Flora Wambaugh Patterson - USDA Mycologist

Flora Waumbaugh Patterson (1847 - 1928) was the first woman hired at the USDA as a mycologist (someone who studies fungi.) While I was reading about the Cherry Blossom Festival for a post on my women's history blog, I ran across Flora Patterson's name. When the first shipment of Cherry trees arrived from Japan, it was discovered that they were infested with insects and diseases and had to be destroyed to protect native species. Identifying new pathogens was part of Patterson's responsibilities at the USDA.

Patterson had studied fungi as a hobby when she was young, but she came to her career as a scientist relatively late. She graduated from Antioch college in 1865, but married at 22 and had two sons. When her husband was disabled and couldn't work, she had to become the breadwinner of the family.

After her husband died, Flora began to study biology at the state University of Iowa. She made plans to continue her studies at Yale, but was rejected because they didn't admit women. Instead she enrolled at Radcliffe and worked at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard. In 1895, she was hired at the USDA where she worked until her retirement at the age of 75. 

While working at the USDA, she increased their fungi collections approximately six fold and identified many new species. She was instrumental in identifying the chestnut blight that decimated the chestnut forests in the eastern United States.

Although I did find references to Flora as the first plant pathologist at the USDA, the American Phytopathological Society website names Effie Southworth as the first woman Plant Pathologist hired at the USDA (1887) and Flora as the first woman Mycologist(1896.)

Meave Leakey in a New Video

Here's a new video from National Geographic Live of Meave Leakey speaking about their work in the Turkana Basin. The video is about 17 minutes long of Leakey speaking before a group of people. She gives a very broad overview of their work in the area with slides of significant finds. She also briefly goes over the process of finding fossils.

She also mentions that she loves jigsaw puzzles, a very useful skill in her profession :-)

(R)evolution Denial

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal at http://www.smbc-comics.com/

Gertrude Belle Elion - Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine

“Acyclovir turned out to be different from any other compound Elion had ever seen. It is so similar to a compound needed by the herpes virus for reproduction that the virus is fooled. The virus enters normal cells and starts to make an enzyme that helps it reproduce. This enzyme activates Acyclovir and turns into something that is toxic to the virus. In short, Acyclovir makes the virus commit suicide.”
 
This is a quote from Sharon Bertsch McGrayne’s excellent book Nobel Prize Women in Science, which explains not only how one of the many compounds developed by Gertrude Belle Elion works, but also exemplifies her approach to research. She wanted to understand how the compounds were metabolized in the body and how they fought disease. Together with Dr. George Hitchings and a team of researchers at Burroughs Wellcome, she developed drugs that would change the lives of many people for the better, reducing suffering and extending lives.

Gertrude Belle Elion was born in New York City on January 23, 1918 to a Jewish immigrant family. Her father, Robert Elion, immigrated to the US from Lithuania when he was 12 and worked hard to graduate from New York University School of Dentistry in 1914. He was very successful, opening several dental offices, and investing in stocks and real estate. Her mother, Bertha Cohen, immigrated alone at the age of 14 to come live with older sisters who were already established. Bertha was 19 when she and Robert married, and although she never pursued higher education, she was a voracious reader who frequently read the books her children brought home from school. She came from an intellectual Russian Jewish family that valued education and knew how important it would be to her children’s futures.

When Gertrude, Trudy to the family, was six years old her brother Herbert was born. Shortly afterward, the family moved to the Bronx where they had a happy childhood. Before the move another person joined the family, her grandfather from Russia. His failing eyesight prevented him from continuing his profession as watchmaker, so after Herbert was born, he spent a great deal of time with Trudy forming a close bond. He was a Biblical scholar and spoke several languages; together they spoke Yiddish, and shared time in the park, the Bronx zoo, and music.

Trudy’s father was also a music lover, specifically the opera. He and Trudy often went to the Metropolitan Opera, a habit that Trudy would maintain for the rest of her life, flying to New York on weekends from North Carolina. Robert influenced her in another way. He was always planning imaginary trips using maps, train and bus schedules. After Trudy became successful, she began to travel, visiting many places in the world before her death in 1999.

