Gender ratios in physics students in the US and UK....

Why do A-level physics gender ratios in the UK and BSc physics major gender ratios in the USA show similar trends offset by 15 years....?

In the UK the trend flatlined (or began declining) around 1985. I the USA the flat line/decline starts around 2000. There should be an offset of about 4 years (the length of time it takes to get a degree in the USA), but I don't understand 15 years.... 

Modelling Data - Example using A-level Physics Gender Trends

Love this blog post: "Brent and Levenberg-Marquardt: the bread and butter algorithms for postgrads" which uses data I collected as an example for modelling trends.

I collected these data to include in an article I was invited to write for Astronomy&Geophysics on "Women of the future in the RAS". In that article I conclude: "Fitting a straight line to this 60-year trend and dangerously extrapolating the poor linear fit into the future, we find that we can't expect gender equality in physics A-level until 2163."

The data is not cheerful, and a linear increase model does not fit it well. In fact according Val Aslanyan's best fit model, recent years show a decline in the fraction of A-level physicsists who are women. 

Credit to Val Aslanyan (http://improbablematter.blogspot.com/2016/12/brent-and-levenberg-marquardt-bread-and.html) for this version of this plot.

Women of the Future Awards for 2017

Nominations are now open for the 2017 Women of the Future Awards, so please see below for an updated version of a post I first wrote this time last year.  

The deadline for nominations this year is 8th September 2017.

Women of the Future 2016 Nominations now open

The Women of the Future Awards are the platform for successful young women in Britain. These awards are aimed at unearthing and recognising the inspirational stars of tomorrow across diverse sectors. I was honoured to win the Science category of this award in 2014, and I am keen to encourage more engagement with the awards from women in STEM. Please feel free to contact me directly (karen.masters@port.ac.uk) if you have any questions/concerns about what these awards are all about.

I personally view participation with this organisation as a great way to engage in outreach about STEM subjects with women in general. The low numbers of women in science means that we are often in a minority in a group of scientists, but also within a group of women. The young people who attend events organised via the Women of the Future: Ambassadors Programme (at which Award winners and shortlisted candidates are invited) are not seeking out discussion of STEM subjects as careers specifically, so this can be a great way to get outside the group of already engaged. And the Women of the Future Network provides the opportunity to network with successful professional women in the UK across all sectors (which is inspiring and interesting, as well as potentially useful). This has led to interesting opportunities - for example I was invited to discuss the issues of women in STEM at the House of Lords this year.

The Awards are open to all women aged 35 or under (candidates must be aged 35 or under on December 31, 2016) living or working in the United Kingdom (Mentor of the Year and Young Star Awards have different eligibility, see below).

Award Categories which I think would of Interest to Women in STEM:

Science
This category recognises a group of truly remarkable young female scientists, forging new ground in research and scientific achievement. Within this category, WoF are also seeking nominees with a career in the sciences who can demonstrate a track record of academic excellence in the field of science; and are showing signs of success in pushing through scientific developments to commercial application.

Recent winners:
2015: Dr. Tessa Baker, Postdoctoral Fellow at All Souls, University of Oxford
2014: Dr. Karen Masters, Senior Lecturer in Astronomy, Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth
2013: Dr Janice Turner, technical project manager, Roke Manor Research

Technology and Digital
This category recognises talented, ground-breaking young women from the worlds of digital and technology.

Recent winners:
2015: Dr. Laura Toogood, Managing Director of Private Clients, Digitalis Reputation
2014: Brie Rogers Lowery, UK Director, Change.org
2013: Kathryn Parsons, founder, Decoded


Mentor of the Year
This award, recognises active mentors behind the success of younger women in British life. Many successful women pay tribute to role models and supporters who have enabled them to flourish in business, professional life, science or whatever their chosen field. This award pays tribute to some of the most influential and unsung heroes and heroines in British life.
The award is open to men and women of all ages.

Recent winners:
2015: Alex Peace-Gadsby, Director, Musto Limited
2014: Dr Vanessa Ogden, Head Teacher, Mulberry School
2013: Helen Milford, south regional director, Asda

Young Star
This award acknowledges high achievers aged 16-21. It is for teenage girls showing exceptional promise within their industry, university or school.

