How do seventh graders see scientists?

I recently came across this website, which posts students drawings of scientists before and after visiting Fermilab.  While at Fermilab, the students had the opportunity to meet with scientists in small groups.  They deliberately chose a white male, female, and African American scientist for the students to meet with.  The before and after drawings and descriptions of scientists are extremely interesting and illuminating.

Some of my favorite posts are from Amanda, Ashley, Beth, James, and Pat.  A common theme expressed in the before and after descriptions are that scientists are normal people, not mythical beings – some of the students seemed surprised that scientists had outside interests like sports and music. A LOT of the students drew old, white men with crazy hair in lab coats in the “before” illustration.  In the after illustrations, the scientists are of all ages and wearing normal clothes (Amanda notes, “I saw people walking around in sweatshirts and jeans. Who knows? Maybe I can be a scientist.”) It’s also really encouraging how many people drew women and people of color after visiting Fermilab.  It seems like this exercise was a great way to reinforce that there are scientists of all kinds, and that anyone can be a scientist if they want to be!

Drawing of scientist before and after, by Ashley. Source: http://ed.fnal.gov/projects/scientists/ashley.html

For some humor, check out Katie (“Their jobs sound very interesting because they can do whatever they want and still get paid for it” – if only!),  and Beth (“The scientist has big square shaped glasses and a big geeky nose.”)

Maria Goeppert-Mayer (Happy Ada Lovelace Day!)

Today is Ada Lovelace Day – a day dedicated to discussing influential women of science!  I decided to talk about Maria Goeppert-Mayer, one of two women to win the Nobel Prize in physics (the other was Marie Curie).  You can read more about Ada Lovelace in this past blog post.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer

Maria Mayer was born in 1906, in what was then Germany.  In 1910, the family moved to Göttingen, where her father had a job as a Professor of Pediatrics.  Her father was in the 7th generation of university scholars in his family, and so it was expected that Maria would get an education.  Maria went to public and private schools, taking the entrance exam for the University at Göttingen in 1924.  She originally intended to be a math major, but switched to physics after taking a physics seminar with Max Born.  Other students of Born’s included Fermi, Oppenheimer, and Dirac.  Maria got her PhD in physics in 1930.  For her dissertation, she she calculated the “probability that an electron orbiting an atom’s nucleus would emit two photons of light as it jumped to an orbit closer to the nucleus.” (http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/mayer.html)  Her calculation was experimentally confirmed in the 1960s.

She married Joseph Mayer, a physical chemist, in 1930, and moved with him to Baltimore, where he had a position at Johns Hopkins University.  Because of anti-nepotism laws, Maria couldn’t have a paid position at the university and instead became a “volunteer associate”.  Nevertheless, until the Mayers left Johns Hopkins in 1938, Maria produced 10 papers, a textbook, and had her daughter.

After her husband lost his job at Johns Hopkins, the Mayers went to Columbia University.  She still could not hold a paid position at Columbia, but she still worked in physics, becoming a member of Enrico Fermi’s lab.  When WWII started, she received a part time, paid teaching position at Sarah Lawrence College.  She also started working on a secret project regarding fuel for nuclear fission weapons at Columbia.  She visited the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico several times.

When the war ended, Maria went with her husband to the University of Chicago, where she was a professor (although the work was voluntary, and she was not paid).  Several months later, she got a paid position as a senior research associate at Argonne National Laboratory.  There, she developed the theory that won her the Nobel Prize – that if electrons orbited the nucleus in shells, the number of electrons in the stable atoms represented “full” electron shells.  These full shells were more stable than non-filled shells.

In 1956, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.  In 1959, UC San Diego offered paid positions to both Maria and her husband. They accepted the positions and moved to California.  In 1963, she won the Nobel Prize for her shell model of the nucleus.  She shared the prize with another scientist who developed the shell model around the same time as she did.  She became the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics, and the first to do so for theoretical work.  No Physics Nobel Prizes have been awarded to women since Maria Goeppert-Mayer.  Maria Goeppert-Mayer died in 1972.

Source: 1, 2

Discussing under-representation of women in physics leads to stronger “physics identity” for girls

This article from Scientific American examines the factors that cause students to choose physics, and relates it to the under-representation of women in science.