Trudy was a successful student in high school, and when she graduated she entered Hunter College in 1933. She was a sponge for knowledge and enjoyed learning just about anything, but her decision to study science was made when she was 15 and watched her grandfather die painfully from stomach cancer. Trudy decided that no one should have to suffer as her grandfather had, so she wanted, if possible, to do something about it. Inspired as a girl by the life of Marie Curie and the book The Microbe Hunters by Paul DeKruif, she knew that she needed to study biology or chemistry, so she chose chemistry and graduated summa cum laude in 1937.

Robert Elion had lost most of his wealth in the crash of 1929, and although he still had his dental practice and loyal customers, there wasn’t much money for college. Hunter College, the women’s section of City College of New York, was free for those who could beat the fierce competition, but graduate school was a different story. Hunter was also an all-girl’s school, and Trudy had never really faced discrimination because of her gender. She placed many applications for fellowships and assistantships, but nothing came through. It was the Depression and there weren’t many jobs available, but there were none for women in fields that were dominated by men. In one eye-opening interview, she was told that she was qualified, but that they had never had a woman in the lab and they thought she would be a distraction!

Trudy’s mother had always encouraged her to have a career of some type, so she finally enrolled in secretarial school, but when she got the opportunity to teach biochemistry at the New York Hospital School of Nursing, she dropped out and took the job, even though it only lasted for 3 months. Finally, she met a chemist at a party and asked him if she could work in his lab as an assistant. He agreed, but couldn’t pay her anything to start. She was willing because it allowed her to continue learning and after a year and a half, she was making $20 a week and had saved enough living at home for one year of graduate school.

In the fall of 1939, Trudy entered New York University with money for one year’s tuition. She worked part-time as a receptionist and took education classes that allowed her to substitute teach in the public schools. In 1941, Trudy completed her Master’s Degree in Chemistry and began the task of looking for the perfect job. Her focus was always to look for jobs that would allow her to learn and get closer to her goal of working in medical research.

When WWII began, the demand for women increased in laboratories across the country. Trudy got a job in a laboratory doing quality control work for the A&P grocery chain. Always concerned with learning new things, when she felt she had learned as much as she could, she applied to an employment agency for research jobs. For about six months, she worked for a Johnson & Johnson lab until it was disbanded. Having gained the experience she needed, she then had a number of jobs to choose from, but was most intrigued by a job as an assistant to George Hitchings working for Burroughs Wellcome.

She found out about the job when her father asked her what she knew about the company after they sent some sample painkillers to his dental office. She decided to call and ask if they had a research lab and a job opening. She and Hitchings were a good match. He explained that he didn’t like the traditional trial and error method of drug research. He was also content to let her learn at her own pace and move from one area to another to satisfy her thirst for knowledge. While she had moved on from other jobs because she felt she had learned all she could, she never moved on from Burroughs Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline.) There was always something new to learn and she had the freedom to do it there. But more importantly, they began to make a difference in people’s lives.

Although Trudy started as Dr. Hitchings assistant, within two years she was publishing her own papers under his guidance and by the mid 1960s she had developed a reputation apart from Hitchings. This was in spite of not having a Ph.D. For two years, she worked on a Ph.D. at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute until the dean told her that she would have to quit her job and work full time on her degree. She wasn’t willing to quit her job, so she quit school. It was an agonizing choice to make, but she knew that she had the potential to make a difference where she was, so she stayed.

Her faith in the job paid off. In 1950, Elion synthesized two cancer treatments for leukemia. Both of these drugs are still used today and when combined with other drugs result in close to an 80% cure rate. One of these drugs, referred to as 6-MP, was found to suppress the immune system in rabbits. Reading about the rabbits, a British surgeon tried 6-MP in dogs with kidney transplants and found that it extended their lives. He contacted Elion and asked if they had similar compounds that he could try which might be more effective. One of these, later marketed as Imuran, proved to be very effective in suppressing the immune system and since 1962 has been given to most of the kidney transplant patients in the US.

But what Elion called her “final jewel” was Acyclovir. Prior to its unveiling in 1978, there hadn’t been much research done on viruses. It was assumed that any compound toxic enough to kill a virus would also be extremely toxic to normal cells. Because Acyclovir was so selective to the herpes virus, it was very nontoxic to normal cells. Not only was it a break through in treating herpes, but it was a break through in virus research, opening the doors to many new possibilities including treatments for AIDS.

The intervening years had brought life changes for Trudy as well. In 1941, she had been planning to get married to a brilliant young statistician named Leonard. He fell ill with a strep infection, bacterial endocarditis, and died, just a few years before penicillin became available. Her mother also died of cervical cancer in 1956. Both of these losses served to intensify Trudy’s drive to continue in her research.

In 1970, the company moved its research facility to the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. For a life long NYC resident this was quite a change. She adjusted well however, and it was here that she received the call in 1988 from a reporter telling her she had received the Nobel Prize together with Dr. Hitchings, and Sir James W. Black. She had already retired in 1983, but had remained in a consulting position. Winning the prize gave her a visibility that she had not had along with opportunities to contribute in many other ways.

In spite of the accolades that eventually came her way, what always meant the most to Trudy were the letters and handshakes she got from people who wanted to tell her how her discoveries had changed their lives. Although she never met anyone that could take Leonard’s place and never married, she loved her work, opera, traveling, and had loving relationships with her brother and his family. Gertrude Belle Elion lived a full and rewarding life and died in her sleep at her home in North Carolina on February 21, 1999, with a folder full of letters from people whose lives she had touched and whose lives she had helped save.

Resources
Nobel Prize Women in Science by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Academy of Achievement – A Museum of Living History
First Woman elected to the national inventor’s hall of fame 1991 (New York Times)

Gerty Radnitz Cori - Nobel Prize Winning Biochemist

 In the late 19th century after universities began admitting women, there were still challenges to overcome. Most secondary schools for girls focused on social graces and being a good conversationalist but didn't prepare them for entrance to the university. When Gerty Radnitz at 16 decided that she wanted to go to medical school, she was completely unprepared. She overcame this disadvantage to become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine and the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize.


Gerty Theresa Radnitz was born August 15, 1896, in Prague which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her family was Jewish and moderately well off. Her father, Otto Radnitz, was a chemist who invented a method for refining sugar and managed several beet sugar refineries. The oldest of three girls, Gerty was tutored at home until the age of ten when she went to finishing school. Recognizing her talent, her uncle who was a physician encouraged her to go to medical school. With the help of family and tutors, over the next two years she accumulated the equivalent of 5 - 6 years study in Latin, mathematics, physics, and chemistry in preparation to take her entrance exams. She passed and at 18 enrolled at the German branch of the Charles Ferdinand University at Prague.

During her first year of university, Gerty discovered two things that changed her life: biochemistry and Carl Cori. Carl was the son of Carl Cori, a physician, and Martha Lippich. His father went on to get a doctorate in zoology and do research at the Marine Biological Station in Trieste where he was the director. He often took the younger Carl with him on field expeditions to do research and gather specimens. Trieste, in what is now northern Italy, was a diverse area where Carl was exposed to people of different backgrounds and developed what he called “immunity to racial propaganda.” The fact that Gerty was Jewish and he was Catholic didn’t bother him at all, but it would play a role later in their lives.

For two years they studied together and enjoyed taking trips for hiking or skiing, until in 1916, Carl was drafted into the Austrian army. In 1918, assigned to a field hospital for infectious disease, he saw first hand the effect of disease on the troops, as well as the impact of the Influenza pandemic sweeping the world. The Cori family had a history of scholarship, with a number of professors on both sides of the family. This combined with his sense of helplessness in the face of disease contributed to his desire to do research. Once the war was over, Carl and Gerty were reunited and received their medical degrees in 1920. They also published their first joint paper, beginning a collaboration that would last for their entire careers.

After receiving their degrees, they traveled to Vienna where they were married, and Carl and Gerty were both able to obtain positions doing post-doctoral research. The post war years were difficult. Research was a low priority and supplies were hard to obtain. Carl was one of the few able to do research, because his father sent him a bag of frogs. Gerty worked in pediatrics doing research on thyroid and blood disorders. The conditions were poor, however. She worked only for meals which were not very nutritious, causing her to develop a vitamin A deficiency. The fact that Gerty was a woman and Jewish, even though she had converted to Catholicism when she married made finding a position very difficult. Carl became even more uneasy about the situation in Europe when he was required to prove his Aryan ancestry for a position at Graz. They began considering moving to the United States.

After working in different cities, Carl in Graz and Gerty in Vienna, any position would only be acceptable to Carl if he could obtain a position for Gerty as well. Carl and Gerty Cori were ideally suited as research partners. William Daughaday of Washington University School of Medicine said "Carl was the visionary. Gerty was the lab genius." In personality, they were the reverse of Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie. Carl was somewhat shy, relaxed, and a slower more contemplative thinker. Gerty was outgoing, vivacious, and a brilliant quick thinker. She was also more ambitious than Carl and more demanding in the lab.

Finally, in 1922, Carl obtained a position at the Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease (later renamed the Roswell Park Memorial Institute), in Buffalo, New York. Gerty was given a position as an assistant pathologist. Although they worked in different labs, they continued the practice of publishing papers together, even though Gerty was told more than once to stay out of Carl’s lab. Eventually, the benefit of allowing them to work together was acknowledged and the breach in protocol was overlooked. During their time in Buffalo from 1922 to 1931, Carl and Gerty established their reputations and became US citizens.

Gerty and Carl were primarily interested in studying insulin and the production of energy in the body. If you remember your high school biology, the Cori cycle explains how the body breaks down glycogen into glucose for use in muscles and converts lactic acid back into glycogen for storage in the liver. The discovery and explanation of this process in 1929 would be the basis for their Nobel Prize in 1947. This research, however, wasn’t a good fit for the work being done at the Institute, which was primarily focused on cancer research, so together the Cori’s began looking for other positions.

From left to right Dr. Carl F. Cori, Dr. Joseph Erlanger, Dr. Gerty T. Cori, and Chancellor Arthur H. Compton.
Copyright © 1947 Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine

In spite of the fact that Gerty had published frequently, individually in addition to jointly with Carl, he began to receive job offers, not Gerty. Most of these offers, including those from Cornell and the University of Toronto, did not include a possibility for positions for her. At the University of Rochester, Carl was offered a position under the condition that he stop collaborating with his wife. Gerty was even taken aside and told that she was hindering his career because it was “un-American” for a husband and wife to work together. In fact it was very common for women to work in conjunction with their husbands during this time, although it was usually as low or unpaid “assistants” meaning that the wife rarely received recognition for her contribution. This was unacceptable to both Carl and Gerty.

Finally in 1931, they received job offers from the Washington University medical school in St. Louis. Even though Carl became the chairman of the pharmacology department, Gerty was only offered a position as a research associate at one-fifth the pay. Still they were able to collaborate and would remain at Washington University for the remainder of their careers doing groundbreaking research in glycogen utilization and with enzymes. During World War II, the demand for women scientists increased due to the reduced work force and Gerty finally became a full professor.

Gerty and Carl were supportive of other scientists as well, hiring women and Jews when other universities and even other departments at Washington refused to do so. Eventually, the work done in their lab resulted in eight Nobel Prizes, including a joint prize for Carl and Gerty in Physiology and Medicine. Over time, Carl became more involved in writing, directing research of students, and administration, and running the lab became exclusively Gerty’s domain. As with many passionate people, she was not always liked or easy to work for. She demanded precision. The work and the results demanded it.

 Both of the Coris impressed others with their depth of knowledge about a wide range of topics. For most of her time at Washington, Gerty had 5 – 7 books delivered weekly to her from a local lending library. Every Friday she would prepare her list for the next week. She loved history and biography, while Carl was a poet and read archeology and art. She was the one who constantly read journal articles and kept people in the lab up-to-date on new findings in biology and related fields.

The Coris worked hard, but also tried to leave work at the lab. They entertained, kept a garden, and continued enjoying the outdoors. It was on a mountain climbing trip in 1947 that Gerty first fell ill and they discovered she had a disease that would eventually take her life. Her bone marrow was no longer producing red blood cells. She worked almost to the end. Her only concessions to the disease were taking time out for the blood transfusions that were necessary, and setting up a cot in her office where she would lie down to do her reading. Gerty Cori died at her home on October 26, 1957.

Resources
Nobel Prize Women in Science by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
American Chemical Society National Historic Chemical Landmark

Irène Curie - Like Mother Like Daughter

After Marie Curie won Nobel Prizes in 1903 and 1911, no other women won in science until 1935 when her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

In 1925, Irène Curie walked into an auditorium of 1000 people to defend her dissertation. This was big news because she was the daughter of two time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie. The pressure could have been enormous, but as usual Irène was calm, confident, and dressed unfashionably! From an early age, Irène had dealt with her parent’s fame both positive, such as when at the age of six she calmly told the reporter who came to the house that her Nobel Prize winning parents were at the laboratory, and negative when a classmate handed her a newspaper article about her mother’s affair with Paul Langevin. She had come to see fame as something external and of no real importance. She didn’t pursue her research for fame, but for the sheer joy of the science itself.

At first glance, Irène was a quiet, shy child, some might even say somber, but as time would show, she just had little energy or attention for things that in her mind didn’t matter or that bored her. Born in September of 1897, her parents Pierre and Marie Curie were in the midst of their most intense period of research. In spite of this, she was a wanted and welcome addition to the family. Limited time and resources, however, did mean that the young parents needed help, and this came in the form of Pierre’s father, Eugene Curie. Pierre’s mother died shortly after Irène was born, so Eugene moved into the house to take care of her.
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Women Role Models in STEM

Only 20% of bachelor degree in STEM are held by women. Why aren't women entering the science fields? Some say it's because there aren't enough role models for girls. The people at OnlineUniversities.com don't believe that. They have posted a list of 25 fabulous women involved in STEM fields.

The list includes astronauts, professors, a fighter pilot, a college president, physicists, electronic game creators, a co-founder of Flickr, a co-founder of iRobot, astronomers, etc. Some of the women were familiar to me, but most were not I'm sad to say. Check out the list and see who you know. But more importantly, pass it on to girls and young women you know who might be interested in the sciences. You never know who you might inspire.

25 Female STEM Superheroes of Today

Lise Meitner - Denied the Nobel Prize

In December of 1938, Lise Meitner received a letter from colleagues in Germany explaining their latest experimental results and questioning what these results could mean. For almost 30 years Lise had worked with Otto Hahn, and later Fritz Strassman, performing experiments related to radioactivity. Although she had begun as Hahn’s assistant without pay, their relationship had evolved to the point where she was the recognized expert in matters related to physics; Hahn was a chemist.

Lise’s nephew Otto Frisch was visiting for the holidays and together they discussed the letter she received. Researchers working on radioactivity had known for some time that one element could change into another, such as radium to polonium in Marie Curie’s experiments. But recently several researchers, when bombarding uranium with neutrons, had been finding elements with smaller atomic weights, almost half the atomic weight of uranium. At the time no one believed that the nucleus of an atom could be split. Hahn and Strassman’s research repeated this result. Meitner realized that this was exactly what was happening and that the power that would result from a chain reaction would be immense. Together she and Frisch worked out the mathematics and she conveyed the information to Neils Bohr who was on his way to the United States for a conference. And the rest as they say is history.

I knew this basic scenario when I began to read about Lise Meitner, but as usual there is more to the story. Continue reading

Americans and Evolution

Rejecting evolution expresses more than an inability to think critically; it relies on a fundamentally paranoid worldview. 

This is the subtitle of an article I read on Alternet, although it was first published on The Nation. The article,  What Is Wrong With Our Education System? Almost Half the Population Doesn't Accept Evolution by Katha Pollitt, has some disturbing statistics.

• 46 percent of Americans with sixteen long years of education under their belt believe the story of Adam and Eve is literally true. 
• 25 percent of Americans with graduate degrees believe dinosaurs and humans romped together before Noah’s flood. (emphasis mine)

I once had a Facebook friend tell me that climate change was just a political conspiracy to bring down American business. I responded that if it was just something being discussed or promoted by Americans, I might consider the possibility, but it was REALLY hard to buy a worldwide conspiracy. The same thing applies to evolution.
  

"Almost every scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it involved every field from archaeology, paleontology, geology and genetics to biology, chemistry and physics. And yet this massive concatenation of lies and delusion is so full of obvious holes that a pastor with a Bible-college degree or a homeschooling parent with no degree at all can see right through it."

Even though we may win battles in court, that doesn't necessarily change what happens on a local level. As she points out in the article, some teachers still skirt the issue of evolution (60 percent) at best while others may teach Creationism out right (13 percent.) Parents who are aware of this and complain face a hard fight often being vilified in the process. What happened in the Dover, PA community in 2004 is good evidence of this.


It's nice to think that as a country we will consistently make progress over time, but the last 30 years or so since I left school sure seem to be taking us backward. The old aphorism "two steps forward, one step back" sure seems to be turning into one step forward, followed by many steps back.


Check out the article, it's worth the read although disturbing.

Emmy Noether - Original in More Ways Than One

“Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.”  ~ Albert Einstein

If you ask anyone to name a famous woman mathematician, the names that come to mind will usually be Hypatia, Ada Lovelace, Emilie du Chatelet, or Maria Agnesi, if they can name any at all. I must admit that these women were the ones who attracted my attention as well when I started reading the history of mathematics. Each of these has something that attracts us apart from mathematics: Hypatia’s brutal death, Ada’s famous father, Emilie’s famous lover, or Maria’s piety. Yet with each of these women there are debates about how much original work they actually did and how much was primarily building on the work of others. There is no doubt that they were all brilliant and deserve to be remembered, but there is one who undoubtedly did work that was so original that it changed the way we do mathematics and is virtually unknown outside of specialist circles: Emmy Noether.

Emmy Noether made groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics and abstract algebra. She developed several formulations to support Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, in fact he wrote to David Hilbert, “You know that Frl. Noether is continually advising me in my projects and that it is really through her that I have become competent in the subject.” The principle behind Noether’s Theorem is foundational to quantum physics proving that the laws of physics are independent of time and space. And yes you can even blame her for “New Math,” her approach, just very, very, watered down. In spite of all of this, she worked almost her entire life without pay because she was a woman.
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The Shallows by Nicholas G. Carr - A Book Review

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas G. Carr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It includes a little for everyone who enjoys non-fiction. Carr goes into the history of different media and how they changed society, such as the written word, printing press, TV, etc. This sets the stage for how the internet is affecting us.

There is good news and not so good news. It seems that use of the internet is very distracting (as if we needed to be told that.) But it's not just distracting us from the rest of our lives, but distracting us while we are surfing. There are so many links, ads, banners, etc. that we are getting better at multitasking and filtering out what is important. But imagine this - You're sitting in a comfortable chair with a good cup of coffee or tea. It's raining softly, maybe a little chilly, and you're sitting there with a soft afghan and one of your favorite books. You quickly get absorbed into the book. Well apparently frequent surfing on the web can decrease our ability to think deeply about what we are reading.

Carr goes into the science of how our brains work, how memory works, and what it takes to hold knowledge in our working memory. He cites many different studies that show our ability to comprehend information that we read decreases in proportion to the number of links and distractions in our material. But this inability to concentrate carries over to reading off of the internet.

The internet is here to stay and we have to make adjustments. When reading material became easily accessible to the general public, the need to memorize knowledge was lessened. Eventually, educators began requiring less memorization which actually decreased our ability to memorize. Now with information at the touch of our fingertips, we are keeping even less information in our working memories. This is no problem for things that are not required for critical thinking, such as logarithms or functions that a calculator could perform for you. But for example, when evaluating current political events in light of historical events, you need to remember the things you've learned.

It's obviously more complicated that this, so I would recommend reading the book for yourself. It's readable and full of interesting information both historical and scientific, which of course made it perfect for me.

