reasoning and study is called ontology. Dr.
Esau’s work contributed a great deal to our
knowledge of the ontology of plants.
LIFE SCIENCE: CELLS
Katherine Esau (1898 - )
EXPERT PLANT VIRUS RESEARCHER
She also realized that, in order to study
plant viruses, she had to know a plant’s
ontology because the first symptoms of a virus
infection occurred in plant parts which were still
growing or developing. Further study showed
that these viruses would infect only certain cells.
For instance, say a particular virus only infects
cells that store water. By knowing how a cell
develops (differentiates) in order to become a
water-storage cell, we can then accurately study
the effects of that virus infection.
Katherine Esau was born and raised in
what was formerly known as Russia, or the
U.S.S.R. It was here that she was educated
through her first year of college. Then the Esau
family migrated to Germany where she
completed her undergraduate college degree. In
1922, she and her family migrated a second time
to the United States of America.
Some time later, Katherine Esau began
graduate studies at the University of California
(U.C.) in the field of botany. She completed her
Ph.D. in 1931 and taught at U.C. Davis until
1963, when she transferred to U.C. Santa
Barbara. But, most of Dr. Esau’s research,
dealing with effects of viral infection of plants,
was performed at the Experiment Station of the
Agriculture Department on the Davis campus.
Dr. Esau’s work led to the discovery of a
phloem-limited virus; in other words, a virus
which infects only a certain type of complex
plant tissue. She also made a significant
contribution to the scientific community by
showing that that studying the ontology of an
organism is important if we are to understand
the differences which occur as a result of things
such as viral infection.
In order to conduct these kinds of
studies, Dr. Esau had to first study normal plants
in order to understand the kinds of changes
which occurred once plants became infected
with a virus. Through this work, Dr. Esau
became an authority on the structure and
development of the phloem (plant tissue
responsible for transporting food from the
leaves to the rest of the plant).
References
Modern Men of Science. 1966. McGraw-Hill
Book Company. NY. Pp. 157-158
In researching the effects of viruses on
plants, Dr. Esau realized that she had to
understand plant cell development – how cells
differentiate and become specialized to carry out
a particular function or process in the life of the
plant.
Differentiation cay be complicated, but it
basically means trying to understand why one
plant cell will develop to take part in one life
process such as water storage, while another
will develop to take part in one life process such
as water storage, while another will develop to
take part in a totally different life process such
as transporting foodstuffs. This kind of
1
completing that degree, however, he was widely
praised for inspiring young Blacks to excel in
school.
LIFE SCIENCE: CELLS
Dr. Ernest E. Just (1883 – 9141)
PIONEERED RESEARCH ON THE LIVING
CELL
Just’s scientific endeavors dealt with the
study of marine eggs and sperm cells,
techniques for their study, the functions of
normal verses abnormal cells, and ways they
might related to diseases such as cancer, sickle
cell anemia and leukemia. Just’s theory that the
cell membrane (surface) is as important to the
life of a cell as its nucleus (center) was much
ahead of its time.
Despite all the contributions he was to
make to science, Dr. Ernest E. Just had to fight
to “keep aglow the flame within me,” even
moving to Europe to escape the racism he
encountered in the U.S.
Just was born August 14, 1883 in
Charleston, South Carolina. His father, a
dockworker, died when Ernest was only four
years old. In order to support Ernest and his
two siblings, their mother worked two jobs – as
a schoolteacher and as a laborer in the
phosphate fields outside of town. Young Ernest
was forced to work in the crop fields.
With the 1930’s came recognition of his
contributions to knowledge by the American
science community. It was during this time that
Just was elected vice-president of the American
Society of Zoologists, elected a member of the
Washington Academy of Sciences, and
appointed to the editorial boards of several
leading science journals.
At age 17, and with the courage and
foresight of his mother, Ernest was send North
to further his education. It is said that he had
only $5 to his name when he left home. Upon
reaching New York City, he first entered the
Kimball Union Academy preparatory school,
where he graduated valedictorian in spite of
overwhelming racism. Dartmouth College was
next. In only three years, he earned degrees in
both biology and history, and was the only
student to graduate magna cum laude (with high
honors). And, he was inducted into Phi Beta
Kappa, one of the most prestigious academic
honor societies in this country.
But, for all Just’s success, he found
himself alienated from large research
institutions, major (White) universities and
scientific organizations because of the color of
his skin. He hated being referred to as “Negro
scientist” and detested feeling “trapped by
color” in a segregated United States of America.
For these reasons, Just found himself
attracted to Europe. There, he was free to go to
restaurants and the theater. The European
scientific community looked to his research, and
not to his color, so Just spent much of his career
at top laboratories in Germany and France.
In 1907, Ernest E. Just became an
English teacher at Howard University in
Washington, D.C. But, because of the
excellence in zoology he displayed at
Dartmouth, began teaching biology two years
later. He also began work toward his Ph.D. at
the Marine Biological Laboratory, located in
Maine, in 1909. Summers were spent at the
University of Chicago.
Sadly, Ernest E. Just died of cancer in
1941, two years after returning to the United
States.
Frank R. Lillie, a well-known scientist
and friend of Just, described his life this way:
“…despite his achievements, an element of
tragedy ran through all Just’s scientific career
due to the limitations imposed by being a Negro
in America… That a man of his ability,
scientific devotion, and of such strong personal
Just completed his zoology doctorate in
1916, some seven years later. Even before
2
loyalties as he gave and received, should have
been warped in the land of his birth must remain
a matter for regret.”
Books by Dr. E. E. Just
The Biology of the Cell Surface.
Blakiston’s Publishing. Philadelphia, 1939.
Basic Methods for Experiments in Eggs of
Marine Animals. Blakiston’s Publishing.
Philadelphia, 1939.
References
“Scientific Ingenuity in the Bind of Racial
Injustice.” J. Natl. Soc. Black Eng. Vol 4. no. 3,
February. 1989.
Dictionary of American Negro Biologist. Eds.
Rayford Logan and Michael Winston. W. W.
Norton & Co., NY. 1982.
The Philadelphia Tribune. Dartmouth Starts E.
E. Just Professorship. January 5, 1982.
Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest
Everett Just. Kenneth R. Manning. Oxford
Univ. Press., NY. 1983.
3
Administration (FDA) in Washington, D. C.
During his time as Commissioner, the FDA
approved several drugs and vaccines produced
using some of the genetic engineering
techniques Dr. Young had helped develop.
Most notable of landmarks during his years at
the FDA will be the agency’s role in approving
effective drugs and vaccines to combat the
disease AIDS. Although only one drug actually
gained FDA approval at the time, AZT, the
FDA has made it possible for other promising
drugs and treatments to be legally prescribed to
those suffering from the disease.
LIFE SCIENCE: CELLS
Frank Edward Young (1931 - )
GENETIC RESEARCHER AND AIDS
FIGHTER
Frank Edward Young was born just
outside New York City in Mineola, Long Island,
on September 1, 1931. Following high school,
Young went to Union College and earned his
medical degree in 1956 from S.U.N.Y. (State
University of New York) Upstate Medical
Center in Syracuse. He then took on an
internship at the University Hospital of
Cleveland, Ohio, and later began work toward a
Ph.D. in microbiology at Case Western Reserve
University, then known as Western Reserve
University. Always ambitious, he received his
Ph.D. degree in 1962.
Since then, Dr. Young has held faculty
positions and memberships in a number of
places. These include the Scripps Clinic and
Research Foundation in LaJolla, California; the
University of California at San Diego, the
School of Medicine and Dentistry at the
University of Rochester, New York; and the
Strong Memorial Hospital, also located in
Rochester.
References
Current Biographic Yearbook 1989. Charles
Moritz (ed.). H.W. Wikson Company, NY.
pp. 648-649.
Bacterial Transformation in Microbial Genetics.
1987. David Friefelder (ed.). Jones and Bartlett
Publishers, Inc. Portola Valley, CA pp. 314329.
Dubnau, D. 1976. “Genetic Transformation of
Bacillus Subtilis: Review With Emphasis on
the Recombination Mechanism.” in
Microbiology 1976 (D. Schlessinger, ed.).
American Society for Microbiology.
Dr Frank Young’s primary research
focused on the fundamental genetics of the
bacterial Bacillus stubtilis and the regulation of
bacterial cell surfaces. He also studied the
“How and Why” of DNA (deoxyribonucleic
acid) as it relates to bacterial cell
transformation. In this process, a bacterial cell
called the recipient takes up DNA from its
surroundings, and integrates DNA into its own
genetic code. The recipient acquires new genes
(the DNA) from outside of the cell.
McCarty, M. 1985. The Transforming
Principle: Discovering That Genes are Made of
DNA. Norton.
Notami, N. K. and J. K. Setlow. 1974.
“Mechanisms of Bacterial Transformation and
Trasfection. “Prog. Nucleic Acid Res. Mol.
Biol., 14, 39.
Through his research, Dr. Young also
developed some of the first cloning enzymes
and vectors (organism carriers). Clones and
vectors have become increasingly important to
the study of genetics and cell transformation.
In 1984, Dr. Young was appointed
Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug
4
At 18, Gerty entered the Medical
College of the German University at the
University of Prague. Here she earned her
M. D. medical doctor degree and met her future
husband, fellow medical student Carl Cori.
LIFE SCIENCE: ORGANIZATION OF
LIVING THINGS
Gerty Theresa Cori (1896 – 1957)
FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN TO WIN
THE NOBEL PRIZE
Both were interested in research, so the
two physicians eventually traveled to the United
States to begin joint research at the New York
State Institute for the Study of Malignant
Diseases in Buffalo. Of special interest was the
study of the chemical process metabolism of
foods we eat as they are broken down into living
body-building materials.
In the early 1900’s, it was unheard of for
a girl to study science, let alone become a
scientist. But Gerty Theresa Cori ignored
expectations of the time and went on to become
the first American woman to win the Nobel
Prize.
Her early education took place at an allgirls school, common where she grew up in the
European city of Prague, then located in
Austria. Here, the focus was on preparing
young women for the life by developing their
social and cultural abilities. Science and
mathematics were not considered important.
Nevertheless, by the time Gerty graduated from
this school, she had been influenced by her
uncle, a professor of pediatric medicine. She
too, decided to become a doctor.
Around this time, something called
insulin was discovered. The protein hormone
insulin is normally produced by the human body
to control the amount of carbohydrates such as
sugars and starches in the blood. When the
body can’t use carbohydrates because insulin is
not produced like it should be, a disease called
diabetes occurs.
The Coris discovered that the most
commonly eaten type of sugar is converted to
glycogen and stored in the liver and muscles.
Some is stored as fat, and the rest is burned or
oxidized into carbon dioxide and water. They
also found out that insulin decreases the amount
of sugar stored in the liver and increased sugar
used for physicians to know when treating
patients with diabetes.
Before she could enter medical school,
however, Gerty would need eight years of Latin.
She would also need five more years of
mathematics, in addition to more years of
mathematics, in addition to physics and
chemistry. It looked like it was going to take
eight years of rigorous study just to qualify for
medical school plus six more years once she
was admitted. With that kind of work ahead,
Gerty decided to take time out for a vacation
before beginning her ambitious program.
The Coris later demonstrated that muscle
glycogen produces lactic acid during exercise
and at other times. This lactic acid is then
carried by the blood stream to the liver where it
is changed into liver glycogen. Liver glycogen
is then converted to glucose, and is carried back
to skeletal muscles which then gain the energy
to do work by converting glucose back to
muscle glycogen. This series of chemical
changes became known as the Cori cycle.
During this vacation, she met a teacher
who offered to help with her Latin studies.
What an offer that turned out to be! By the time
she began classes at the Realgymnasium at
Tetschen, Gerty had completed three years’
worth of Latin requirements and was ready to
take the medical school entrance exams.
The couple also made some important
discoveries about other proteins called enzymes
– phosphorylase and phosphoglucomutase.
And, they discovered the structure of the
5
glycogen molecule. Gerty, herself, discovered
four different types of glycogen storage
diseases.
LIFE SCIENCE: ORGANIZATION OF
LIVING THINGS
Daniel Hale Williams (1858 – 1931)
A TRUE PIONEER IN THE MEDICAL
FIELD
Drs. Gerty and Carl Cori shared the 1947
Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for
their work showing how glycogen is
catalytically converted (enzymes are involved in
the process or conversion). Although her
husband was made a member of the National
Academy of Sciences for his work, Gerty did
not receive this honor until eight years later –
after receiving the Nobel Prize. In fact, that
proved to be the case with most of her other
honors.
While heart surgery may seem like a
modern idea, it was first performed back in
1893 by Dr. Daniel “Dan” Hale Williams to
save the life of a young black man who had
been stabbed in the chest. And this proved to be
only one of a long list of remarkable
achievements.
Perhaps Dr. Williams’ background had
something to do with his drive and ambition to
succeed. He was born in Hollidaysburg,
Pennsylvania, the son of Daniel Williams, Jr., a
man of mixed African-American, NativeAmerican and white ancestry. His mother,
Sarah Ann Price, was the daughter of a well-todo family of similar ancestry from Annapolis,
Maryland.
References
Women of Modern Science. Edna Yost. Dodd
Mead & Co. New York. 1959.
Women & the Nobel Prize. Barbara Shiels.
Dillon Press, Inc. Minneapolis, MN. 1985.
Enzymes & Metabolism: A collection of
papers. Gerty T. R. Cori. Elsevier Pub. Co.
Amsterdam, New York. 1956.
Dan’s father fought slavery as an
abolitionist, and was a member of the Equal
Rights League, a group dedicated to providing
civil rights and education for all Blacks. A
trustee of the local African Wesleyan Church,
he died at the age of 47 following a battle with
tuberculosis. Soon after, the family was torn
apart.
Harper’s Review of Biochemistry. David W.
Martin, Peter A. Mayers and Victor W.
Rodwell. Lange Medical Publications. Los
Altos, CA. 1981.
Sarah Ann moved to Rockford, Illinois
where she found work in a family-owned
business. Dan’s older brother was a teacher and
law student, while his youngest sister stayed in
Annapolis with their grandmother. Tow other
sisters were sent to a convent school in
Baltimore, Maryland.
At the age of 12, Dan also found himself
in Baltimore, working as a shoemaker’s
apprentice. Lonely and separated from family,
he ran away to rejoin his mother. But, she
interpreted Dan’s ingenuity and determination
in traveling this distance as a sign that he was
old enough to take care of himself. So, she
6
returned to Annapolis, leaving him and his little
sister, Sally, behind to fend for themselves.
where Black people could go for proper medical
treatment, but also a place Black interns and
nurses could get the training and professional
experience they needed.
Dan found whatever work he could,
toiling as a dockworker, ship’s deckhand on the
Great Lakes, and as a barber. Always
ambitious, by the age of 17 he had moved to
Wisconsin and opened a small barbershop. But,
he never forgot the importance his father had
placed on education and made up his mind to
return to school he could.
Two years later, Dr. Williams performed
the first known heart operation and saved the
life of James Cornish, a young Black man who
had been stabbed in the heart. In fact, this
surgery was performed without the use of Xrays, antibiotics to fight infections, and with no
blood transfusions since all of the medical
advancements were unknown at the time.
Determined to become a doctor, Dan
Secured an apprenticeship with Dr. Henry
Palmer in 1878 in Janesville, Wisconsin. He
later managed to enroll at the Chicago, Illinois,
Medical College in 1880 and received his
medical degree three years later. Next, the
brand-new physician opened a small practice in
Chicago.
Soon after, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams
was appointed chief surgeon at Freedman’s
Hospital at Howard University in Washington,
D. D. And, he would establish the National
Medical Association – the only medical
association open to Black physicians near the
Turn of the Century,
Never on to have time on his hands, Dr.
Williams also served as a physician at the
Protestant Orphan Asylum, the South Side
Dispensary and taught clinical medicine and
anatomy at the Chicago Medical College.
Dr. Williams later returned to work as a
physician at Provident and Mercy Hospitals in
Chicago, and as a surgeon at Cook County
Hospital. Here he once again performed
surgeries unusual for their time – Caesarian
section births, operations to save torn and
mangled limbs, hernia repairs, removal of
damaged kidneys, and the very first operation to
suture (sew up) a ruptured spleen.
Along the way, he became aware of the
tremendous discrimination Black people
encountered when they became ill. Few doctors
would treat them, and hospitals frequently
denied them entrance. When Blacks were
allowed inside, it was into charity wards where
treatment was generally poor.
A true medical pioneer Dr. Daniel Hale
Williams dedicated himself not only to saving
lives through the development of new medical
techniques, but also to improving the quality of
life for Black people everywhere. The
institutions he established, where promising
Black nurses and doctors could study and work,
allowed contributions to humanity.
In fact, facilities for minorities were so
scarce that Dr. Williams was forced to perform
his first surgical operation on the patient’s
dinning room table. In addition, Blacks were
often subjected to unneeded treatments and
experiments by white doctors.
References
As was the case with his abolitionist
father, Dr. Dan Williams fought hard for
change. In 1891, he established the first
interracial hospital in America – the Provident
Hospital and Training School Association
located in Chicago. It was not only a place
Great Black Americans. 1976. Ben Richardson
and William Fahey. Thomas Crowell Co. New
York. pp. 244-255
7
Dictionary of American Negro Biography.
1982. Rayford Logan and Michael Winston.
W. W. Norton and Co., New York, pp. 654-655.
LIFE SCIENCE: ORGANIZATION OF
LIVING THINGS
Robert Jarvik (1946 - )
INVENTOR OF THE FIRST ARTIFICIAL
HEART
Dr. Dan; Pioneer American Surgeon. 1954,
Helen Buckler. Boston, Mass.
While still in high school, Robert Jarvik
felt a strong desire to become a medical doctor.
Unlike many, it wasn’t a glorified picture of the
delicate balance between life and death that
inspired Robert. Instead, he had a strong desire
to improve the usual method for suturing
(sewing up a patient) to be awkward. He felt
that there must be a better way and made up his
mind to find it.
But when Jarvik began college, he
studied architecture at Syracuse University in
New York until his father suffered a nearly fatal
aortic aneurysm (blood clot to the aorta of the
heart). It was then that Robert decided to pursue
his dream of becoming a doctor. The problem
was that he was rejected by most medical
schools. After he was finally accepted by the
University of Bologna in Italy, he dropped out
two years later.
While still at New York University
Robert had earned his biomechanics degree. So,
he next moved to the western U. S. and went to
work in Utah at Kolff Medical, a research and
development company founded by Dr. Willem
J. Kolff. The philosophy of Dr. Kolff was
basically that “if man could grow one, then he
can build one.” It is through Kolff’s work that
we have the artificial kidney or dialysis
machine.
Robert Jarvik completed his medical
studies while working for Dr. Kolff in Utah, and
it was there that he designed the artificial heart.
This manmade machine 00 once surgically
implanted in a patient – substitutes for the
ventricles of the heart which pump blood to the
arteries, and into the patient’s blood circulatory
system.
8
In 1983 at the University of Utah, the
Jarvik-7, an initial version of the artificial heart,
was implanted in Dr. Barney Clark, a retired
dentist. But, it proved cumbersome even though
it was about the same size as a human heart. It
was connected by tubes in the patient’s
abdomen which were attached to a machine
about the size of a portable television.
LIFE SCIENCE: ECOSYSTEMS
Rachel Louis Carson (1907 – 1964)
A CRUSADER AGAINST THE DANGERS
OF PRESTICIDES
Rachel Carson was raised in the towns
of Springdale and Parnassus, Pennsylvania. It
was here that she received her early education in
the public school system, but it was her mother,
Maria McLean Carson, who taught Rachel to
love nature. She learned to appreciate birds,
insects, and the wildlife in and around streams
and ponds.
Carrying something this size around
everywhere made it difficult even to stand up.
Nevertheless, Dr. Clark’s life was extended by
three months and his experiences with the
machine provided the basis for important
research on the device which continues today.
So, even though Rachel’s first career
goal was to become a writer, she later changed
her mind and earned a B.A. in science from the
Pennsylvania College for Women at Pittsburgh.
She then enrolled in Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore, Maryland, where she received a
master’s degree in zoology.
Lessons learned from Dr. Robert
Jarvik’s desire to do something to help people
like his father who suffered from heart disease,
along with Barney Clark’s experience with the
first Jarvik-7, have served to help prolong many
lives since then – lives that would otherwise
have been ended by heart disease.
Rachel Carson went on to work as an
aquatic biologist with the U.S. Fish &Wildlife
Service in Washington, D. C. Later, she became
editor-in-chief of the bureau, responsible for
issuing bulletins and leaflets aimed at
preventing the depletion of the nation’s wildlife.
Through her writings, Carson wanted to make
people aware of dangers to our environment
such as pesticides.
References
“Honoring the heart of an invention.” Science
News. February 19, 1983. vol. 123, no. 8.
After Barney Clark: reflections on the Utah
artificial heart program. Margery W. Shaw.
University of Texas Press. Austin. 1984.
Modern science has developed a variety
of fertilizers for different purposes. Some
provide mineral nutrients necessary for plant
growth. Others are made to kill a specific kind
of insect or a variety of insects. Then there are
the kinds of pesticides that kill other plants or
weeds which compete with crops for mineral
nutrients in the soil. Even though fertilizers
help increase the size and amount of crops,
questions exist about their safety, both to nature
and to mankind. In general, fertilizers are safe.
But some fertilizers which contain pesticides
can also be dangerous.
Rachel Carson told the world about the
dangers of DDT, a pestiside widely used by
9
farmers in the 1960’s to control bugs. In her
book, The Silent Spring, she told how DDT was
poisoning parts of the food chain, and thus
affecting all living things. In the food chain, all
living things are connected in some way. When
any part of the food chain is harmed, we all are
harmed. The harm may not come in the same
ways or to the same degree, but all living things
are affected.
The Sea Around Us. 1951. Rachel L. Carson.
The Silent Spring. 1962. Rachel L. Carson.
”Soiled Shores” by Marquerite Holloway &
John Horgan. American Scientific. Oct. 1991.
Pesticides can filter into waterways
through the soil and through improper storage
and disposal methods. Once in the water, they
affect the aquatic life found in these ponds and
streams, rivers and the oceans. Then it is only a
matter of time before these pesticides begin to
effect the animals which prey on aquatic
animals and plant life.
For example, you can find fish with
toxic levels of the pesticides in their bodies.
When birds eat these fish, they will also become
poisoned with pesticides. When they lay eggs,
the shells are too fragile to protect the unborn
baby birds, or their babies may be deformed.
We must also consider the animals and insects
living on or near lands where pesticides are
used. They, too, can get sick from eating these
plants or other small animals (prey).
Much of these contaminated lands are
farms where our food is grown, where we get
tomatoes, corn, wheat, beef and pork. And the
list goes on and on. Ms. Carson warned that we
all needed to stop using DDT or many animals
and plants would die.
Rachel Carson made us all aware that it
is important to know what pesticides are being
used and how they are used – for the sake of all
living things.
References
Current Biography 1951. H. W. Wilson
Company. Nov. 1951. New York. P. 12-13.
10
instead of using fresh water. That way the
limited amount of fresh water available can be
used for dinking.
LIFE SCIENCE: ECOSYSTEMS
Grace Chow
PROTECTING OUR CLEAN DRINKING
WATER
Grace Chow is a civil engineer whose work
centers on concerns for the environment. These
concerns include questions like how we use
what is available from nature in an efficient
manner, how we can protect the environment in
innovative ways, and how to develop new
technologies and methods to achieve these
goals.
Environmental problems occur in a
variety of ways. When the water level on a lake
or a waterway is high, it can cause the shoreline
to erode away. When we build anything along a
shoreline, we must realize that both the
materials used in the building process as well as
those materials in use after a building is
complete can filter into the nearby waterways.
Also, that heavy rains alone can cause flooding
and soil erosion.
Cities build and maintain sanitary
sewage treatment facilities designed to keep
sewage (waste) water separate from clean
drinking water. They are also designed to clean
sewage from the water so that it can be reused.
But storms can cause these treatment plants to
flood. When this happens, sewage water spills
out into the rivers, streams and other sources to
clean water. Or, sometimes these facilities are
designed wrong or operated in a careless
manner. Then they can cause the same kinds of
contamination of our clean water sources.
Grace Chow works on developing better
water treatment systems. She is involved with a
number of projects designed to recycle sewage
water in such a way as to put the water to good
use for not only people, but also other animals
and plant life.
It is hoped that sewage water treated in
new ways can be re-used for things like the
irrigation of farms, parks and recreational areas,
11
and fauna as much as possible. Leopold
believed that conservation was not only about
prevention, but also using natural resources
wisely. Nature as a whole is a community of
life including the soil, waters, fauna, flora and
people.
LIFE SCIENCE: ECOSYSTEMS
Aldo Leopold (1887 – 1948)
FATHER OF MODERN CONSERVATION
Born in 1887, Aldo Leopold spent his
boyhood years in Burlington, Iowa, and went on
to attend Yale University’s School of Forestry
where he earned his professional degree.
One of Aldo Leopold’s last conservation
fights was over the Wisconsin’s whitetail deer
management laws. The deer herd there had
gotten so large that it was eating away the plant
life faster than the land could replace it. They
were ruining the land. Whitetail fawns were
starving to death and bucks were not growing to
maturity. Leopold knew the answer to this
problem – reduce the size of the deer
population.
When Aldo joined the U. S. Forest
Service in 1909, his views were quite different
from those around him. Leopold approached
forest management from an ecological
perspective. To his mind, forest management
went beyond providing trees for industry. It
should include watershed protection for the
whole region from which a river receives it
supply of fresh water, as well as grazing, fish
and wildlife conservation, recreation and, of
course, protecting land from the ravages of man.
The deer had no natural predators in this
region, so their numbers increased beyond a
natural balance. Leopold’s advice was to
lengthen the annual hunting season and allow
the hunting of both bucks and fawns. (Fawns
are not usually hunted.) Conservationists did
not like what Leopold advised, so the battles
began.
In 1933, his treatise on Game
Management led to a professorship at the
University of Wisconsin. There, he sought to
educate and involve youth in matters of ecology.
He organized projects including counting nests,
planting shelter belts, filling feeding stations
warning poachers and recording weather
conditions year round.
Today, arguments are still being waged
over what role people should take in preserving
nature and the balance of nature. Is it our
responsibility only to oversee and protect the
lands and animals, or is it our duty to keep
animal populations at controlled levels by
allowing hunting? What should our role be
when an animal population gets too large to be
supported by the vegetation of the region? How
much human intervention is too much?
Leopold also established some
conservation rules which he called Ecological
Principles. These rules call upon us to do
several things. First, to maintain soil fertility;
second, to preserve the stability of water
systems; and third, produce useful products.
Fourth, he also called upon us to preserve our
fauna and flora as much as possible. (Fauna
refers to the animals of a given region and Flora
refers to the plants of a region.)
Because he knew more about land
ecology than any other person of his time, many
principles of wildlife management in practice
today were developed by Aldo Leopold and his
co-workers. He had a rare understanding of the
way biotic (life) forces interact, and the ways in
which these interactions occur, affecting the life
and landscapes of America.
In Leopold’s opinion, farmers and others
interested in erosion prevention believed only in
the first three conservation principles. The
sportsman or hunter only believed in producing
useful products for the purpose of hunting. But
the “true” nature lover, he said, devined
conservation in terms of preserving our flora
12
References
LIFE SCIENCE: HEREDITY
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and
There. Aldo Leopold. Oxford University Press.
1949, 1980.
Dr. Barbara McClintock (1902 - )
THE NOBEL PRIZE AT AGE 81
Sometimes professional recognition and
respect can be a long time in coming. Dr.
Barbara McClintock certainly knows that to be
true, having waited more than a quarter of a
century for scientists to take her genetic
discoveries seriously.
A Sand County Almanac with other Essays on
Conservation from Round River. Aldo Leopold.
Oxford University Press. 1949, 1966.
Game Management. Aldo Leopold. Charles
Scribner & Sons. 1933, 1961.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1902,
Barbara attended college at Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York, where she received her
graduate degree in 1927.
“Leopold Helped Set the Course of Modern
Conservation.” Wisconsin Conservation
Bulletin. Dec. 1954.
“Aldo Leopold Remembered.” By Clay
Schoenefeld. Audubon. May 1978.
Fascinated by the study of transposition,
or moving from place to place, Dr. McClintock
single-handedly took on the study of
transposable genes decades before anyone else
even believed it was possible for genes to
change their positions.
She was studying mutations in corn
when she noticed that these mutations caused
changes in the color and texture of the kernels.
Then she noticed that these color changes had
definite patterns. This led Dr. McClintock to
see whether there was a relationship between
developing corn kernels and genetics, and what
happened during growth of the corn that
affected the genetics of the plant. She learned
that mutations were caused by the ability of
some of the corn plant’s genes to jump.
To understand the concept of jumping
genes – or transposition (moving from place to
place) – the following example may help.
Inside a cell is DNS material. This material is
referred to as the chromosome(s) [or genome] of
the cell. The DNA is organized in a particular
order or sequence. Sometimes, sections of this
sequence can be moved to a different place
within the overall sequence.
Imagine the DNA sequence is like the
letters of the alphabet, lined up side by side in
order; A-B-C-, etc. Now, suppose that the
13
letters I-J move to a position between A and B.
Now the alphabet (DNA sequence) reads: -A-BI-J-K-C-D-. In this example, the clement –I-J-JK is like the transposable element or jumping
gene.
LIFE SCIENCE: HEREDITY
Dr. McClintock was clearly ahead of her
time in terms of scientific thought. She made
these discoveries before material which
determines how things grow and develop. And
even though Dr. McClintock’s genetic work
began in the 1940’s, it wasn’t until the mid
1970’s that science gave the theory of jumping
genes the serious attention it deserved. Many
believe that this is why her discoveries and their
importance to science were ignored for so long.
Dr. James Bowman is noted not only as
a scientist who has studied genetic
characteristics of African populations, but also
as someone who used his findings to debunk
popular myths about the supremacy of one race
over another.
James E. Bowman, Jr. (1923 - )
RESEARCHED GENETIC VARIATIONS
AND DISORDERS
Born in Washington, D.C., in the early
1920’s, James Bowman received his bachelor’s
degree from Howard University in 1943 and
went on to Howard Medical School to earn and
M. D. (medical doctor) degree. An internship at
Freedmen’s Hospital followed before Dr.
Bowman left the nation’s capital to complete a
pathology residency at St. Luke’s Hospital in
Chicago Illinois.
It has been only in the last decade or so
that Dr. Barbara McClintock received the
recognition to which she is entitled. In 1983,
she was awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of
81.
His research career has dealt mainly with
genetic variations and disorders common among
the many African populations. Dr. Bowman
studied these variations and traced their
migrations, not only within the continent of
Africa, but throughout the world. He also
analyzed issues of pigmentation,
hemoglobinopathies (diseases of the red blood
cells), lactose intolerance, malaria (a major
killer in Africa), hypertension and diabetes,
among others.
References
Breakthrough: Women in Science. Diana C.
Gleason. Walker and Co., New York. 1983.
A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and
Work of Barbara McClintock. Evelyn Fox
Keller. W. H. Freeman. San Francisco. 1983.
This research found that genetic
disorders vary from population to population.
For example, sickle-cell anemia is more
prominent in Africans and African-Americans
than in Europeans and European-Americans.
On the other hand, African-Americans are less
prone to disorders like PKt, cystic fibrosis and
Tay-Sachs disease.
But, Dr. Bowman has not limited his
interests strictly to science. He has also
addressed the legal and ethical questions that
follow genetic research. At different times
throughout history, genetic research has been
14
misused – when it was used as “evidence” to
support theories of white supremacy over Jews,
Africans and other ethnic groups, for instance.
Some organizations have taken any number of
valid genetic characteristics among ethnic
groups, and then interpreted the data to fit their
own beliefs.
in Genetic Research. Washingotn, University
Press of America, 1978; 141-171.
Genetic Screening Programs and Public Policy.
J. E. Bowman. Phylon, 38: 117-142, 1977.
“Population Genetics of Abnormal
Hemoglobins in the United States.” J. E.
Bowman. In: B. K. Adedeveh, ed.
Haemoglobinopathy ‘Sickle Cell’.
Reproduction and Contraception.
Where these misuses have occurred and
could have shaped public policy and laws, and
determined how national resources were used,
Dr. Bowman cam forward to speak out. He
influenced changes in legislation and policy
which deal with sickle-cell traits and diseases.
And, Dr. James E. Bowman, Jr., has made a
significant contribution to fairness and equality
for all ethnic groups by helping others
understand what genetic research findings really
mean.
References
Distribution and Evolution of Hemoglobin and
Globin Loci. Je. E. Bowman ed. New York:
Elsevier/North Holland. 1983.
Genetic Variation and Disorders of Peoples of
African Orifin. J. E. Bowman and R. F.
Murray. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
“Scope of the Problem” (Keynote Address), J.
E. Bowman. National Symposium on Genetic
Services for Underserved Populations.
“Legal and Ethical Issues in Newborn
Screening,” J. E. Bowman. Pediatrics, 83:894896, 1989.
“Genetic Variation in Cameroon.
Thermostability of Hemoglobin and of Glucose6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase” S. C. Bernstein, J.
E. Bowman, and L. Kaptue Noche.
Biochemical Genetics, 18:21-37, 1980.
“Social, Legal and Economic Issues in Sickle
Cell Programs.” J. E. Bowman. In: J. J.
Buckley, Jr., ed. Genetics Now: Ethical Issues
15
choose a plant that was true-breeding for yellow
seed color and one that was true-breeding for
green seed color. He would then cross pollinate
the two and observe the offspring. Then he
mated members of the offspring (filial)
generation, and looked at their offspring (the
second filial generation).
LIFE SCIENCE: HEREDITY
Johann Gregor Mendel (1822 – 1884)
DISCOVERING THE LAWS OF
HEREDITY
J. Gregor Mendel was born in
Heinzendorf, Austria in 1822. His father was a
peasant and his mother was the daughter of a
village gardener. In fact, Mendel’s ancestors
were professional gardeners of one type or
another. So it is no wonder that even as a child,
Mendel was encouraged to plant and care for
fruit trees.
In general, Mendel found that the
parents’ physical characteristics appeared time
and time again in the crosses. In the first
generation, all the offspring were alike and
physically (phenotypically) like either of the
“dominant” form. In the second generation,
when he crossed two offspring that physically
looked alike, Mendel would get mostly plants
which looked like “dominant” form or parent
and the rest looked like the other parent. (This
parent is the “recessive” form or parent.) He
also discovered that the ratio of dominant to
recessive is about 3:1.
The village vicar, who taught natural
science to the children, saw that young Mendel
had exceptional abilities and urged his parents
to send him to a high school in Troppau called
the Gymnasium. But, due to his father’s illness,
Gregor had to work to support himself and any
schooling he wanted.
The work led to the development of the
Mendalian laws of inheritance. The first of
these is the Principle of Segregation which
states that: 1) There are two hereditary
determinants for each physical characteristic, 2)
Each reproductive cell (gamete) of the plant has
only one of the two possible determinants
(either member of the pair) and that the two
determinants occur the same number of times in
the gametes; and 3) When the male and female
gametes unite forming the zygote (fertilized
egg), this happens randomly.
Later, he entered the Augustine
Monastery as a way of freeing himself of
financial burdens and leaving him time to study.
(During these times, monasteries were the
institutions of higher learning and scientific
research. Here, there was an experimental
garden where heredity and evolution in plants
was being studied.
As an adult, Mendel’s most important
work took place during a period of about 10
years. It involved experiments in growing and
plant crossing (hybridization), as well as
gathering, sorting, observing, and counting
some 30,000 plants. Mendel worked primarily
with the pea plant, which has a small number of
physical characteristics. These included height,
seed color, seed shape, flower color, seed
texture, pod shape, pod color and flower, and
position of the pod.
Mendel’s second law is known as the
Principle of Independent Assortment. It states
that the separation of segregation of a pair of
alleles happens independently of the segregation
of other pairs of alleles when gametes are
formed.
Glossary of terms
Mendel studied plants which were “truebreeding,” (their offspring always looked just
like the parent plants) for different forms of the
same physical characteristic. So, if he wanted to
look at seed color, for example, he would
*GENES are the particles of heredity.
*Each gene has two parts or determinants which
are also called ALLELES. Determinants of
alleles occur in two different forms, often
denoted by using upper and lower case letters.
16
LIFE SCIENCE: EVOLUTION
*When the two alleles are alike, they are
HOMOZYGOUS
Jane VanLawick-Goodall (1931 - )
30 YEARS WITH THE CHIMPANZEES
*When the two alleles are different, they are
HETEROZYGOUS
Even as a child in England, Jane Goodall
was fascinated by animal life. She spent much
of her time watching animals and making notes
of their habits. She would even use her
allowance to buy books on zoology and
ethology. (Zoology is the scientific study of
animals and Ethology is the study of animal
behavior.)
*The actual genetic composition of an organism
is the GENOTYPE
*The physical appearance of an organism is the
PHENOTYPE
References
One of her dreams was to someday
travel to the continent of Africa where she could
further study animals in their natural habitats.
At the age of 18, Jane took a couple of jobs in
order to make enough money to go to Africa.
Once there, she met Dr. Louis S. B. Leakey in
Kenya. A famous anthropologist and
paleontologist, Dr. Leaky was curator of the
National Museum of Natural History in Nairobi,
Kenya at the time.
Experiments in Plant Hybridization. Gregor
Mendel. Cambridge, Harvard University Pres.
1965.
Mendel’s Principles of Heredity. W. Bateson.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 1909.
Dictionary of Scientific Bibliography. Charles
Coulston Gillispie. Charles Scribner & Sons.
New York. 1974. Vol. IX, p. 277-283.
While working as his secretary, Jane
conducted a study of vervet monkeys of the
Lake Victoria region. Dr. Leaky found this
study interesting because he felt her findings
could help answer questions asked about the
evolution of human beings. In fact, it was his
suggestion that Jane go into the Gomble Stream
Reserve in Tanzania to conduct a lengthy study
of the chimpanzee population.
At first, the Lake Tanganyika
chimpanzees fled at the sight of her. But, two
years of patience paid off when the chimps
became comfortable enough to visit her
campsite for bananas.
In her quest to fully understand the
chimps, Ms. Van Lawick-Goodall imitated their
habits. She spent a lot of time in trees with
them and ate the same foods they ate, even
insects! She wrote down everything she saw –
that they made nests or beds for themselves,
they aimed at their targets when throwing
stones, they frequently walked upright, and even
17
shared a community of social life with rules for
behavior.
References
National Geographic Magazine. August 1964.
December 1965.
She also noticed that males courted
females with an elaborate swaggering ritual.
The males did not participate in family life, but
mothers and their offspring had a very strong
bond until the children reached maturity. If a
mother died, a child’s older sister cared for the
orphan. Like humans, chimps also hugged one
another for comfort. They communicated
vocally, even though the chimps could only
make about 20 different sounds. Jane also
noticed that males who did the most posturing
and made the most noise were given a higher
social status.
My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees. Dr. Jane
Van Lawick-Goodall. National Geographic
Society. Washington, DC. 1967.
In The Shadow of Man. Jane Goodall.
Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1971.
Through A Window: My Thirty Years With the
Chimpanzees of Gombe. Jane Goodall.
Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 1990.
Of major importance was her discovery
that chimpanzees are not strict vegetarians –
they often hunt their prey. They kill and eat not
only insects, but also animals as large as the red
colobus monkey and young baboons. Another
discovery set aside the false belief that only
humans were capable of making tools. Goodall
found the chimps would strip down blades of
sword grass and use the shafts to dig into holes
in termite hills.
Once the blade’s shaft was removed
from a hill, it was covered with insects. The
chimps then used the shaft as an eating tool,
licking the insects off. She also watched
chimpanzees make sponges by chewing up
leaves and using them to soak up water from the
cracks in rocks and hollowed trees.
Jane Van Lawick-Goodall earned a
Ph.D. degree in ethology in December of 1965,
and wrote her thesis on the “Behavior of the
Free-Ranging Chimpanzee.” Her work and life
have been written about in several magazines
and journals, and a few of the Gomble Stream
Reserve have appeared on TV.
In spite of all her academic
achievements, Dr. Goodall truly believed that
her chimpanzee companions of 30 years
considered her just an inferior primate –
something on the level of a baboon.
18
“woman’s: contribution to life, a different look
at anthropology.
LIFE SCIENCE: EVOLUTION
Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978)
THE STUDY OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR –
NATURE VS. NURTURE
One of the things important to the study
of anthropology is describing patterns of human
behavior – like criminality, insanity, alcoholism,
feeblemindedness and laziness, for example.