First, the author discusses what influences a student’s decision to pursue physics?  One factor is an early interest in science.  More so than mathematics achievement, this is a good predictor of whether a student will major in science as an undergraduate.  Also extremely important is a student’s confidence in his or her abilities.  Both male and female students who are more confident in their ability to succeed or complete a task are more likely to get good grades in physics.  Parents, teachers, and fellow students also have the ability to influence a student’s decision.  In one study, it was found that the “more mothers believed in their children’s science and math abilities in grade 7, the more likely those students were to pursue careers in science at age 24.”  The fact that outsiders can have such a strong influence on the careers that students choose to pursue can be problematic when girls encounter people who think that math/science are for boys.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics surveyed “3,800 American undergraduate students about their physics interests, confidence and career plans, along with their experiences in high school physics classes.”  The researchers then measured each student’s “physics identity”, which reflects how much they see themselves as the right type of person for physics.  A person with a strong physics identity would have confidence in their ability to complete physics problems, an interest in physics, would participate in physics-related activities, and have other people recognize them as the right type of person for physics. The researchers asked students questions about their high school physics experience; how they were taught, the types of resources they had, etc.  They also asked students if teachers addressed subjects outside of the typical physics curriculum, such as ethical issues, benefits of a career in science, and the under-representation of women.

They found several factors that were related to a strong physics identity.  For men and women, discussing cutting-edge physics, “frequent labs addressing students’ beliefs about the world, opportunities for peer teaching, and encouraging student questions” all led to stronger physics identities.  They found that one classroom experience led to a stronger physics identity for women only – the discussion of the under-representation of women in physics.  Women who were in classes where they discussed the fact that there were fewer women in physics had significantly stronger physics identities.  The discussions had no impact on men.

Acknowledging the under-representation of women in physics to high school students can perhaps help to decrease the gender gap.  Social factors still appear to play a large role in whether students decide to pursue science or not, and having a good teacher is extremely important in encouraging students to go into the sciences.

Book Review: The Madame Curie Complex

I recently read The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science by Julie Des Jardins.  The book discusses prominent female scientists, from the Nobel Prize-winning Marie Curie to Rosalind Franklin – the brilliant scientist largely passed over for her work uncovering the structure of DNA, to Lillian Gilbreth – engineer, psychologist, and mother of twelve (two of her children went on to write Cheaper By the Dozen).

The Madame Curie Complex introduces the reader to female scientists, all of who have made important contributions, and some that have gone unnoticed and unappreciated.  The book is divided into three sections: “Assistants, Housekeepers, and Interchangeable Parts: Women Scientists and Professionalization, 1880-1940″, “The Cult of Masculinity in the Age of Heroic Science, 1941-1962″, and “American Women and Science in Transition, 1962-”.

The first section talks about women such as Marie Curie, Lillian Gilbreth, and Annie Jump Cannon.  These woman were pioneers in their fields – women doing science when there were essentially no other women in the field.  One of the chapters in this section talks about the women of the Harvard Observatory, from 1880-1940.  The director of the observatory, Edward Pickering, hired many women to record measurements and help with classifications.  However, these women were not intended to be astronomers – they were considered “computers” only.  But many of these women, such as Annie Cannon, Williamina Fleming, and Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin, discovered great things.

The second section discusses scientists such as the Nobel Prize-winning Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Rosalind Franklin, and the women involved in the Manhattan Project.  In this age of “heroic science”, when the atomic bomb was being developed and science had captured the public interest in a great way, women began to enter the sciences in larger numbers as many men were recruited for science relating to WWII efforts.  This section was extremely interesting; it contrasts the careers of Goeppert-Mayer and Franklin, one of whom is one of two women to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, and the other who deserved a Nobel Prize.  The section on the Manhattan Project discusses both female scientists who were involved, and the lives of women who accompanied their husbands there.

The third section discusses more modern women of science, like Rosalyn Yalow, Barbara McClintock, and “The Lady Trimates”.  The Lady Trimates are Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas, all of whom conducted primate research in the field and challenged the cold and removed way science was generally conducted at the time.  It discusses the increasing number of women in science thanks to the second-wave feminist movement and the passage of Title IX.