Recent winners:
2015: Phoebe Gormley, Managing Director, Gormley & Gamble
2014: Suzanne Birney, Apprentice CAD Technologist, Doosan Babcock
2013: Eliza Rebeiro, founder, Lives not Knives

Entry deadline: September 12th 2016
Judging Day (central London): October 14th 2016
Awards Night (London Hilton on Park Lane - shortlisted candidates get a complimentary ticket): 16th November 2016
There are two ways to nominate (self nominations are welcome):
1. Complete the application form (https://womenofthefuture.wufoo.eu/forms/women-of-the-future-2016-nomination-form/) - self nominations are welcomed.
2. Email candidate suggestions to info@womenofthefuture.co.uk (they will then be contacted and invited to fill in the application form).

For more details: http://awards.womenofthefuture.co.uk, or contact me at karen.masters@port.ac.uk.

Please pass this message on to any Women in STEM groups you are part of.

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.

Women of the Future 2015 Nominations now open

The Women of the Future Awards are the platform for successful young women in Britain. Now in their tenth year, the awards continue to unearth and recognise the inspirational stars of tomorrow across diverse sectors. I was honoured to win the Science category of this award in 2014, and I am keen to encourage more engagement with the awards from women in STEM. Please feel free to contact me directly (karen.masters@port.ac.uk) if you have any questions/concerns about what these awards are all about. 

I personally view participation with this organisation as a great way to engage in outreach about STEM subjects with women in general. The low numbers of women in science means that we are often in a minority in a group of scientists, but also within a group of women. The young people who attend events organised via the Women of the Future: Ambassadors Programme (at which Award winners and shortlisted candidates are invited) are not seeking out discussion of STEM subjects as careers specifically, so this can be a great way to get outside the group of already engaged. And the Women of the Future Network provides the opportunity to network with successful professional women in the UK across all sectors (which is inspiring and interesting, as well as potentially useful). 

The Awards are open to all women aged 35 or under (candidates must be aged 35 or under on December 31, 2015) living or working in the United Kingdom (Mentor of the Year and Young Star Awards have different eligibility, see below). 

Award Categories which I think would of Interest to Women in STEM: 

Technology and Digital

This category recognises talented, ground-breaking young women from the worlds of digital and technology.

Science

This category recognises a group of truly remarkable young female scientists, forging new ground in research and scientific achievement. Within this category, WoF are also seeking nominees with a career in the sciences who can demonstrate a track record of academic excellence in the field of science; and are showing signs of success in pushing through scientific developments to commercial application.

Mentor of the Year

This award, recognises active mentors behind the success of younger women in British life. Many successful women pay tribute to role models and supporters who have enabled them to flourish in business, professional life, science or whatever their chosen field. This award pays tribute to some of the most influential and unsung heroes and heroines in British life.

The award is open to men and women of all ages.

Young Star

This award acknowledges high achievers aged 16-21. It is for teenage girls showing exceptional promise within their industry, university or school.

Entry deadline September 4th 2015

Judging Day (central London): September 25th 2015

Awards Night (London Hilton on Park Lane): 27th October 2015

There are two ways to nominate (self nominations are welcome): 

1. Complete the application form (https://womenofthefuture.wufoo.eu/forms/women-of-the-future-2015-nomination-form/) - self nominations are welcomed.

2. Email candidate suggestions to info@womenofthefuture.co.uk (they will then be contacted and invited to fill in the application form). 

For more details: http://awards.womenofthefuture.co.uk, or contact me at karen.masters@port.ac.uk. 

Please pass this message on to any Women in STEM groups you are part of. 

What does a "Women of the Future" do?

Back in October last year I was honoured to win the Women of the Future 2014 Award for Science.
Women of the Future is  an organisation which aims to provide a platform, and inspiration for young women in Britain. As well as the Women of the Future Awards they run a Asian Women of Achievment Award, a Women of the Future Network (to which all shortlisted and winning candidates belong from the now 10 years this has been running) and a Women of the Future Ambassadors Programme (connecting sixth formers with the award winning women).

I was delighted to win the award, obviously on a personal level, but also I hope because of how I can use the opportunities it gives me to talk about science as an excellent career choice for any young person. Since I won the award people often ask me what I get from it….. well - the quickest answer is that I got a shiny metallic monolith to put in my office:

Showing off the shiny award, right after I won in October 2014!