These are frequently descriptions of how a
person acts, or of their role in the greater
community. Often, these descriptions are of
negative or “undesirable” types of behavior.
Growing up in a family which stressed
the importance of education the way Margaret
Mead’s did, it was no wonder that she went on
to achieve greatness in the field of
anthropology. Her father was a professor of
economics at the University of Pennsylvania,
and her mother, a social scientist. In fact, it was
Margaret’s mother who fostered the “observer”
in the young girl.
Anthropology also studies the concept of
“Nature vs. Nurture”. Scientists who believe in
the concept of Nature insist that human behavior
is determined by a person’s genetics. Those
who follow the Nurture concept believe that it’s
the environment (a person’s surroundings)
which influence human behavior.
The Meads were not happy with the
education Margaret was getting in schools
during the early 1900’s. So, grandmother Mead
– a former school principal and teacher – was
responsible for most of Margaret’s early
education. She studied subjects like algebra and
botany, and learned how to make careful and
detailed observations of human psychological
behavior. In fact, Margaret’s mother gave her
notebooks so that she could make notes on
everything she saw, including her younger
sisters!
A simple example is the debate about
English grammar and pronunciation. Children
tend to speak with the same kinds of quirks and
accents as their parents and relatives. Naturists
(or Hereditarians) would say that English usage
is genetically transmitted from the parents to the
children. On the other hand, Nurturists (at one
time called Environmentalists) would insist that
children will speak whatever language they are
raised with.
The Mead children were also
encouraged to get to know all kinds of people.
This was so they would not grow up believing
that one type of person belongs in one place,
and another person belongs somewhere else.
The family even moved to different
neighborhoods so the children would learn to
adjust to changes in their surroundings and see
that all people are human beings, similar to
other human beings.
Margaret Mead decided to study human
behavior in hopes of adding to what we already
know about the question of Nature vs. Nurture.
She also felt that a proper study of a particular
culture had to include the children and women
of the culture. Prior to her work, studies looked
at cultures almost exclusively from the males’
roles.
While a senior at Barnard College,
Margaret began working under well-known
scientists Dr. Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict and
began to consider the field of anthropology as
her goal. But, she felt it important to select an
area where being a woman would be of benefit
to the field. She had great pride in her gender
and wanted to make what she considered a
Dr. Mead believed that, if you look at
the total picture of a “primitive” culture and
compare it to observations from a “civilized”
culture, differences will be found.
Determinations can be made as to human
qualities which appear because of life and living
experiences or the culture in which people live
(Nurture), or those which exist as a result of
being human (Nature).
19
where we all can live in true peace, she said, we
must all accept this fact. The ideal world for
which we are always striving can only be
achieved based on truths about human nature.
And, she said, we must all, as individuals and
regardless of our station in life, learn to deal
with the truth in order to achieve all that human
beings are capable of achieving.
Dr. Margaret Mead concentrated on the
study of teen-aged girls in Samoa, including
women and children. In earlier studies of
teenagers from “civilized” cultures, it was
observed that different countries and ethnic
groups produced different types of adolescent
problems (although there were some
similarities). It was believed that adolescence
was supposed to be a period of conflict, struggle
and bad behavior, and that it was human nature
for young people to be in conflict during their
teen years.
References
Breakthrough: Women in Sciences. Diana C.
Gleasnor. Walker and Co., New York. 1983.
And, people believed that because the
human body goes through all sorts of physical
changes during this time, some of these changes
produced bad behaviors. So, the question
became: How much of this conflict is due to
physical changes that all human beings
experience (Nature), and what part is due to the
different cultures in which the children are
raised (Nurture)?
American Women of Science. Edna Yost. J. B.
Lippencott Co., Philadelphia. 1955.
Books by Dr. Margaret Mead
Growing Up in New Guinea. Morrow and Co.,
New York. 1975.
Coming of Age in Samoa. Morrow. New York.
1928.
During her first study in Samoa, Dr.
Mead spent nine months observing and talking
with adolescent girls about their sexual
behavior. She found Samoan teens and the
people of Samoa to be sexually free, with no
sexual fears or problems. Dr. Mead believed
this was due to their easy-going way of life –
quite different from American youth.
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a
Changing World. W. Morrow, New York,
1949.
Childhood in Contemporary Cultures. M. Mead
and Martha Wolfenstein. University of Chicago
Press, Chicago. 1955.
Dr. Franz Boas used Dr. Mead’s studies
to support his belief that adolescence did not
have to be a period of crisis or stress, but could
instead be a time of orderly and slowlydeveloping mature interests and activities.
Continuities in Cultural Evolution. Yale
University Press. New York. 1964.
The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe. AMS
Press., New York. 1969.
Dr. Mead wrote a book about her
observations Coming of Age in Samoa, which
supported Dr. Boas’ beliefs and shifted
scientific debate to the side of Nurture over
Natures. But, this debate still thrives today.
Dr. Margaret Mead continued to study
other cultures through the years, delivering the
message that human nature is subject to
changes. In order for us ot reach the point
20
Darwin had returned home to start his own
family that he began to search for the secret to
the true ancestry of the human race.
LIFE SCIENCE: EVOLUTION
Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 1882)
THE FATHER OF EVOLUTION
He put together all his observations from
the voyage because he felt it was important to
present his findings in a simple and
understandable fashion. He wanted to report the
truth as it appeared to him. (Darwin’s first
book, Voyage of The Beagle, reads like a fine
novel. His next book was more scientific, and
dealt with the nature and habits of the barnacle.
This one took Darwin eight years to finish.)
Charles Robert Darwin, born February
12, 1809, was a gentle child – always deep in
thought and sharply observant of the world
around him. He collected all kinds of objects,
from pebbles, shells and birds’ eggs to flowers
and insects.
This gentle nature came from his
mother, who died when he was only eight years
old. Little Darwin’s relationship with his father
was different, however. While he loved and
respected his father, D. Robert W. Darwin
didn’t understand his son and considered him a
“good-for-nothing.”
During this time, Darwin began
developing his theory about the Origin of
Species and the Ascent of Man. Although a
theory of evolution had been around for
thousands of years prior to Christianity, it was
the belief in Creation which dominated society.
So, bringing the idea of evolution back was a
difficult task.
So, young Darwin was sent away to get
a classical education in Latin and Creek, in spite
of the lad’s preference for chemistry and
physics. (Young Charles even conducted
experiments in these areas in a secret
laboratory.) The school’s headmaster thought
of him as deranged for having such interests.
And Dr. Darwin, also disgusted by his son’s
experimenting, sent him off to medical school.
Darwin did not want there to be a battle
between the two schools of thought; he just
wanted to present his findings truthfully and
honestly. But he knew that a battle was
inevitable, so he spent 20 years reviewing his
data—twenty years going over and over his
conclusions, testing every question which came
to mind so that he could answer any questions
asked of him.
When medical school didn’t work out,
Darwin’s father sent him to Christ’s College in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, hoping he would
become a clergyman. But Darwin did not spend
his years here wisely and drifted through his
courses. During this time, he met a wellrespected scientist, Professor Henslow.
Henslow suggested that Darwin sail on a ship
called The Beagle as a naturalist. The Beagle
was to make a voyage around the world in
search of scientific truth.
Darwin’s major contribution to the
Theory of Evolution is that evolution takes
place by a process called natural selection. In
addition, certain truths about the world exist;
living creatures are constantly multiplying in
number, and can thus reach unlimited numbers.
But, the food supply is limited, and so is living
space. The result of all these conditions is that
there is an ongoing life-and-death competition
between all living things.
At the time, Darwin considered the
world to be one big question, a mystery puzzle.
He was forever observing and collecting,
interested in only the facts. He was not thinking
about evolution yet; his only goal was finding
the truth about things. It wasn’t until the fiveyear voyage of The Beagle was over and
It also stands to reason, he said, that in
order for a living thing to survive, it must be
better suited to the environment (geography,
climate, natural enemies and availability of
food) than the other types of living things
21
around it. Those less fit will die. This process
is called survival of the fittest.
During the course of time, the world’s
environment is always changing. Mountains
can form where there were valleys and seas,
seas can form where there were lands, and the
climate can change from severe cold to tropical
heat. Because of these changes, living things
need to change in order to survive. The changes
that living creatures undergo is called evolution.
Evolution takes place by natural selection,
nature’s way of choosing those characteristics
which enable a species to survive in a new
environment. Natural selection also weeds out
those characteristics which are no longer useful
through the deaths of members of a species.
Interestingly, Darwin is often given
credit for the theory that mankind is descended
from monkeys. Actually, what Darwin said was
that human beings and apes are both evolved
from a common ancestor, thus apes are our
distant cousins. Darwin also wanted it
understood that, when speaking of the survival
of the fittest, the word “fittest” does not
necessarily mean the strongest but rather the
most adaptable.
Darwin saw man’s dominance as due not
to strength, but to adaptability. And he pointed
out that man has developed a system of social
cooperation. We have learned that the best way
to ensure the learned that the best way to ensure
the survival of the individual human being is to
have a friendly cooperative relationship between
the entire human race. Finally, Darwin saw
human beings as not being separate from nature,
but rather a part of nature—of all living things,
including the animal kingdom.
References
Fifty Great Modern Lives. Henry Thomas and
Dana Lee Thomas. Hanover House, Doubleday
and Company, Inc. 1941.
22
PHYSICAL
SCIENCE
23
Theoretical Physics, and Dr. Hahn, who was
made a member of the staff. Dr Meitner was
soon recognized for her work, and was asked to
organize and become the head of a new Physics
Department at the Institute. This gave her
unlimited opportunity to meet and work with the
greatest scientific minds of the time.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: MATTER AND
ENERGY
Lise Meitner (1878 – 1968)
ONE OF THE FIRST GREAT WOMEN
PHYSICISTS
Lise Meitner was born in Vienna,
Austria in 1878. Her father was lawyer and able
to provide well for the family, so---even though
a girl—Lise was furnished with an excellent
education. She attended the Academic High
School in Vienna, and read about Marie Curie
and her work with radioactivity in isolating
radium. Intrigued, Meitner decided to study
mathematics and physics so she, too, could
become a physicist.
She continued her collaborative work
with Dr. Hahn, and in 1917, they discovered the
rare radioactive element protactinium. Dr.
Meitner also did extensive work on her own,
especially studying beta rays. She was the first
to conclude that the emission of radiation
follows, rather than precedes, the emission of
the particles in the process of disintegration of
radioactive materials.
In 1902, she began her studies in
theoretical physics with Ludwig Boltzmann.
Although the concept that matter was composed
of atoms was not generally accepted in that day,
Professor Boltzmann was an early and
enthusiastic proponent of the concept. Soon
after the discovery of radium, physicists were
able to prove that atoms and even sub-atomic
particles existed. It was an eventful and
exciting time.
In 1924, she was awarded the Liebnitz
Medal of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and
the Lieber Prize of the Austrian Academy of
Sciences in the following year. IN 1926, she
was appointed Professor Extraordinary at the
University of Berlin. She continued in this
position until Adolph Hitler’s anti-Jewish
activities forced her to flee for her life.
Although the workings of nuclear fission
were known to many enslaved Jewish scientists
who were unable to escape Hitler’s decrees,
they did not reveal their secrets. If they had, it
is likely that Hitler’s military would have had
the atomic bomb before the U.S. Ironically, the
Jewish scientists who were able to escape
Hitler’s grasp formed the basis of the scientific
group in the U.S. which developed the atomic
bomb, ending the war Hitler had begun.
In 1906, she received her doctorate and
went on to the University of Berlin. It was here
that Dr. Meitner met and began collaborating
with a young chemist, Otto Hahn, who later won
the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hahn worked at the
Emil Fischer Institute, which barred women
from working there. But Dr. Hahn finally
convinced the authorities to allow Dr. Meitner
to work with him. She was given a carpenter
shop on the first floor to use as a laboratory.
Not only was this shop difficult to equip, but its
size and the lack of full cooperation from the
Institute’s administration limited her work to
chemical research.
Just prior to escaping Germany, Dr.
Meitner and Dr. Hahn found a new group of
radioactive substances (transuranium elements,
such as barium and krypton) that could not be
identical to any element just below uranium in
the Periodic Table. These experiments revealed
that they had, in fact, split the uranium atom—
something she called atomic fission. Thirteen
months later, an atomic chain reaction was
produced at Columbia University making
possible the first atomic bomb.
In 1921, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Chemistry was opened as part of the University
of Berlin. This afforded opportunities for both
Dr. Meitner, who became an assistant to Max
Planck at the University’s Institute for
24
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: MATTER AND
ENERGY
Only July 13, 1938, Dr. Meitner
received a forged set of documents and escaped
with Dr. Coster to the Netherlands. At the age
of 59, she was again starting over in a new
country. One month later, Dr. Meitner moved
to Stockholm, Sweden, where she began work at
the Physical Institute of the Academy of
Sciences. Dr. Meitner remained at the Institute,
and as a member of the Atomic Research Staff
of the University of Stockholm, until she retired.
Meredith C. Gourdine (1929 - ) OLYMPIC
MEDALIST AND INVENTOR OF
POLLUTION CONTROL DEVICES
Meredith C. Gourdine was born in
Newark, New Jersey, on September 26, 1929.
Shortly after, his family first moved to the
Harlem section of New York City, and then
later to Brooklyn, New York, when he was
seven. The son of an auto mechanic,
Gourdine’s early life was not easy. Although he
doesn’t remember going hungry, he does
remember some very lean times.
Dr. Lise Meitner lived at a time in which
she was severely discriminated against because
of her gender and religion. But, her inquiring
mind, tremendous intellectual abilities, and the
help of some of the greatest thinkers of her day,
permitted her to overcome discrimination and
become one of the most distinguished
theoretical physicists to date. She not only
made many scientific discoveries on her own,
but also helped a number of others achieve
greatness.
By the seventh grade, Gourdine’s classes
seemed easy, so he was sometimes disruptive.
In an effort to challenge him and channel his
endless energy, Gourdine’s teacher bet him that
he couldn’t pass the mathematics examinations
to get into Brooklyn Technical school. After a
great deal of study and tutoring, he passed.
Finding the courses more challenging at
Brooklyn Technical, he became a good student
and also excelled in swimming and track.
By the time of her death on April 12,
1989, Dr. Meitner had been the only living
woman member of the Swedish Academy of
Sciences, who had received the City of Vienna’s
Prize in Science (1947); was awarded the Max
Planck Medal (1949), and also had been given
honorary doctorates in science from Syracuse,
Rutgers, Smith, and Adelphi Universities.
Throughout high school, Gourdine
worked eight hours a day to save money for
college. When he entered Cornell University in
1948 with only enough money to pay for his
first semester, Gourdine knew he would have to
win a scholarship in order to continue.
References
Yost, Edna, “Atomic Fission: Tapping A New
Source of Energy for Man’s Use”; Women of
Modern Science. Dodd Mead & Company,
New York, 1959.
It wasn’t long before he wanted to
change his major from electrical engineering to
engineering physics – the most demanding
course of study at the University. But, his high
school grades were not good enough. Viewing
this as another challenge, he studied harder and
received very good grades in his difficult first
semester courses. By the end of that semester,
he was accepted into the engineering physics
department and received a full academic
scholarship.
Sime, Ruth L., “Lise Meitner’s Escape from
Germany, “American Journal of Physics. Vol.
58, No. 3, March, 1990.
As Gourdine’s academic abilities
increased, so did his love of sports. He spent
25
the little spare time he had after studies and a
part-time dishwashing job, training for a spot on
the U.S. Olympic broad-jumping team. In 1952,
he made the team and won a silver medal –
missing first place by only for centimeters.
Because he was also serving on a
Presidential Advisory Panel on Energy, his first
years at Gourdine Systems, Inc. were quite
difficult. At the time, he had to work out of a
friend’s garage and a borrowed office while he
developed new products and landed new
contracts. After two years, he was able to set up
laboratories in Livingston, New Jersey.
By the time he graduated in 1953 with a
B.S. in engineering physics, Gourdine was made
a member of the Telluride Association, the
highest academic honor society at Cornell
University. He had also earned high respect
from his friends, colleagues, and mentors such
as Dr. Theodore von Karman, the father of
modern aeronautics. Although Dr. Karman was
in his 70’s when they became friends, he pushed
Gourdine to pursue his studies and develop his
novel ideas.
Much of his first business came from
sales of the Gourdine Mark I Generator to
schools and research laboratories to be used in
the study of electrogasdynamics. He also
developed the automotive exhaust precipitator
during this time, and invented a dust monitor
used to cleanse the air from utility stacks. And,
he was awarded a large grant from the U. S.
Department of the Interior to develop a
prototype electrogasdynamic central power
station.
Gourdine began his doctoral studies at
California Tech (Caltech) so he could focus his
efforts on electrogasdynamics (EGD) – a
conversion method which yields electricity from
flowing gas. Although science had known for a
long time that electricity was produced from
flowing gas, the electricity was not of a high
enough voltage to make production practical or
economical. Gourdine found the answer by
narrowing the passage through which the gas
glowed – an EGD channel. This produced high
voltage by crowding the gas ions into a very
small space. Charged particles moved the gas
down the channel, generating a large amount of
power in a small space –- a breakthrough which
had eluded earlier scientists. Dr. Gourdine was
graduated with a Ph.D. in 1960.
It was also during those beginning years
of Dr. Gourdine’s business efforts that he
developed the Incineraid, a device which
reduces garbage-smoke pollution produced by
incinerators. Earlier devices were too large to
be practical, did not cleanse fine particles of
smoke from the air and transferred these
particles of smoke from the air, and transferred
these particles into water – leaving it
contaminated. The Incineraid solved those
problems, eliminating 90% of smoke particles
by charging and collecting them on metal strips
installed inside smokestacks.
In 1966, Dr. Gourdine merged his
company with Fabricating Engineering, Inc. a
heavy engineering equipment manufacturer, and
changed the company name to Gourdine
Industries, Inc. Since then, he and his
colleagues developed a variety of innovations
such as a technique used to disperse fog from
airport runways, and an Electradyne Spray Gun
which atomizes and electrifies paint. This spray
gun is used for the production line coating of
irregularly shaped metal products. It reduces
both production costs and the amount of
pollutants released in to the atmosphere.
During this time, he worked at the
Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a senior
scientist, but rather than getting support for his
ideas, was only told to keep up his good work.
Gourdine left, feeling that their lack of
commitment or enthusiasm forced him to go
elsewhere in order to concentrate his efforts on
developing large scale power generation via
magneto hydrodynamics. After a couple of
other unfulfilling jobs, Gourdine formed his
own corporation in 1964 so he could fully
develop EGD technology.
26
Most recently, Dr. Gourdine has begun
research in plasma cell technology. (Plasma is
an ionized gas.) By arranging plasma electrodes
in a certain way, voltage is generated. If Dr.
Gourdine succeeds in developing this plasma
cell, it could mean the decentralization of power
generation and bring an end to air pollution.
And, it could also be used as convenient source
of electrical power in space.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: MATTER AND
ENERGY
Enrico Fermi (1901 – 9154) FIRST TO
CREATE NUCLEAR FISSION
Winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in
nuclear physics, Enrico Fermi was born in
Rome, Italy, in 1902. He grew up during
troubled times of great economic, political, and
religious strife. Even so Fermi earned his
doctorate degree at the University of Pisa in
1922 – only a few months before the dictator
Benito Mussolini seized power.
Dr. Meredith Gourdine – scholar and
athlete, winner of both a Gugenheim and RamoWolridge fellowship, Olympic silver medal
winner, and successful businessman – has
achieved a tremendous amount of success since
his humble beginnings in Harlem. By applying
novel ideas to practical uses, he has created a
growing business and many inventions which
reduce pollution of our environment. Knows as
“Flash” to his friends, Dr. Gourdine provides us
all with a living example of how we can succeed
through study and hard work.
Throughout his tudies, Fermi was
extremely interested in the behavior of electrons
in solid materials. He went to Germany to work
under Bron, later returning to Italy where he
became professor of physics at the University of
Rome in 1926.
His interests in sub-atomic particles
became even greater with Chadwick’s 1932
discovery of the neutron. Germi’s mathematics
demonstrated the neutron’s existence and
measured its emission. As part of this work,
Fermio calculated the nature of weak interaction
among neutrons – and later also calculated
strong interaction.
Journal articles
Numerous articles in scientific journals on
Electrogasdynamics
References
Black Contributors to Science, Energy, and
Technology, 19797, pp. 67-17.
Fermi’s important mathematical
calculations made possible new types of nuclear
reactions. He discovered that neutrons were
more effective when they had a lesser change,
and he noticed that they were also more
effective in generating nuclear reactions if they
first passed through water or paraffin.
Black Engineers in the United States, pp. 78-79.
Blacks in Science, Astrophysicist to Zoologist,
pp. 50-51.
Ebony, “A Promising New Device for the
Reduction of Air Pollution,” 1972, p. 125.
This finding was important because,
when a neutron is absorbed by the nucleus of
another atom, the newly-formed nucleus can
emit a beta particle and become an atom of the
next higher element on the periodic table. IN
1934, Fermi conjectured that he could bombard
uranium with neutrons to form an artificial
element above uranium on the periodic table – a
trans-uranium element which he called uranium
X. What Fermi had actually done, however,
Pierce, Ponchitta, “Science Pacemaker,” Ebony,
April 1967, pp. 52-62.
27
was create nuclear fission, and he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in 1938 for his experiments.
rods, used to absorb neutrons until they were
needed to start a nuclear reaction. At 3:45 p.m.
on December 2, 1942, cadmium rods were
withdrawn from the nuclear pile and the chain
reaction became self-sustaining – the nuclear
age began with this first chain reaction.
While this work was going on, the
dictator Mussolini had increased his hold over
Italy and combined forces with German dictator
Adolph Hitler. Hitler’s anti-Jewish control was
rapidly increasing in Europe, and the Italian
government passed many anti-Jewish laws.
When Fermi refused to wear a Fascist uniform
or give a Fascist salute at award ceremonies,
this made his anti-Fascist views public and he
was attacked by the Italian press. And, because
Fermi’s wife was Jewish, they could not return
to Italy. After a short stay in Stockholm,
Sweden, where he accepted the Nobel Prize,
Fermi moved permanently to the U.S., and
became a citizen in 1944.
IN a little more than tow-and-a-half
years, enough was known about fission
reactions for the first atomic bomb to be
developed, which was used to devastate the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The
world had never witnessed such widespread
destruction from a single weapon. Shortly after
Nagasaki was bombed, the Japanese surrendered
and the last part of World War II was over.
Like many of the Manhattan Project
team who knew how powerful nuclear
explosions could be, Fermi opposed further
development of atomic bombs. Even so,
nuclear reactions were refined to create nuclear
fusion – the basis for the even more powerful Hbomb. Fortunately, none have been used in
armed conflicts so far.
Here, Fermi and a well-known scientist
named Szilard began collaborating. They
speculated that neutrons could be emitted in
uranium fission, which would cause other
uranium atoms to also undergo fission and
produce more neutrons. These would collide
with more atoms to create a nuclear chain
reaction. This type of reaction would produce
tremendous amounts of energy in only a fraction
of a second.
When the Manhattan Project was
completed, Fermi became a professor at the
Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of
Chicago, where he worked until he retired.
Many of his students later went on to make
great discoveries themselves, including GellMann, Chamberlain, Lee, and Yang.
Meanwhile, world powers were
conducting research to find a “super weapon”
which would give them control over the
outcome of World War II. The Manhattan
Project was established at the University of
Chicago, Illinois in an effort to develop a
structure in which a nuclear reaction could be
produced. Fermi was put in charge of the
building which housed the Project. He soon
discovered that graphite would slow down the
activity of neutrons better than the paraffin he
used earlier. Because the slowed neutron could
be more readily absorbed by uranium atoms,
nuclear fission was made easier.
On November 28, 1954, before Fermi
could see nuclear reactions put to peaceful use,
he died of stomach cancer. Fermium,
discovered a year after his death, was named for
Fermi as a lasting tribute to the “Father of
Nuclear Fission”.
The first nuclear reactor was made of
uranium and uranium oxide piled up with
graphite blocks. It also contained cadmium
28
to buy enough pitchblende to complete their
experiments. by 1887, Madame Curie had
completed two additional university degrees, a
fellowship, a paper on the magnetization of
tempered steel, and given birth to their first
daughter, Irene.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: CHANGES IN
MATTER
Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867 – 1934)
WINNER OF TWO NOBEL PRIZES
Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw,
Poland, November 7, 1867. She demonstrated
academic excellence throughout her early
schooling, and was awarded a gold medal upon
completing her high school studies in 1883.
The Curies set up their laboratory in a
courtyard shed at the School of Physics and
Chemistry. Soon, the news of the discovery of
radiation reached them. They became virtually
obsessed in their search for the mysterious
element which would account for the earlier
differences in radioactivity they had found.
Marie discovered that, although radiation
emitted from thorium was similar to that of
uranium, pitchblende contained more
radioactivity than could be explained by the
combination of the uranium and thorium which
it contained. They believed the pitchblende
contained another element which they had not
yet found, and called it “radium.” During this
time, she also coined a new word to describe the
emitted radiation, “radioactivity.”
Although she was considered brilliant,
girls were not allowed to attend universities in
Russian-dominated Poland. Dejected, she spent
a year in the country with friends. Upon her
return, she began to tutor students to earn a
living and also became associated with the
“Floating University” – a group of young men
and women who tried to quench their thirst for
knowledge in semi-secret meetings.
IN 1886, she became governess to a
family in Szczuki, Poland, but this only served
to fuel her hunger for knowledge and she was
determined to continue her studies at a
university. Fortunately, one of Marie’s sisters
was studying medicine in Paris, France, at the
time, so Marie joined her there.
After four years, their exhaustive work
and near-starvation paid off – they were able to
produce a tenth of a gram of radium. Within six
months, the Curies had written two papers on
their discoveries. The first, which announce the
discovery of an entirely new radioactive element
(polonium, named after Marie’s homeland), was
presented to the French Academy of Sciences.
The second paper proclaimed the discovery of
radium, which they found to be two million
times more radioactive than uranium. It also
noted that radiation made air a conductor of
electricity, and by ionizing the gas molecules,
caused phosphorescent substances like zinc
sulfide to glow brightly.
After her graduation in physics from the
Sorbonne, Marie began looking for a laboratory
where she could continue her research on
measurement of the magnetic properties of steel
alloys. A friend suggested that she speak with a
young professor, Pierre Curie, at the School of
Physics and Chemistry of the University of
Paris. Although Marie returned to Poland
during that summer, Pierre convinced her to
return to Paris and they were married a year
later.
During those years, they jointly or
separately published another 30 scientific
papers. Among them was one which reported
that diseased tumor-forming cells were
destroyed faster than healthy cells when
exposed to radium. This finding went unnoticed
until World War I, and continues to be the basis
of much work in radiology today.
Early in their work together, the Curies
were intrigued with the radiation which was
emitted from uranium compounds. In searching
for its source, they turned to pitchblende, a
mineral which was known to contain uranium.
During their four years of research, however,
the two were forced to spend their entire savings
29
of the Pasteur Institute and the Sorbonne was
dedicated in July, 1914.
Suddenly, the scientific world began
taking note. In November, 1903, the Royal
Society in London gave Marie and Pierre Curie
the Davy Medal, one of their highest awards.
Within a month, word came that A. H.
Becquerel and the Curies were to be jointly
awarded the Nobel Prize for physics.
Unfortunately, the Curies were too ill and
exhausted to travel to Stockholm to accept the
award.
World Ward I also broke out at the time.
IN an effort to apply her talents to medicine,
Madame Curie spent most of the next four years
equipping automobiles with X-ray apparatus.
By the end of the war, these cars became known
as “little Curies.”
After the war in 1919, Marie Curie
began work at the Institute of Radium, and her
daughter Irene – a talented physicist in her own
right – was appointed her laboratory assistant.
Two year later, she published her book, La
Radiologie et la guerre, which gave a full
account of the gains made in radiology during
the war.
Even French scientists began to take
note, and created a chair in physics at the
University of Paris. A few months later, Marie
Curie was appointed director of research for
physics. In 1904, the Curies had their second
daughter, Eve. A year later, Pierre Curie, who
had previously been rejected for membership,
was finally elected to the French Academy of
Sciences.
Soon afterward, Mrs. William B.
Meloney, editor of a large New York magazine,
visited Madame Curie to tell her that she was an
inspiration to the women of the United States.
However, her attention was focused on raising
funds to buy for research purposes some of the
exceedingly expensive element, radium. Within
a year, Mrs. Meloney had raised $100,000 and
purchased some radium. Madame Curie
collected this gift from U. S. President Warren
G. Harding at the White House.
At their new academic posts, the Curies
feverishly renewed their research on radium
atoms. However, tragedy struck in 1906 when
Pierre was run over and killed by a heavy
carriage. Two weeks later, Marie was asked to
take over her husband’s post – the first time a
woman had ever been named a professor.
Without time to mourn, and now the single
mother of two children, Marie Curie undertook
the task of leading the scientific world with her
research.
During the last years of her life, Madame
Curie continued her work at the Institute of
Radium, which became a major center for
research in nuclear physics and chemistry.
During this time, she pioneered many of the
earliest medical applications of X-rays and
radium. The techniques which resulted were
quickly adopted in the treatment of cancer.
In 1911, the French Academy of
Sciences voted down her membership, but 11
months later she was awarded the Nobel Prize in
chemistry – becoming the first person to ever
receive two Nobel Prize science laureates. That
same year, Madame Curie was also elected a
permanent member of the Solvay Conferences
in physics, and offered the directorship of the
new Institute of Radioactivity in Warsaw.
Unfortunately, Marie Curie was unaware
of what the years of research to help mankind
had done to her own body. Constant exposure
to radioactive elements began to negatively
affect her blood chemistry. Even so, with great
support from her daughter Eve, she completed
her last book, Radioactivite. On July 4, 1934,
Marie Curie died of leukemia.
Curie turned down the Warsaw offer and
remained in Paris because the Pasteur Institute
convinced her to stay by promising to establish
the Paris Institute of Radium. This joint effort
30
Marie Sklodowska Curie is remembered
for more than her many extraordinary
accomplishments in physics and chemistry. She
was a symbol of commitment, dedication, and
strength, having faced and overcome
overwhelming prejudice because she was
female. She was often poor because of the high
costs of her research, and things were especially
difficult after Pierre’s death as she raised her
children alone.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: CHANGES IN
MATTER
Chien-Shiung Wu (1915 - ) FIRST WOMAN
PHYSICS TEACHER AT U.S.
UNIVERSITY
Chien-Shiung Wu was born in 1912 in
Liu Ho, a small town near Shanghai, China.
She first attended school in Liu Ho, where her
father was the principal. After she completed
all the schooling available in her village, Wu
was sent to Soochow for high school. There,
she began to study the English language and
decided to become a physicist because she
enjoyed mathematics and Science. Next, she
enrolled in the National Central University at
Nanking. She took all of the math and physics
courses available, and graduated with a science
degree in 1936.
But, regardless of the obstacle, Madame
Curie overcame it. Perhaps Albert Einstein best
described this brilliant woman. “Marie Curie is,
of all celebrated beings,” he said, “the only one
whom fame has not corrupted.”
References
Boorse, Henry A., and Motz, Lloyd, (eds). The
World of the Atom. 1966.
At that time, no advanced degrees in
physics were offered in China, so Chien-Shiung
Wu persuaded per parents to let her go to
graduate school in the United States. In 1936,
she arrived at the University of California at
Berkeley to study under Dr. Ernest Lawrence,
who had just made director of the radiation
laboratory there. Son after, he began
developing his noted atom smashing cyclotron.
He also began his research of atomic structure
and transmutations for which he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Physics. Studying under
such a great scientist made this a particularly
inspiring time for Wu.
Curie, Eve, Madame Curie. (Translated), 1937.
Dorin, Henry, et al. Chemistry; The Study of
Matter. (3rd ed.), Prentice Hall, Needham, MA.
Feldman, Anthony, and Ford, Peter, Scientists
and Inventors., Facts on File Publications, 1979.
Encyclopedia of World Biography. McGraw
Hill, Vol. 3, 1973.
Holton, Gerald, and Roller, Duane, H.D.,
Foundations of Modern Physical Science. 1958.
Her excellent work was soon noticed,
and she was given a teaching assistantship
which continued through her graduation with a
Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1940. Dr. Wu’s
researchfor her doctoral dissertation had two
parts – she worked with X-radiations from beta
decay, perfected new ways to separate two types
of rays during disintegration, and also focused
on establishing two complete chains of
radioactive decay with half lives. Here, she
collaborated with Dr. E. Serg, but this work was
not allowed to be published until after World
War II was over. Soon, she was elected to Phi
31
Beta Kappa (a prestigious national honor
society) for her outstanding graduate work, and
began work with Dr. Lawrence as his research
assistant.
The results of her experiment clearly
showed that the number of electrons emitted in
the opposite direction of the rotation of the
nucleus was far greater than the number emitted
in the same direction. Thus, the direction of the
emitted electrons is predetermined to be in the
opposite direction of the rotation of the nucleus.
Not only did her experiments prove that the
motion of emitted electrons is the opposite of
what was formerly thought, but they also
liberated thinking about the structure of the
physical world. Later, in 1958, for her
outstanding work in this field, Dr. Wu was
given an honorary doctorate in science from
Princeton University, the first ever given to a
woman.
In 1942, Dr. Wu taught physics at Smith
College. At the age of 21, after only a year at
Smith, Princeton University asked her to teach
nuclear physics to their students. But, within a
few months she was called to work on the
Manhattan Project at Columbia University – the
project responsible for developing the atomic
bomb. IN 1944 she was made a member of the
scientific staff of the Division of War Research
at Columbia. Most of her work there was spent
developing devices which could detect and
measure radiation.
In 1963, Dur. Wu again collaborated
with Professor Lee and L. W. Mo, another
research physicist. Her experiments clearly
proved a new fundamental theory in nuclear
physics – the theory of conservation of vectory
current. This gave rational understanding to the
lack of renormalization of the vector current in
beta decay, the basis of the universal Fermi
interaction. Dr. Wu then went on to perform
other research which led her to determine the
masses and magnetic moments of particles to a
very high precision.
Immediately following the end of World
War II, Dr. Wu became a research associate at
Columbia, where she found new ways to study
the shapes of the beta spectra and the interaction
of beta decay. To do this, she invented a
technique which used a magnetic spectrometer
into which a scintillation counter and a beta
detector had been built. The results of her
experiments gave proof of the Fermi theory of
beta decay, and won her a promotion to
associate professor of physics in 1952.
In 1956, two Chinese-American
physicist colleagues, Professors Tsung Dao Lee
of Columbia and Chen Ning Yang of the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, wrote
a paper which questioned a principal of parity
which had been an accepted truth in physics
since its conception 30 years earlier. They
noted that there were great differences between
what actually happened when K-mesons
(discovered in 1952) disintegrated and what,
according the theory, should have happened.
Lee and Yang purposed that these questions be
cleared up by experimenting with pi and muon
mesons and with beta rays. They later won a
Nobel Prize for this theoretical work, but it was
Dr. Wu who conducted the experiments with
beta rays.
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu has continued her
research and teaching to date, and received
many awards and memberships which recognize
her merit. She was awarded the first Michael I.
Pupin Chair in Physics, elected to the National
Academy of Sciences, served as president of the
American Physical Society, joined the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, made a fellow
of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, received the Research
Corporation Award, and the Comstock Award
of the National Academy of Sciences. She also
received the Scientist of the Year award from
Industrial Research Magazine, the National
Science Medal, the Wolf Prize in Physics from
the Wolf Foundation in Israel, and was elected
to the Academia Sinica (the Academy of
Sciences of China).
32
Dr. Wu has shown that great obstacles
such as gender, race, culture, and language can
be overcome in order to succeed as a preeminent
and respected scientist in her chosen field.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: CHANGES IN
MATTER
John Dalton (1766 – 1844) “FATHER OF
ATOMIC THEORY’
Books
John Dalton was born the son of a
weaver in Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England.
Throughout his life, he was a practicing Quaker
and remained single.
C. S. Wu, and S. Moszkowski, Beta Decay,
1965.
C. S. Wu, and L. Cl L. Yuan. (eds.). Methods
of Experimental Physics: Nuclear Physics,
1961.
Dalton was only 11 years old when he
left school. But, a year later in 1778, he
returned to begin teaching at a Quaker school.
Because he was no older than some of his
students, there were difficulties. He not only
overcame these trials, but also grew increasingly
interested in science during this time.
Dalton’s initial interest in science was in
the field of meteorology. He built his first
instruments in 1787, and in 1793, wrote a book
on meteorology, Meteorological Observations
and Essays. This qualified him as one of the
original pioneers in the field. Dalton continued
his weather observations and documented the
data for each day in a diary he kept for 57 years,
recording some 200,000 observations.
Unfortunately, these and Dalton’s other records
were destroyed during World War II when
Manchester was bombed.
He suffered from red-green color
blindness, and was the first to publish a paper on
the subject. In fact, this disorder was referred to
as Daltonism for some time. Color blindness
often made his work as a chemist more difficult
because it required him to recognize many
substances by color.
Dalton’s interest in meteorology led him
to study both the properties and composition of
air and other gases. He began by looking at
Boyle’s earlier experiments. This led him to
speculate that gases were composed of tiny
particles. He then proved this theory and
developed his law of partial pressures in 1801.
This law state that gases, whether pure or a
component of a mixture of gases, exert the same
33
pressure at the same temperature. In other
words, the pressure of each gas in a mixture
does not change in relation to other gasses with
which might be mixed.
In trying to prove his theory, he
experimented weighing elements in particular
compounds as well as measuring the weights of
different individual atoms. This resulted in the
first table of atomic weights based on the atomic
weight of hydrogen (the lightest element) being
arbitrarily set at one. He then calculated the
weights of other atoms from the weight of
hydrogen. Dalton also began the practice of
assigning unique symbols to elements and
prepared a list of atomic weights which included
14 elements. Although some of his original
calculations were wrong, the principal proved
correct.
Dalton continued his experiments and
was the first to measure increases in the
temperature of air as it was compressed. He
also showed that the amount of water vapor air
held could be increased with temperature. It
was only a short step from these findings for
Dalton to conclude that all matter is composed
of similarly tiny particles. Although this
thought was first advanced by Democritus 21
centuries earlier, it was Dalton who converted
this grand philosophical consideration of how
the universe was formed into a real and usable
scientific hypothesis.
These atomic theories were first
advanced in 1803, and later published in his
New System of Chemical Philosophy, in 1808.
Surprisingly for the day, his revolutionary
theories were readily accepted by most.
Much of Dalton’s work in this area was
based on theories of Proust, who had earlier
developed the law of definite proportions.
Essentially this law stated that elements were
always combined in whole-number proportions
– compounds could only contain proportions
like 4 to 1 rather than 3.9 or 4.1 to 1.
Regardless of what elements were combined to
form a compound, the ratio of one element to
another would always be a whole number.
These findings allowed Dalton to develop the
law of multiple proportions, which was first
published in 1803. Dalton named the “tiny
particles” atoms, as had Democritus many years
before.
Dalton was nominated for membership
in the Royal Society in 1810. However, because
Quaker beliefs would not allow him to bring
notoriety to himself, he could not accept. But,
in 1822, his colleagues elected him to the
Society without his knowledge. As time passed
and his work became more widely known,
Dalton received further honors and met with
other notable chemists. In 1832, he helped
found the British Association for the
Advancement of Science.
In 1832, he received a doctorate from
Oxford University. Dr. Dalton’s peers thought
that they could, at last, present this noted
scientist to King William IV so he could be
recognized for his achievements. To be
received by the King, however, Dalton would
have to dress in brightly colored clothing, rather
than the drab clothes required of him as a
Quaker. His friends then had the idea that
Dalton could be received if he wore his robes
from Oxford. (Although the robes were scarlet,
because of his color blindness, Dalton thought
they were a drab gray.) He was presented to the
King who later, in 1833, gave him a pension of
150 pounds sterling until 1836, when it was
doubled.
Dalton held that all elements were
composed of atoms which were tiny and
invisible. A particular substance could be
turned into another by combining the atoms in
different ways, but individual atoms would
remain the same. This means that all atoms of
any given element are exactly the same as all
other atoms of that element, and the atoms of
each element are different from the atoms of all
other elements. He further suggested that atoms
are different from one another only in their
mass. This made Dalton the first to advance a
quantitative atomic theory.
34
Dr. Dalton continued his research and
writing until his death in 1884. At his funeral,
all the pent-up recognition for his achievements
poured out, and Dalton was declared one of the
great scientists of his day.