This book offers an enlightening look at the struggles and accomplishments of the some of the great women scientists of our time.  These women faced incredible odds; many had great trouble getting faculty positions at universities, and if they did, they were overworked and underpaid.  It was often extremely difficult for them to find the resources to do their research.  Marie Curie was forced to go on a tour of the United States to raise money to buy radium for her lab (ironic considering that she discovered radium).  Women scientists sometimes had to portray themselves as “maternal scientists”, doing science for the good of humanity rather than for the sake of science, in order to be accepted.  But despite obstacles such as these, these women were so dedicated to science that they found whatever way they could to contribute.  I highly recommend it for anyone interested in science or women’s history, and for anyone involved in science.  All scientists, whether they be male or female, should have a knowledge of the contributions that women have made to science and of the hardships that they overcame.  Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium, and is one of only four people to ever receive two Nobel Prizes.  Rosalind Franklin made incredible contributions to uncovering the structure of DNA.  Annie Jump Cannon developed the OBAFGKM stellar classification system.  Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was the first person to show that the sun was made of mainly hydrogen.  Jane Goodall’s field observations challenged the ideas that chimpanzees were vegetarians (they aren’t) and that only humans are capable of using tools.  These accomplishments comprise only a small fraction of those discussed in The Madame Curie Complex.  The stories told in this book are inspiring, informational, and give women scientists the recognition they deserve.

Jardins concludes by discussing the ways in which women have helped to change the face of science; many women such as Rachel Carson and the Lady Trimates have taken up important roles as science popularizers, making science accessible for the general public.  She writes that women have helped create a new scientific hero; one who is “collaborative and multifaceted”, and realizes that “her experience in the private realm has bearing on her science”.  Women have different experiences in the world, which is why it is so important to make sure that women have equal representations in science, where the viewpoints and observations of all are needed to make important discoveries.  She emphasizes that the positions of women and men in science are different because of cultural traditions, not because of innate biological differences.

Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics

Happy New Year!  I wanted to post about this event – The Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics.  There are actually four of them to accommodate people in all parts of the country.  It is a three day conference with the following goals (according to the website):

• To help female undergraduate physics majors transition successfully from undergraduate to graduate studies in physics.
• To foster an undergraduate culture in the Northeast and specifically at Yale University in which women are encouraged and supported to pursue and succeed in higher education in physics.
• To strengthen the network of women in physics in the Northeast and nationally.

The conference includes really cool stuff like panel discussions, research talks, laboratory tours, and a student poster session.  They also cover food and lodging at a hotel.  I totally wish I could attend this, but it unfortunately begins the day after I return from the American Astronomical Society conference in Seattle.  Hopefully I can go next year!  Here are the links for each of the four conferences:

• Northeast
• California
• Midwest
• Southeast

Values affirmation reduces gender gap in college physics

A study printed in Science Magazine found that introductory level physics classes where students were asked to write about their most important values twice during the beginning of course had a much reduced gender gap compared to those without the values writing assignments.  Those classes in which students wrote about their values found that women’s grades rose significantly.

In 2006, women earned 28% of physical science PhDs, 25% of computer science and mathematics PhDs, and 20% of engineering PhDs.   In college physics exams, women tend to earn lower grades on exams, and to get lower scores on “standardized tests of conceptual mastery.”  There have been many attempts to reduce this gender gap, such as peer instruction groups, curricular materials that go over context rich problems, restructuring of courses, and mentoring programs.  While some of these work, they mostly focus on changing the way the class is taught instead of addressing social factors that may affect the gender gap.  Other studies have shown that the fear of confirming a negative gender stereotype can result in poor performance.  This study tests the effectiveness of psychological intervention on the gender gap. Values affirmation was also shown to reduce the racial achievement gap in middle school students.

In this study, students were randomly chosen to participate in the values affirmation group or the control group.  Those in the values group were asked to select their most important values from a list and then write about why they were important to them.  This 15 minute writing assignment was given once during the first recitation of the semester, and once in an online homework assignment that was given shortly before the first midterm.  Students were also asked to indicate whether they believed in the stereotype that men are better at physics than women in an online survey during the second week of class.

The values affirmation exercise was extremely effective in reducing the gender gap!  The mean exam scores for women rose significantly in the values group.  In the control group, there was about a difference of about 10 percentage points between the mean male score and mean female score.  However, in the values affirmation group, the difference was only a few percentage points.  The gap was also closed on a standardized test that was given to both groups.  The grade distribution is also something pretty incredible – many more women in the values affirmation group scored B’s, compared to the control group where the vast majority of women got C’s.  The grade distribution for men was largely unchanged between groups.  In addition, it was found that for the control group, women’s exam scores decreased as “a function of stereotype endorsement,” meaning that the more a woman believed in the “men are better at physics” stereotype, the lower her exam scores were.  However, those in this relationship was not present in the values affirmation group.

Here’s another article about it: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics
And here’s a link to the actual study: Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation