struck me most about it, was that it could exist in a (then) complete form. In fact it remained a complete listing of all women who had won Nobels in science fields until 2008 (with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi being a joint winner of the medicine prize that year).

In the last couple of weeks, the 2012 Nobel Prizes in science fields (physics, chemistry and medicine) have been announced. The physics prize went to David Wineland and Serge Haroche for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems"; the chemistry prize went to Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz for work on protein receptors; and the medicine prize went to John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for their work demonstrating that mature cells could be turned into stem cells. 

These are undoubtably all great contributions to science, and well worthy of the prize (although there has been some controversy over if the chemistry prize winning work really counts as chemistry), but as I watched the announcements roll in I couldn't help be a little bit disappointed that yet again there were no women among the recipients. In 2012, six men won the prizes in science, in 2011 seven men shared the prizes. In fact in the last women to win a science prize were three years ago in 2009 when three of the nine total recipients were women (Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider sharing the medicine prize with Jack Szostak, while Ada Yonath was one of the three winners of the chemistry prize). 

In the whole of the 21st century (2001-2012), only four of the recipients of Nobel prizes in science (out of 89 total winners) have been women (that's just about 4.5%); added to the 10 women who won in the 20th century, that makes 14 women who have ever been given Nobel Prizes in a science field. 

In a sense this is good news for the book which is only missing 4 stories to be complete to this day. But of course it's also disappointing. At the point of it's publication, the book claims that only 2% of the more than 300 Nobel Prizes in Science had gone to women. That we cannot do better than just doubling that fraction in the first decade of the 21st century is not encouraging.  

The book itself is well worth a read. I find it actually rather inspiring and motivating, and often dip into it when in need of a bit of perspective on the struggles of a career in science. The lives of these women were at times so difficult, and not one of them had an easy route. The common factor they all possess seems to be an overwhelming love of science and of discovering the world around them. Nothing more than that could have taken them to the point they reached. 

The book is arranged chronologically, and as such represents an interesting progression, from the outright discrimination and legal barriers faced by the pioneers in the early part of the 20th century (Marie Curie, Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911; or Lise Meitner and Emmy Noether - neither of whom won a Nobel Prize), to more complex (and often WW2 related) problems of the second generation,  (Gerty Cori, Irene Curie, Barbara McClintock, Maria Mayer, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Dorothy Hodgkin, Chien-Shiun Wu, Gertrude Elion, Rosalind Franklin and Rosalyn Yalow). 

 Many of these "second generation" women faced problems with anti-nepotism laws in the US (not allowing univerisities to hire married couples). McGrayne points out that even today something like 70% of women physicists are married to other scientists, and when working in a team with men, women's contributions have historically been overlooked. Several of these women only received formal recognition for their work after they won a Nobel. In the first Chapter of the book McGrayne writes an interesting summary of all these obstacles, concluding with a statement which sticks in my mind:

Given the enormous problems they faced and the important discoveries they made, the real question to be asked about these women is not "Why so few?" A better question is "Why so many?" (Chapter 1, pg 8).

The last two chapters profile what McGrayne calls the "New Generation". These are Jocelyn Bell (whose advisor won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars which she led the observations of) and Christine Nusslein-Vollard (Nobel Prize in medicine, 1995), who only appears in the Second Edition version. It makes me wonder if McGrayne was expecting this book to become dated quickly as significantly more women from this group won prizes. I wonder if she's disappointed in the still slow progress in the decade since this edition of the book was published. In her afterword some of this frustration already seems to be showing: 

Are women racing into science? Yes and no. The number of women earning science degrees rose steadily between the 1960s and the late 1980s. Then it stopped growing. Why?

She talks about one of the reasons being the poor representation of women scientists in textbooks (usually just Marie Curie appearing). I hope Ada Lovelace day will do its bit to improve this.

Curiously, women (well at least in goddess form, and perhaps less clothed than a typical scientist) are well represented on the medal itself. The reverse shows two female figures, the upright one depicts nature, in the form of the godess Isis, emerging from the clouds holding a cornucopia (a "horn of plenty); while the kneeling women holding up the veil off the face of Isis depicts the "Genius of Science". You can read a full description on the Nobel Prize website.

I hope one day the representation of women winning this prize will be as good. 

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne's Website.

I linked to all the Wikipedia articles about these women where you can find some fascinating facts. For example, did you know that Rita Levi-Montalcini is the oldest living Novel laureate, and the only one so far to have reached 100! Also it reminded me of this great Royal Society Workshop happening later this week: Women in Science: Wikipedia Workshop, with the aim of improving wikipedia articles about women in science. The event can be joined online (Twitter hashtag #WomenSciWP). 

Ada Lovelace Day Links from Twitter

A great idea by @alicebell and @allinthegutter to make lists of women scientists to follow (as part of Ada Lovelace Day). 

Alice Bell's Ada list

Emma's List

Other great Ada Lovelace Themed links from Twitter

Emmy Noether and Symmetry

Free iPad Application "Lovelace and Babbage"

Ada Lovelace Day - Martha Haynes

Today is Ada Lovelace Day - a day named after a women who is widely believed to have been the worlds first computer programmer. You can read more about it at  "Finding Ada" a website which is soliciting stories about inspirational women in science.

 Coincidentally (I think) my former PhD thesis advisor, Martha Haynes, posted the below picture on Facebook today in response to a post by another of her former students about how male dominated Physics colloquia (and the business lounge of Lufthansa Airlines) both are. This is a picture of ALL of the 1989 winners of ALL awards from the (US) National Academy of Sciences. This was the year that Martha and her collaborator (and husband) Riccardo Giovanelli won the Henry Draper Medal "For the first three-dimensional view of some of the remarkable large-scale filamentary structures of our visible universe."

The 1989 Winners of ALL Awards from the (US) National Academy of Sciences 

 Martha is easy to spot - the only winner not wearing a tie (2nd row, 2nd from the left). Riccardo is standing next to her on the extreme left. So in 1989 1/24 prize recipients were women.

 In fact in the 125 years the Henry Draper Medal has been awarded (although note it's not awarded every year), the only female recipients have been Annie Jump Cannon and Martha Haynes.

 Sadly I suspect the situation among such high profile award winners is not much different today, but it is trailblazers like Martha (the first women  astronomy professor at Cornell; and the only one for 20 years) who make life easier for us now.

 Martha's stories of "Haynes and his wife Giovanelli" (among many others) remind me of the pre-conceptions about male scientists, and also make me laugh!

 So today for Ada Lovelace Day Martha is the person I want to mention as an inspirational woman in science.