PHYSICAL SICENCE: MOTION OF
OBJECTS
Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906 – 1972)
SECOND WOMAN TO RECEIVE NOBEL
PRIZE FOR PHYSICS
Books
Dr. Maria Goeppert-Mayer was born in
Poland in 1906. Her father was a seventh
generation university professor, and her mother
had been a French and piano teacher. In 1910,
they moved to Göttingen where her father was
appointed professor of pediatrics at the Georgia
Augusta University (commonly referred to as
Göttingen), and founded a children’s clinic. For
several years, life in Göttingen was rich and
filled with intellectual stimulation. But, in 1914
with the onset of World War I, life changed and,
at times, was quite harsh.
Meteorological Observations and Essays, 1793.
New System of Chemical Philosophy, 1808.
Other works, notes, and materials
written by Dalton were destroyed when
Manchester was bombed during World War II.
Maria’s excellence in school, especially
in mathematics and languages – along with a
never-ending curiosity – made her decide to
attend college. But admission of women at
universities was limited, and the entrance
examinations were quite rigorous. So, after
graduating from high school in 1921, Maria
attended the Frauenstudium, a school which
prepared girls for the university entrance
examination. Although the academic program
was three years long, the school went bankrupt
two years later. Undaunted, Maria took the
entrance examination anyway, passed, and was
admitted to the university. She studied
mathematics at Göttingen, attending to become
a teacher.
Göttingen was one of the leading
universities in Europe at the time and was
staffed by many of the leading mathematicians
and physicists of the day. Here, she was
surrounded with, and nurtured by, many
scientific giants. They often gathered at
Göttingen to discuss their latest findings, and
the science of physics was advancing rapidly. It
was then that Max Born invited Goeppert to join
his class. This was a turning point for Maria,
who decided to concentrate her studies on
physics so she could work with puzzles of
35
nature, rather than with mathematics, the
puzzles of man.
scientist, as did the rapid development of
quantum mechanics during that time. Dr.
Göeppert-Mayer also worked closely with one
of Herzfeld’s students, Alfred Sklar, who later
became the Director of the Argonne National
Laboratory.
Shortly after Maria’s father died, Born
expanded his role as her mentor, and became
more of a father figure. His guidance and
teaching in theoretical physics, in addition to her
strong mathematics education, gave Maria
Göeppert a solid foundation and the skills
necessary to become one of the great quantum
physicists of our time.
The situation in Europe during the
1930’s grew worse each day because of the Nazi
government in Germany. Thousands of Jews
fled the country, realizing that if they stayed,
they would be deported to concentration camps
or killed. Because many of the leading
scientists in Germany were Jewish, U.S.
scientists were quite concerned that their
colleagues from abroad would be enslaved or
murdered. A group was formed to provide food
and shelter for those who were able to escape.
As treasurer, Dr. Herzfeld got Dr. GöeppertMayer quite involved, and she opened her home
to a number of refugees.
Because of the Depression, it was
common practice in Europe for families to take
in boarders, especially university towns. In
1929, Maria rented a room to Joseph Mayer, an
American who had just received his Ph.D. in
chemistry from the University of California at
Berkley, and had come to Europe to study with
James Franck. Göeppert and Mayer soon
became more than landlady and boarder. Upon
receiving her doctorate in 1930, the two were
married.
During this time, she also focused her
energy on methods of group theory, and matrix
mechanics on pioneering work concerning the
structure of organic compounds. While at Johns
Hopkins, she spent the summers of 1931-1933
in Göettingen working and writing with Max
Born. Just before leaving Johns Hopkins for
Columbia University in New York City, Dr.
Göeppert-Mayer and her husband attended a
conference where it was first disclosed that the
atom had been split.
Dr. Mayer completed his work and then
accepted an appointment with the chemistry
department at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, Maryland. Unfortunately, the U.S.
was the height of the Great Depression and jobs
were scarce. Plus, the University, like most at
that time, had strict rules against employing
members of the same family. As a result, even
though Dr. Göepert-Mayer was exceedingly
well qualified, the best job she could find was
an assistantship in the physics department.
Even though underemployed, she was provided
opportunities to continue her research and was
later allowed to present lecture courses for
graduate students.
Sadly, when first arriving at Columbia,
Dr. Göepert-Mayer was given an office, but not
a faculty appointment. Even so, she soon
became close friends with a number of
Columbia staff members, NObel Physics Prize
and fled Germany because his wife was Jewish.
The Fermi’s and Mayer’s moved to Leonia,
New Jersey, so they could live nearby.
Karl Herzfeld, a prominent theorist in
kinetic theory and thermodynanmics,
recognized Dr. Göeppert-Mayer’s expertise and
they soon began writing scientific papers
together. She also worked with, and formed
close relationships with Gerhard Dicke, Francis
Murnaghan and Aurel Winter of the
mathematics department. Each of these
experiences added to her enrichment as a
In 1942, Dr. Göeppert-Mayer was
offered her first genuine position as a half-time
faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College in
Bronxville, N.Y. She developed and presented
a number of science and mathematics courses
36
there, and continued her teaching throughout
World War II.
elements were more abundant than others, they
must have a very stable nucleus. And, she
found that the nuclei of these stable elements
contained even numbers of either neutrons or
protons.
In early December, 1941, Harold Urey
began putting together a research group to work
on developing the atomic bomb, the Manhattan
Project. Dr. Göeppert-Mayer was offered a
position to work with those scientists on what
was, for security reasons, called the Substitute
Alloy Materials project. Her top secret work
included research on the thermodynamic
properties of uranium hexafluoride.
Later, she realized that protons and
neutrons could spin in their orbit around nuclei,
and that there was a difference in the energy
between them relative to their direction. This
allowed them to be arranged in more different
orbits than was earlier thought. In addition,
when protons and neutrons were most tightly
bound, they created stable elements and were in
even numbers. At last, Dr. Göeppert-Mayer
could clearly explain how the particles of the
nucleus are arranged – “shells” within the nuclei
– and the spinning orbit-coupling model of
nuclei was born. Although another scientist had
suggested such a possibility in 1933, his
research was never completed because of the
war.
Although she continued her part-time
teaching at Sarah Lawrence, she also began
participating in a research program called the
Opacity Project. It focused on the properties of
matter and radium at extremely high
temperatures, necessary to develop
thermonuclear weapons. After working for
some while to design and build the first atomic
bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, she
returned home to be with Dr. Mayer. Soon
after, while on their only vacation in years, they
received the news that the first atomic bomb had
been exploded over Hiroshima, Japan.
In April 1950, the journal “Physical
Review” carried an article explaining her
discovery. Simultaneously, Otto Haxel, J. Hans
D. Jensen, and Hans E. Suess, well-known
German scientists, had also made the same
discovery. Later, after meeting Jensen in 1950,
the two collaborated in writing the Elementary
Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure, published in
1955. Although Dr. Göeppert-Mayer was first
to submit her documentation for publication, she
and Jensen shared the 1963 Nobel Physics Prize.
Immediately following the end of the
war, the couple moved to Chicago, Illinois. Dr.
Mayer was appointed a full professor and given
a position at the new Institute for Nuclear
Studies at the University of Chicago (later
renamed the Enrico Fermi Institute). The
Opacity Project also moved there, and was
joined by a number of famous scientists. The
university soon became known for its experts in
nuclear physics, chemistry, astrophysics,
cosmology, and geophysics.
In 9154, Dr. Göeppert-Mayer was finally
offered a full professorship in physics at the
University of California at San Diego, and Dr.
Mayer, a professorship in chemistry. Only
weeks after their arrival, Dr. Göeppert-Mayer
suffered a stroke which left her partially
paralyzed. Even so, she recovered enough to
accept the Nobel Prize in 1963 and continue her
teaching and research into the development of
the shell model.
Here, Dr. Göeppert-Mayer was given the
opportunity to continue her work with the
Metallurgical Laboratory of the University as an
associate professor and senior physicist. The
Metallurgical Labaoratory was soon replaced by
the Argonne National Laboratory under the
Atomic Energy Commission. During this time,
Dr. Göeppert-Mayer was introduced to a
cosmological model of the origin of the
elements. She realized that, because some
Although Dr. Göeppert-Mayer’s efforts
to remain actively involved in research were
valiant, her health problems began to quckly
37
mount. After losing the hearing in one ear, she
began to suffer heart problems and died in San
Diego on February 20, 1972.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: MOTION OF
OBJECTS
Ronald Erwin McNair (1950 – 1986) LASER
PHYSICIST AND NASA ASTRONAUT
Throughout her life, Dr. GöeppertMayer fought against the evils and effects of
gender and religious discrimination and
persecution. Her friends described her as a
quiet, modest, thoughtful, and elegant person.
Those in the field of physics refer to her as an
enthusiastic scientific giant who brought to the
world order and fundamental understanding of
the nuclei.
Ronald Erwin NcNair was born the son
of a teacher and an auto body repairman, on
October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina.
Even though both parents were employed, life
was very difficult for McNair and his two
brothers, who grew up in an atmosphere of
racial prejudice. Throughout much of his
childhood, he and his brothers picked cotton,
cucumbers, and cropped tobacco for $4 a day to
help support the family.
Books
Born Max, and Mayer, Maria Göeppert,
“Dynamische Gittertheiorie der Kristalle”,
Handbuch der Physik, 1935.
McNair began reading at the age of
three, and became interested in science when he
was young. After the Soviet Union launched
the satellite Sputnik, McNair’s classmates
remember that science, Sputnik, and thoughts of
space travel began to dominate his thinking. He
excelled in both academics and sports such as
football, track, and basketball, and graduated
from high school as valedictorian of his class in
1967. Nevertheless, he remained the quiet,
modest follow his friends nicknames “Gismo”.
Mayer, Joseph, and Mayer, Maria Göeppert,
Statistical Mechanics. UNKNOWN
PUBLISHER, 1940.
Mayer, Maria Göeppert, and J. Hans D. Jensen,
Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure.
UNKNOWN PUBLISHER, 1955.
References
Since state colleges in South Carolina
were not fully integrated, McNair attended
North Carolina A&T State University. Needing
to challenge his intellect, he majored in physics
and was graduated with highest honors in 1972.
Although he wanted to continue his education at
a top school in physics, he was apprehensive
about attending the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). But, he couldn’t hide from
the challenge, and soon began his doctoral
studies there.
Dash, Joan, A Life of One’s Own. New York,
Harper and Row, 1973.
Sachs, Robert G., “Maria Göeppert Mayer –
Two-Fold Pioneer”, Physics Today, February,
1982, pp. 46-51.
Shiels, Barbara, “Maria Göeppert Mayer”, in
Women and the Nobel Prize. Dillon Press, Inc.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1985.
While at MIT, McNair worked on
developing some of the first chemical and highpressure lasers, and worked with some of the
top authorities in the field. Even so, he faced
many challenges at MIT, ranging from
“unspoken” prejudice to losing two years worth
of dissertation research data on the computer.
Inspired by early memories of his mother
38
driving 600 miles a week to earn her master’s
degree, McNair was not about to let any
hardship stand in his way. He persisted and
quietly went about recreating his doctoral
research. Within three months, he had come up
with even better material, completed his
research experiments, and finished his
dissertation. NcNair received his Ph.D. in 1976.
things he started. A sixth-degree black belt in
karate, accomplished saxophonist, scholar,
scientist, and a loving family-man, he lived by
the philosophy “Be your best” -- leaving a
legacy of excellence for us all to follow.
References
Black Collegian, December/January, 1980/81.
pp. 31, 134-138.
Next, he worked at Hughes Research
Laboratories in Malibu, California. While there,
he received a flier from NASA which said they
were looking for shuttle astronauts. Dr. McNair
returned his application, confident that he would
at least fulfill his dream of space travel. In
1978, at the age of 28, he was accepted into the
astronaut program as one of 35 applicants from
among 10,000 who applies. Shortly after being
accepted, Dr. McNair and Cheryl, his wife, were
in an automobile accident. Fortunately, when
the other car crashed into them, he only suffered
several broken ribs. Determined to regain his
health, Dr. McNair recovered from the injury
and reported to NASA for astronaut training—
only the second black in history to do so.
Black Enterprise, Vol. 16, No. 9, April, 1986, p.
25.
Cheers, Michael D., “Requiem for a Hero”,
Ebony, Vol. XLI, No. 7, pp. 82-94.
Ebony, May 1986, pp. 14-17.
Jet, March 9, 1978, pp. 22-26.
Jet, Vol. 70, No. 2, March 31, pp. 14
Samons, Vivian O. Blacks in Science &
Medicine. Hemisphere Publishing Corp., NY,
1990.
His first experience in space travel
aboard the space shuttle Columbia in early
January of 1986 was uneventful, and all went
well. He even had time during the mission to
record solo renditions of the songs, “What the
World Needs Now is Love” and “Reach Out and
Touch” on his saxophone. However, his second
voyage into space ended in tragedy. Seventyfour seconds after lift-off from Kennedy Space
Center, the space shuttle Challenger exploded
above the shore of Florida. All crew members
were lost.
Who’s Who Among Black Americans, 1985, p.
578.
Dr. McNair earned many honors and
received a number of awards during his short
life of 35 years. He was a Presidential Scholar,
Ford Foundation Fellow, and Omega Psi
Scholar of the Year. He was awarded three
honorary doctorates, made a member of the
National Society of Black Professional
Engineers, and joined the American Association
for the Advancement of Science. Ronald Erwin
McNair was known as a man who completed
39
mathematics teacher, but soon realized that his
greatest interests lay in experimental and
theoretical physics.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: MOTION OF
OBJECTS
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
CONCEPTUALIZED THE THEORY OF
RELATIVITY
Einstein passed his university
examinations in 1900, and was given a teaching
certificate – but not a teaching job as was usual
at that time. Anti-Semitism was growing, and
as a Jew, he was denied any job with status
attached to it. After several years of
unsuccessfully searching for a teaching position,
he accepted a job as a technical expert, thirdclass, in a patent office.