View all my reviews

Women in Science and Mathematics

I have an unfortunate habit of becoming distracted by the latest thing that catches my interest. Unfortunately, I began this blog during one of those times and I have failed to keep up with it. One reason, is that the arguments around evolution, climate change, and religion become very tiring. This is a reason for another post, another time, but suffice it to say that as a person who believes in God I have no problem reconciling that belief with science. In fact, the arguments against science seem irrational enough for me to have trouble taking them seriously. So, from time to time it gets my ire up, but lately it's just tiring.

The second reason that this blog has languished is that around the same time I began a blog about women in history - Saints, Sisters, and Sluts. This combined several of my interests - math, science, and history. I have written about women mathematicians and scientists, but also about religious figures in history. Lately, a friend who has spent years researching the history of Great Britain has begun writing about queens of England. This has attracted more attention than I would ever have gotten writing about women in mathematics and science - go figure! But needless to say my attention has been devoted to that blog lately.

However, for the few who may stumble upon this blog and are also interested in women's history in math and science, I invite you to join us on the other blog. Here is a list of the women I've written about so far with links to those posts. You might also find other interesting things on the blog.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi - 18th Century Mathematician

Sonya Kovalevsky - A Marriage of Convenience

 Madame Curie (This is the link to the first of two posts about Maria Curie.)

 Emilie du Chatelet - "femme savant" and paramour

Laura Bassi - Italian Physicist (1711 - 1778)

Mary Fairfax Somerville - Mathematics by Candlelight

Check it out, especially if you also like Queens of England!

Taking Action on Climate Change - A Matter of Justice

The seventeenth UN Convention on Climate Change, COP-17 is currently taking place in Durban, South Africa. It began November 28 and will run until December 9. Once again developed nations that are doing the most to accelerate global warming have a chance to commit to making a difference. "Climate Change is a matter of Justice." declared Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu of the General Council of Elders.  The nations that are most affected by climate change are the ones least able to put a stop to it. One example is the Republic of the Maldives, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean. Laura Flanders of The Nation describes a conversation she had with Dr. MohammedWaheed Hassan, the vice president of Maldives. They have seen the sea level rise 8 inches causing erosion, most of their fresh water to become brackish, and the dying of their coastal reefs. As a people they have lived on these islands for 3000 years and are looking at the possible destruction of their nation.

And they’re not alone. The small Pacific island nation of Kiribati is facing the same problems. Parts of their country are already underwater and the contamination of fresh water supplies is affecting their ability to grow crops. The president, Anote Tong, is encouraging his people in what is called merit-based relocation. They have worked out deals with Australia and New Zealand that allow young people who successfully complete training in professions that are in-demand to stay in their countries. This will hopefully give their families preferential status for migration. This is preferable to emergency evacuation on down the road, but how sad that an entire nation might have to leave their ancestral homes. And there are others. Twenty-two Pacific island nations are home to approximately 7 million people. Where will they go? Most nations in the world are not prepared to accept large numbers of environmental refugees, but that may be exactly what we are looking at within the next generation. 

Many people are still skeptical about our ability to affect global warming, even though the vast majority of scientific organizations have issued statements that support not only global warming, but that human activity is a large contributing factor. The few that disagree are at best non-committal on the involvement of human activity. Richard Muller, once a beloved scientist of the skeptics, has completed his own study and come to the same conclusions as other studies, that the earth is warming at an increasing rate.

In the mean time, there appears to be an attempt by developed countries to allow access to the Green Climate Fund by multinational companies, bypassing the governments of the developing nations it was created to help. This would allow Wall Street companies, for example, to directly access those funds. The problem is that many of the initiatives required may not be financially lucrative, but that doesn’t mean they are not still necessary. Given the recent record of some Wall Street firms with regard to their concern for people in general, I have a hard time believing that they would have the best interest of these small “insignificant” island nations at heart.

I am a skeptic, but not a skeptic about global warming, a skeptic about the ability of people who are not directly affected by global warming to care. It’s sad to say that, but there it is. I do hope I am proven wrong. During the conference in Durban, the US and other large developed nations have the chance to really make a difference. I’m hoping that this year we will finally take a stand in favor of the other people in the world who need us, not worrying about the inconvenience it might be to us, or whether or not we can profit while helping, just whether or not we can help.

Sitting can Kill You

 When I worked as a technical instructor, I had weeks when I stood all day every day teaching, and other weeks when I would sit at my computer doing course development or other forms of technical writing.  I frequently had trouble with my back during those years. It helped when I quit wearing heels to teach, go figure! But sitting all day was just as problematic. I got in the habit of getting up frequently, which did help, but it is a habit that I haven't kept up. For some reason at home I don't seem to have the same back problems when I sit for long periods. It may be because I do less writing and more reading on the computer, which allows me greater mobility. I can read in a lot of positions that I can't type in! But now it seems that I have other reasons to get up frequently. 

In the article, Prolonged Sitting Linked to Cancer , Scientific American reports on a study which connects the length of time we sit with our chances of getting cancer. The longer we sit, the more at risk we are for cancer. The study suggests that breast and colon cancer are those most closely related to sitting for prolonged periods, but it does affect other types as well. This seems to be the case regardless of how active we are during the rest of the day. The good news is that 1 – 2 minutes each hour can make a difference. 

If you’re like me, constantly sipping on water while at my computer gives me a frequent reminder that I need to get up!  I've also started using the bathroom upstairs, even though I basically live downstairs. Those few extra stairs certainly don't hurt and it keeps me away from my computer for a longer period of time. But, the big change for me is that I'm trying to spend less time on my computer. Life on the computer can certainly be addictive and in the last couple of years since I've been at home, I've spent far too much time on it. A lot of housework, yard work, and good books have been neglected. (Of course reading, since I usually sit while I do it, would have the same sitting issues.) So here's to an early new year's resolution, sitting less. Maybe I'll be a little healthier, and who knows, maybe my house will be cleaner too!

Don’t Sit Tight, an article in “Health News Daily” gives suggestions that can help you be kind to your body when sitting at a computer.

A Saber-toothed Squirrel?

I've always been fascinated by paleontology, but things change so quickly in science that it doesn't take long to get behind. When I first taught biology at South Providence (I think it was 2003) I quickly found out that MANY things were different from when I first studied it in college. (I just told my students that I went to college during the last Ice Age. I think some may have believed me!) I only taught biology for a couple years and went back to teaching math, so I've been trying to catch up a little bit lately on changes. Here are a few interesting articles I found.
 

A Saber-toothed squirrel?
A fossil found in Argentina of a small mammal will hopefully help scientists to determine if mammals evolved differently in the Americas than they did in other parts of the world. The fossil dates to approximately 100 million years ago from the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, and falls into a 60 million year gap in the fossil record of South America. It is in the subclass of mammals Theria, which means it was live-bearing, as opposed to an egg-laying mammal such as the platypus. You can find an abstract of the article in Nature below. Clicking on the title above will take you to the Science News article that has an artist's rendering of what the little creature might look like. Not nearly as cute as the gray squirrels currently playing on the pecan tree in my backyard.
Nature article


Homo Sapiens may have moved faster than we think.
Two new studies have found that modern humans may have arrived in Europe earlier than previously thought, perhaps as early as 45,000 years ago. This would mean they coexisted with Neanderthals for a longer period of time. Neanderthals died out around 30,000 years ago. Both studies are based on the reexamination of previously found evidence: two teeth found in a cave in England in 1927, and three teeth in a partial jaw bone found in Italy in 1964. But other scientists are skeptical or outright disagree. To read the entire story click on the heading above. If you're way behind on human evolution, as I was, there are a series of PBS videos that explain the current thinking on the subject. They are well done and fascinating. You can find the first video, Becoming Human Part 1, here. There are three videos.

Giant Sauropods may have migrated
Sauropods were immense. The most familiar example is the Apatosaurus (what we used to call the Brontosaurus.) Henry Fricke believes that one reason they became so large is because they migrated to richer feeding grounds during certain times of years. His analysis was based chemical variations in the teeth. Oxygen in the water animals drink finds it's way into the blood stream and eventually into tooth enamel. This can be compared to samples of sediment found near the teeth. If they differ there is evidence that the animal has migrated to that area. Or so the theory goes. There is always more to investigate. That's one thing I like about science, there are always new questions.