But much more importantly, I also get lots of opportunities and invitations, and I get to meet lots of other amazing young women at all of them! 

My first opportunity in many ways was the acceptance speech I gave in front of the ~400 amazing women and supporters at the gala award ceremony. I tried to speak about the importance of science being seen as an important thing for women to do - that a female scientist is a minority not only in an average group of scientists, but also an average group of women, and that it's important we see science as part of our culture (for both women and men). 

The opportunities keep rolling in…. A couple of weeks ago, coincidently on two consecutive days I got invited with other "Women of the Future" to attend the Open of the London Stock Exchange, and to have tea with the Speaker of the House of Commons. 

Getting to London for the opening of the stock exchange meant a very early (and snowy) morning start from Portsmouth, but it was worth it to arrive (still in the semi dark you note) and see the Women of the Future logo on full display. 

The branding was very evidence inside too for the short (and very dramatic) ceremony. 

\

The was followed by speeches from the CEO of the London Stock Exchange, who took the opportunity to announce the launch of their own "Women's Network", and the commitment they have to equality and diversity. 

Then we had an unabashedly feminist speech from The Right Honorable Andrea Leadson, MP, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury (who actually opened the stock exchange this morning - we just all watched). 

More branding, and then me with it to prove I was there I guess! 

See if you can spot my ear in the official picture! 

Then the next day it was back to London (albeit at a more respectable hour) to visit Speakers House for a tea to be attended by the Speaker of the House of Commons (The Right Honourable John Bercow). 

The Speakers House is in the medieval part of the Palace of Westminster - it's obviously a stunning building, and full of UK history.

We got served very nice tea, and then waited quite a long time while the Speaker was delayed in Parliament. This was actually great as it gave us tons of time to network with all the other women in the group.

Oddly one of the rooms we had access to had this giant four poster bed in it. 

Pinky Liliani took this picture of me enjoying tea with one of the shortlisted candidates from the Technology Category (Jo York, Co-founder, Reframed.tv, a video tagging service)

Pinky then tweeted the picture, so I got a bit meta and tweeted a picture of her tweeting. 

The Speaker arrived, and was very apologetic about the delay, and then gave a speech were he called me out by name (he had handed me my award at the ceremony). 

We had a group shot, and then some more networking time. 

Here's a shot on the way out - again with Jo York, and also FenFen Huang (shortlisted for Arts and Culture, and Director of China Pearl - a company offering Chinese cultural experiences in the UK). 

More shots on the way out - it was really an amazing location to be invited too.

 The next event is even more important in my view - March 16th is the networking evening with sixth formers from across London.

Who Asks Questions at Research Talks in the UK Astronomy Community?

This past summer I was on the Local Organising Committee for the UK National Astronomy Meeting, held in Portsmouth.

In the run up to that I heard about this interesting project lead by James Davenport, tracking the gender of astronomers who asked questions at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Jan 2014.

I ended up discussing this via a Twitter conversation with Jonathan Pritchard (@jr_pritchard) and we decided running the same experiment at NAM would be really interesting. After getting permission from the LOC, RAS and some help from James Davenport setting up the data collection web form we were ready to go.

The first ever NAM Hack Day gave the project a kick start and collected some other co-authors. I'm delighted to be able to say that the results it was published in A&G this month (we plan to get it on the arxiv soon, and for now you can download the pdf here  download from the arxiv here).

As you'll see we got a great response to the call for data collection at NAM - we were able to collect data on questions asked in about 70% of the talks at the conference which was absolutely fantastic.

We did find a clear gender difference in the rate of asking questions, and below I reproduce my favourite plot from the paper, showing how particularly in the first question, men were much more likely to ask, but by the fourth question the questions came from men and women in proportion to their representation at the conference.

Plot from Pritchard et al. 2014, A&G

When you read the report you'll see we found similarities, but also subtle differences with the results from the AAS (allowing us to quote Winston Churchill "we are two nations divided by a common language").

I also really enjoyed the research we did placing out result in the context of wider social science research into the psychology of asking questions, and also that we decided to end with a set of concrete suggestions to help improve the gender balance of those asking questions at astronomy conferences.

Our suggestions were:

• Younger scientists should be explicitly encouraged to ask questions (i.e. this should be stated in introductory remarks by the chair), and favoured if there is a choice of questioners.
• If there is a choice between male and female questioners for the first question, a question from a woman should be given priority.
• Questioners should be asked to identify themselves by name.
• If possible, Q&A sessions should not be cut short before at least four questions have been asked (if they need to be ended early). To enable this, session organizers should schedule enough time for questions and speakers should not be allowed to run over time.  

In my view we also implicitly leave an action for male astronomers - especially those who typically ask a lot of questions, and ask those questions early. Perhaps if they were willing to give just a small pause - a wait to see if others might have questions before jumping in, they could help open up the scientific debate in our community to be representative of those within it…..

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.

British Astronomers

I had cause to Google "British Astronomers" yesterday, and was so horrified by the result I felt I needed to post it. Actually once I think about it it's not a surprise at all, but the raw numbers still shocked me.

The top line is a list (with images) of the results "most mentioned on the web". I did a screen shot of that below.

It's William Herschel, Patrick Moore, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, John Flamsteed, Caroline Herschel, George Airy, John Herschel, James Bradley (?), Arthur Stanley Eddington, Jeremiah Horrocks, Nevil Maskelyne, John Adams (?), Fred Hoyle, Richard van der Riet Woolley (?), Frank Watson Dyson (?), William Parsons, Martin Rees, Harold Spencer Jones (?) and Jocelyn Bell.

Only two out of the 20 (10%) are alive, only two (10%) are women.

I put question marks above on names which were not immediately recognisable to me (this I take as my failing not Google's, but I was curious why they're there). It turns out that most of them are former Astronomer Royals whose wikipedia article begins "XX is an English Astronomer who was Astronomer Royal from XX-XX". John Adams I should have known - he's the person who (a the same time as but independently of Le Verrier) predicted the existence of Neptune from deviations in Uranus's orbit.

Is it time to add some more recent British astronomers to the list? Perhaps some more women (where is Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin in this?). It seems we can help to do this by editing Wikipedia which is a good thing to do anyway.

Curiously Googling either "English Astronomers" or "American Astronomers" does not return the series of images ("Italian Astronomers" does - but missing Galileo!).

Wikipedia Success for Isis Pogson!

A couple of weeks ago I participated (remotely) in the Royal Society Wiki-a-thon to improve the visibility of women scientists on wikipedia.

One of the articles I started because of this event was about Isis Pogson, a British astronomer who worked for many years as an assistant to her astronomer father at the Madras Observatory in India. Of all the articles I created this is the one which has changed the most since - I guess one sign of success on Wikipedia.

And this article was nominated as a "Did you know" entry by Gonobobo a couple of weeks ago, and ended up on the Wikipedia main page yesterday with the text:

Did you know:
that British astronomer Isis Pogson was probably named after a river, and an asteroid was probably named after her?

And check out the hits as a result, of the 2277 people who've visited the article since I created it, 1765 (78%) went yesterday.

I think that has to count as a success for the Royal Society Wiki-a-thon. :) 

Why Google Thought I was a Man.

This is a bit old, but I wanted to remember the link here. In your Google account is an analysis of the types of websites you visit most often. Based on this Google determines your demographics (age and gender). Almost 100% of the women scientists I've asked about this (including myself) come out as middle aged men, presumably based on our browsing interests related to science.

You can check you're own Google Profile at this link (under Ads Preferences), and edit your demographics (or turn the whole thing off if you prefer).

There's a surprisingly reasonable article in the Daily Mail about this How to find out who Google thinks you are from your web history (and how it may even have your sex wrong) which talks more about the issue. 

I edited my demographics to reflect reality, and I'm curious to see the impact this had on the types of Ads Google shows me.....

What had I not heard of Mary Somerville?

A suggestion for a Google Doodle for Speaking Up for Us.

26th December 2012
Mary Somerville's 232nd Birthday

Other possible dates: 29th November 2012: 160 years since Mary Somerville died. 

Notable events: 
1831 - publication of "The Mechanics of the Heavens"
1832 - invention of the word "scientist"
1834 - publication of "On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences"
1836 - admission to RAS (with Caroline Herschel)

Mary Somerville, portrait by Thomas Phillips, 1834. From the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. 

Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was an innovative and talented science communicator, with an extraordinary (and mostly self taught) grasp of mathematics in an era when most women had no access to formal education. As a direct result of her work, calculus was introduced to the English speaking scientific world, the idea of physics (as a single subject containing topics such as optics, thermodynamics and astronomy) was invented, and the term "scientist" was coined to describe people who studied the various sciences.

In 1826 Mary Somerville became the first women to author a scientific paper published by the Royal Society (which was possible through her second husband's membership of the society), discussing her work in trying to understand the properties of the UV radiation from the Sun. The success of this work led to her being invited to translate into English Laplace's last work "Mechanique Celeste", which was already at the time considered to be the most significant advance in understanding celestial mechanics (applying the "new" mathematics of calculus to solve several previously intractable problems) since "Newton's Principia." Mary took four years in the translation, but instead of a direct version of the book, significantly reorganized how it was presented to make it more lucid, and even in some cases, used her own proofs rather than Laplace's. This translation is credited with bringing the "continental methods" of calculus to English speaking students of Mathematics. And it's introduction was published separately for a public audience, becoming so popular that it remained in print for 50 years!

Mary's next project was "The Connexion of the Physical Sciences" (1834), a book which aimed to bring to popular (and female) audiences an overview of how universal laws of physics could be used to explain many branches of science (e.g. matter, optics, hear, electricity, magnetism and astronomy). This book was acclaimed by scientists and general readers alike, and made Mary truly famous in her day, selling thousands of copies. It's basically the invention of the idea of physics as we understand it, and also led to the invention of the term "scientist".

In the book one of the things Mary explained was that the laws of physics could explain the predictable and stable orbits of the planets. At the time Uranus had just been discovered, and its orbit was known to show discrepancies from predictions. Mary explained this by "possibly it [Uranus] may be subject to disturbances from some unseen planet revolving about the sun beyond the present boundries of our system". Supposedly Adams told Mary's husband that this line inspired him to "calculate the orbit of Neputune", although some doubt remains as to this claim. What is clear though is that Mary had the idea, and would have been capable of making the calculation which predicted the existence of Neptune. We can only speculate why she did not.

The fame of these works led to Mary Somerville being one of the first women admitted into the Royal Astronomical Society. At the time female members were against the rules, but the society in 1836 initiated a new rank of "Honorary Member" specifically to be able to admit Mary Somerville and Caroline Herschel (30 years Mary's senior). 


Despite all this I was unaware of Mary's contribution to science until I started searching for a Google Worthy Woman to write about. I stumbled across her mentioned in the same sentence as the much more famous Caroline Herschel, and was immediately intrigued. I find it interesting (and disappointing) that she is often described in relation to her husband(s) and father. For example the caption to the beautiful portrait above says:

Mary Fairfax was the daughter of a naval officer and born in Jedburgh. As was customary for young ladies, she received very little formal education. Yet she taught herself algebra in secret and, as a young wife and mother, she continued to study mathematics. Widowhood at twenty-seven gave her the independence to develop her intellectual interests and her second husband, William Somerville, proved more supportive than her first. Somerville’s particular contribution to nineteenth-century science lay in her powers of analysis and explication rather than original research. She translated Laplace’s ‘The Mechanism of the Heavens’ into English and wrote a bestselling book on physics. After her death, Somerville College in Oxford was named in her honour.

Mary married twice - first to a Captain Samuel Greig, with whom she had two children before he died after 3 years of marriage. By accounts Captain Greig was not supportive of Mary's study of mathematics, but she continued anyway. As a young widow she had more freedom to suit herself (although also we should point out also two young sons to look after), and when in 1812 she married Dr. William Somerville he turned out to be much more supportive of her work. She had four more children (all girls) with Dr. Somerville, who also brought the son of a former marriage to the family. One of her sons died in infancy, and her eldest daughter (who she called "a child of intelligence and acquirements far beyond her tender age") died at age 10. Her eldest remaining son became a barrister and scientist, and Mary lived with her 3 adult daughters (who never married) until she died.


I stumbled across some wonderful quotes from Mary while researching this:
"Mathematics are the natural bent of my mind"
"Age has not abated my zeal for the emancipation of my sex from the unreasonable prejudice too prevalent in Great Britain against a literary and scientific education for women" - age 90.

And quotes about her:
Was she "an astronomer and mathematician of underused talents?" - Mary Bruck (1996)
"the Jane Austen of science" - Alan Chapman



References:
"The Lost Women of the Royal Society", by Richard Holmes for The Observer (Nov 2010).
Chapter 6 of "Women in Early British and Irish Astronomy", by Mary Bruck (Springer)
Wikipedia page on Mary Somerville
Mary Somerville's Portrait at the National Gallery of Scotland.

International Women's Day 2012 - Women in Science

For international women's day a quick post about women in science (well  mostly astronomy, but then I will admit to being biased!).

Thanks to @AnneOsterreider for an already excellent post. I'm not going to go on about the statistics or anything like that. I've done that before - for example in the series I ran on the Galaxy Zoo blog about the Women of Galaxy Zoo.

Alice Roberts does make a good point though....

I also totally agree with Anne that the Royal Society publication Mothers in Science: 64 Ways to Have it All is a good one to remember.

So what am I adding to the conversation. Well a couple of pictures and quotes. Here's Cecilia-Payne Gaposhkin with her husband and two of her children.

Prof. Payne-Gaposhkin had an incredibly difficult career path and was a real early pioneer for women in science. My favourite quote of hers is

"I simply went on plodding, rewarded by the beauty of the scenery towards an unexpected goal."

Vera Rubin is another personal favourite woman in astronomy (and a mother of a woman in astronomy too which I think is fun).

Here she is observing

and a quote (from "Brainy Quote")

"Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions."

(seems appropriate for the woman whose data first demonstrated that galaxies must have dark matter).

That's it. This woman has got to get on with some science! ;)

I'm on "This is What a Scientist Looks Like"

The information I submitted to This is What a Scientist Looks Like appeared last week.

My post. 

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.

Do we need a Physics Barbie?

Last week we learnt that the numbers of students sitting A-level physics has increased but that the gender divide is getting worse,

This week we discover that at GCSE level, both the numbers taking science and the percent have girls have increased - with 46% of double science entrants this year being girls. The girls continue to outperform the boys, both overall, and in science (which seems to me should put pay to any ideas about intrinsic lack of science ability in girls) but yet this doesn't translate to girls taking Physics at A-level.

Imram Khan comments in the CASE reaction to the GCSE results (which he wrote, causing me to wonder what the rules are on quoting your self in an article).

"We need to encourage more girls to take the top grades they get at GCSE and translate those into science and maths A-levels."

 In related news, this week, the September 2011 Issue of Nature Chemistry celebrates women chemists in its cover - a photo mosaic of Marie Curie made up of the images of 200 women chemists (reproduced below).

ORIGINAL IMAGE OF MARIE CURIE © PHOTOS.COM/THINKSTOCK. 
A portrait of Marie Curie's face created from the photographs of around 200 women scientists.

In this volume, Michelle Francl (a Chemistry professor from Bryn Mawr College in the USA) writes a wonderful commentary: "Sex and the Citadel of Science" in which she wonders why 100 years after Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry so few other women have followed her to Stockholm.

 She puts forward a new and intriguing (at least to me) idea, that subtle messages from our working environment could be putting off women in science. As an example she talks about ergonomics - still general calibrated to the average size of men, for example:

"Chairs — in meeting rooms and conference venues are built to accommodate the majority of men, and the minority of women (less than 5% in fact). Most women will look — and perhaps feel — just a bit out of place, faintly childlike in an outsized chair."

Although I would argue that is true of all office spaces, many of which do not have the same gender imbalance as science.

 I was also interested to read her ideas on the use of colour as a subtle message about who belongs in science:

"It makes me wonder if one reason the science and engineering pipeline begins to leak girls at middle school is not due to some innate sex-linked lack of interest, but because that's often when 'real' lab equipment starts to be used regularly, the colours of which are drawn largely from the male-associated palette."

 This led to a silly Twitter conversation between myself, @sarahkendrew and @allinthegutter (all female astronomers) about how we only like red galaxies not blue ones, but actually I do wonder if all the beautiful images in astronomy could be responsible for a slightly higher female proportion in (some subfields) of astronomy than in physics as a whole (for which statement I should look up a reference).

Just look at all these pink galaxies from Google Images! I wonder how many female astronomers can be traced by to Halpha being commonly displayed as pink in images....?

 Being serious again though I do wonder if she has a point, Dr. Francl explains that obviously a single trivial detail like chair height, or the colour of lab equipment is not enough to put a girl off science, but she wonders about the cumulative effect of all these subtle messages, comparing it to the method of chemically separating substances by performing a procedure which slightly separates them multiple times.

 To cap all this off (and inspiring the title of my post) Athene Donald is also writing about the impacts of gender in science in THE: "Where is Physics Barbie?". The increase in Physics A-levels has been attributed by the BBC to a rise in "Geek Chic", but Dr. Donald (along with Alice Bell in her blog post "Unravelling the Politics of Geek Chic") laments that our idea of a geek is still very male (and middle class), and that we are forcing these stereotypes on our kids from a young age - partially by the choice of toys. As a mother to two young children I will gladly admit to the disquiet I feel at the very pink "girls" toys, and the very green and brown "boys" toys. I will even admit to my dismay that my 4 1/2 year old daughter is really keen to get a Princess Barbie.

Computer Scientist Barbie exists (and even blogs for UKRC), and in the 1960s apparently there was a Rocket Scientist/Astronaut Barbie, but I can say from personal experience that most of the Barbie aisle is pink, and very stereotypically girly.

Rocket Scientist Barbie

I'm currently knitting my daughters only Barbie a dress (she has a Disney Ariel Barbie which just came with a mermaid tails and bikini) which I am sorry to admit panders to her wishes and so will be very pink and twirly..... All this makes me wonder if my next project should be a Physicist outfit for the doll - and if it was how would it look. I would argue that she could in fact wear a pink frilly summer dress! Perhaps I'll just add a computer!

Anyway I'm not sure why all of this is making the online news this week, but I'm glad it is. Any discussion of the issues in my opinion is a good thing. As an MIT study showed - things only seem to improve when we're paying attention.

And I am happy to report I have an adjustable chair set at just the right height for me. A standard desk though (just too high?) and a very brown and green mens club looking coffee room to sit in. Perhaps I'll ask the department to put up some pictures of pink galaxies soon!

Astronomers on Twitter (who happen to be women)

On Friday I was honoured to discover that Ken Hudson, who blogs at Share Astronomy included me in a list of women astronomers (who he follows on Twitter) that he thinks are excellent role models for girls (in his post "Girls Speak Out on Physics Education").


He was motivated to make the list after watching a video on teachers.tv in which girls at a school in London are interviewed (by young women working in Physics related fields) about what they think about physics: Physics Girls Speak Out (teachers.tv)

It's an excellent and interesting video, and I encourage anyone working with young women in science to watch it.  Ken's conclusion was that the girls needed more role models - hence his list of women astronomers.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins award

Jocelyn Bell Burnell at the LOFAR-UK station in Chilbolton in September 2010. Credit: James West, SEPnet.

I just posted over a the LOFAR-UK blog a story from NRAO about Jocelyn Bell Burnell winning the 2011 Grote Reber Award for lifetime contributions to radio astronomy.

Jocelyn Bell with the antennas she built and used to discover pulsars in the 1960s. Not sure of the credit for this image. 

 When I first learned the story of Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovering pulsars, as a young woman interested in astronomy she immediately became a scientific role model for me. Finally someone who looked a bit like me was in the history of astronomy. That was a really powerful moment.

 Now that I've met her on several occasions I'm happy to say I still think of her as a role model for professional science. Especially on how to act with humility and treat people with respect - and also on how to be excited about science of course. (That particularly came through I thought when I interviewed her about LOFAR in September - YouTube clip, embedded below.)

 I'm delighted every time I hear she's won another award. And I was really delighted when I learned she would be opening the LOFAR-UK station in Chilbolton. I loved the comparison we could make between the LBAs and the antennas she built in the 1960s. In some ways it looks like not much has changed in radio astronomy! Of course in other ways things are significantly different. Jocelyn Bell Burnell had to meticulously search for the signal in reams of traces made with a pen on paper. LOFAR used a massive supercomputer to combine the signal, and is only possible thanks the enormous advances in high speed internet connections and computing which have happened in the last 10 years or so.