Dr. Albert Einstein was born the son of
an electrical engineer on March 14, 1879, in
Ulm, Germany. His scientific curiosity began
by age five as he pondered the invisible force
which directed the needle of a compass given to
him by his father. But, he showed little
academic promise at the Catholic state school he
was forced to attend, and was unable to speak
very well at the age of nine. His teachers said
he was mentally slow, unsociable, and “adrift
forever in his foolish dreams.” Unaffected by
these criticisms, Einstein took refuge in a sea of
books and learned to play the violin. These
solitary pursuits brought him great joy.
Bored, Einstein began experimenting
with complicated mathematical formulas. With
a pencil in hand, he built a laboratory in his
mind. Those calculations were basis of his
doctoral dissertation which he completed at age
26. They also were his first steps in formulating
a theory which shook the foundations of
science.
One day, Einstein’s teacher brought to
class a large nail she said was from the
crucifixion of Jesus. As the only Jewish boy, all
eyes turned to him as if he and his religious
ancestors were directly responsible. Einstein
did not understand this senseless hatred, and he
ran from the room, returning to his books for
comfort. This incident stayed with him
throughout his lifelong fight against prejudice.
Einstein had long searched for a general
principal which would explain a paradox that
occurred to him when he was 16 – if someone
runs alongside a train at the same speed, as the
train, it appears to be at rest. But, if it were
possible to run alongside a ray of light, the ray
of light – an oscillating electromagnetic wave –
would not appear to be at rest. Therefore,
everything in the universe was actually in
motion. Speed and direction are relative, and
only measured relative to other objects.
Einstein then concluded that space and time
were also relative. The only thing that was not
relative was the speed of light.
At the age of 12, Einstein’s life changed
dramatically when he discovered Euclidean
geometry. By age 16, he had also become
proficient in differential and integral calculus.
In the 1880’s, Einstein’s family moved
to Switzerland. Even so, he continued to be
unhappy in school and was soon expelled
because his rebellious attitude hurt the morale of
fellow classmates. He then tried to enter the
Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Even
though Albert’s knowledge of mathematics was
superior to most, his knowledge in other areas
was greatly lacking and he failed his first
attempt at taking the university entrance
examination. Later, in 1896, he was admitted to
the Institute. At first he wanted to become a
In short, he stated that, no matter how
fast an observer is traveling, he or she must
always observe the velocity of “c” as the speed
of light. He also hypothesized that, if an
observer at rest and an observer moving at a
constant velocity perform the same experiment,
they must get the same results. These two
considerations were the basis of Einstein’s
“Special Theory of Relativity.” He went on to
prove that this theory predicted energy “E” and
mass “m” are interconvertible – thus “E=mc2.
40
This formula gave a remarkable new picture of
the universe.
near the sun would, because of the intense
gravitational waves. He also suggested that the
universe is static and uniformly filled with a
finite amount of matter; and although finite, it
has no beginning or end point. The proof of his
predictions, published in 1915, caused a great
fury in the scientific world.
The Special Theory of Relativity
challenged long-held views of time and space.
Always before, scientists had believed that
mass, length, and time was absolute and
unvarying. Einstein demonstrated that they
were dependent on the relative motion between
the observer and what is being observed. In
1907, he proved his entire quantum hypothesis
by showing that it accounted for the lowtemperature behavior of specific heat in solids.
In 1920, Einstein was appointed to an
honorary lifelong professorship at the
University of Leiden. A year later, he was
awarded the Nobel Prize for his famous 1905
equation for the photelectric effect.
In 1909, he was made an associate
professor at the University of Zurich, and a full
professor two years later. A year-and-a-half
after that, he became a full professor at the
Federal Institute of Technology. Einstein was
rapidly advancing. He had become so well
known within the scientific community that, in
1913, Max Planck and Walter Nernest asked
him to accept a research professorship at the
University of Berlin. To further entice Einstein,
Planck also offered him full membership in the
Prussian Academy of Science. In 1914,
Einstein accepted and remarked, “The Germans
are gambling on me as they would on a prize
hen. I do not really know myself whether I shall
ever lay another egg.”
During 1921-22, Anti-Semitic attacks on
Einstein were renewed. Even Nobel Prizewinning physicists Philipp Leonard and
Johannes Stark were known to criticize
Einstein’s theory of relativity as “Jewish
physics.” This Anti-Semitic prejudice increased
rapidly with the rise of Nazi Germany. It was
during this period that Einstein took a public
stand against Anti-Semitism. For two years he
and Chiam Weizmann, the future first president
of Israel, traveled worldwide to gain support for
establishing Palestine as a Jewish homeland.
In 1924, S. N. Bose, with Einstein’s
help, developed Bose-Einstein statistics. This
soon led to Einstein’s famous wuantum theory
of an ideal gas. Around this same time, he was
offered an honorary vice presidency of the Mark
Twain Society. When he found that they also
had offered a similar position to Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini, however, he flatly refused.
Shortly thereafter, he found his name high on a
list of people who were to be assassinated by the
Nazis, and moved to Holland. But, he found
that formerly tolerant nation also to be rife with
Anti-Semitism and a fear of Nazi Germany. In
1932, Einstein moved to the United States.
By 1915, Einstein had refined his
General Theory of Relativity which described
the structure of space. He maintained that the
universe contained a continuum of space and
time in the form of a complicated fourdimensional curve. Unlike Newton, Einstein
proved that gravity was created by a localized
bending of space caused by the presence of
large masses such as planets and stars. In
addition, he demonstrated that the shortest
distance between two points in space was not a
straight line, but a curved line – light is
modified by the objects it encounters as it
travels from one point to the next.
Adolf Hitler then told Einstein that he
would overlook the fact that he was Jewish, and
asked him to return to Germany. When Einstein
refused, Hitler reversed himself, insisted that no
Jew could have formulated the Theory of
Relativity immediately revoked his German
citizenship, and place a price of 20,000 marks
In 1919, the light of a solar eclipse was
independently measured at two observatories.
Einstein predicted that light rays which passed
41
on his head. At the same time, Einstein
resigned from the Prussian Academy of Science
because of their Anti-Semitism, and was
expelled from the Bavarian Academy of
Science.
Frank, Philipp, Einstein: His Life and Times.
(Translated by George Rosen), 1947.
A year later he was appointed a life
member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at
Princeton University in New Jersey, and
actively continued his work there until 1939. At
that time, American scientists were becoming
concerned that the Relativity Theory (which
showed that mass could be converted directly to
energy) could be used by German scientists to
build a new “super weapon.” With the threat of
a world war looming, Einstein wrote to
President Roosevelt, a suggesting that the U.S.
develop a counter weapon in hopes it could be
used to prevent war. The counter weapon’s
development was begun, but rather than used to
deter a war, it was used to end one. In 9145,
despite Einstein’s appeals, an atomic bomb was
dropped over Hiroshima, Japan.
Infeld, Leopold, Albert Einstein: His Work and
Its Influence on Our World, 1950.
Feldman, Anthony, and Ford, Peter, Scientists
and Inventors., Facts on File Publications, 1979.
Jammer, Max, The Conceptual Development of
Quantum Mechanics, 1966.
Seeling, Carl, Albert Einstein: A Documentary
Biography. (Translated by Mervyn Savil),
1956.
Schlipp, P.A., Albert Einstein: PhilosopherScientist. (2nd ed) 1951.
Einstein spent his last years in semiretirement at Princeton and continued to work
and teach until 1945, when he retired and was
made a professor emeritus. Between that time
and his death in 1955, Einstein became a strong
advocate of a world government as the only
practical way to achieve peace.
Dr. Albert Einstein’s legacy is unending.
He gave science an entirely new understanding
of the universe. He fought against religious
prejudice and war. And the lived a full life – a
life spent in the service of others.
References
Born, Max, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
(Translated) 1922, (rev. ed 1962).
Clark, Ronald W., Einstein: The Life and
Times. 1947.
Encyclopedia of World Biography. McGraw
Hill, Vol. 3, 1973.
42
Batavia, Illinois. In 1974, she was appointed to
the post of Visiting Science Associate at the
European Organization for Nuclear Research,
and remained there until 1975. Later that year,
she returned to the Fermi Laboratory to spend a
year as a research associate in theoretical
physics. Dr. Jackson then moved to California
to work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center and the Aspen Center for Physics.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: WAVES AND
VIBRATION
Shirley Ann Jackson (1946 - )
FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO EARN A
PH.D IN PHYSICS
The first black woman in the United
States to receive a doctorate in physics, Shirley
Ann Jackson was born in Washington, D.C.,
August 5, 1946. Her enjoyment of mathematics
– along with strong encouragement from her
parents and scientific events like the launching
of the Soviet Sputnik satellite – helped her
achieve her dream of becoming a theoretical
physicist.
In 1978, she was appointed to the
technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories,
where she continues to work in theoretical
physics. Dr. Jackson’s primary focus is
conducting research on the Landau theories of
change density waves in one and two
dimensions, two dimensional yang-mills gauge
theories, and neutrino reactions. In particular,
she is involved in trying to explain one of the
most troubling questions in physics today –
what force holds the components of the hadron
proton and neutron together? Answering this
question will lead physicists to understand the
fundamental interaction between the basic
constituents of matter when they interact with
high energy, this finding could well prove to be
as important as the first splitting of the atom.
Jackson was offered many academic
scholarships after graduating from high school.
She decided to attend the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), even though she
would be one of only 15 Black students, and the
only Black to study theoretical physics. Here,
she joined the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and
served as president for two years, following in
the footsteps of her role models – Mrs. Frankie
Freeman, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission; and Dr. Jean Noble, a professor of
psychology at New York University.
As a Black woman, Dr, Jackson has
overcome many obstacles in the primarily White
male field of theoretical physics. She has
earned a large number of awards and has served
as a member of many noteworthy organizations.
These include the Candace Award, National
Coalition of 100 Black Women; MIT
Educational award; Board of Trustees, Lincoln
University; Nuclear Regulatory Commission –
National Academy of Sciences; and Sigma Xi,
Also, the New York Academy of Sciences;
Scholar, martin Marietta Aircraft Corporation;
National Science Foundation Traineeship; and
the Outstanding Young Women of America
Award, received in both 1976 and 1981.
While at MIT, Jackson also helped
organize the Black Student Union, which she
co-chaired for two years. She set up recruiting
committees, and got a commitment from MIT to
make enrollment requirements more flexible,
and to admit more Black students. Jackson
received her undergraduate degree in 1968.
Although she was accepted by graduate
schools of may other prestigious universities,
Jackson remained at MIT to complete her
doctorate. She studied theoretical solid state
physics and investigated the fundamental
interaction between basic parts of matter. She
received her Ph.D. in 1973.
Next, Dr. Jackson was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in theoretical physics at the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in
43
References
Blacks in Science and Medicine. Vivian
Ovelton, Sammons Publishing, Hemisphere,
Corporation, New York, 1990.
Ebony, “Nuclear Phyusicist at Fermi Lab”,
November, 1974. Vol. XXX, No. 1, pp. 114.
44
the position of chief draftsman, and married
Mary Wilson on November 10, 1873. They had
two daughters together, Jeanette and Louise.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: WAVES AND
VIBRATION
Lewis Howard Latimer
DRAFTSMAN, ENGINEER, INVENTOR
OF CARBON FILAMENT
Although he was self-taught and just
beginning his drafting career, by the mid-1870’s
Latimer had worked on many important
projects. For example, when Alexander Graham
Bell was racing Elisha Gray, chief electrician at
the Western Electric factory, to register patents
on the multiple telegraph (the first version of the
telephone), Bell went to Crosby and Gould to
prepare the patent blueprints. It was Latimer
who drafted the initial patent drawings and later
assisted with the preparation of patents Bell
registered.
Lewis Howard Latimer, the son of a
runaway slave, was born in Chelsea,
Massachusetts, in 1848. The fourth child of
George and Rebecca Latimer, his father had fled
from a Norfolk, Virginia plantation to Boston,
Massachusetts in 1842. Later, George was
found by the plantation owner who tried to
return him to slavery. Upon hearing about this,
local citizens became enraged and raised $400
to buy George his freedom. But, even though
George was a barber and paperhanger, he was
unable to earn much money, so his children had
to help provide for the family.
Following his great success with Crosby
and Gould, he left in 1880 to work as a
draftsman for Hiram Maxim, inventor of the
machine gun and co-founder of the U.S. Electric
Lighting Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Even though common use of electrical power
was just beginning at the time, Latimer foresaw
its tremendous commercial value and
considered it to be the pathway to the future.
As a young child, Lewis Latimer was
very interested in reading, writing stories and
poetry, and drawing. However, at age 10, after
only a few years of grammar school, he began
working with his father at night hanging
wallpaper. In an effort to earn more money to
help out his family, Latimer got a job as an
office boy for Isaac Hull Wright, a famous
Boston lawyer.
He studied all he could find about
electricity, and began designing an electric light
bulb which would burn longer and give better
quality light. Soon, he refined and patented the
process used to make brighter, longer lasting
light bulbs with carbon filaments from the
cellulose of cotton thread or bamboo. In 1882,
he received a patent for the Maxim electric
lamp. Soon after, he was put in charge of the
instillation of the Maxim lighting systems using
his newly-invented carbon filament in New
York City, Philadelphia, Montreal, Canada; and
London, England. While installing the lighting
system in Montreal, he learned to speak French
so he could properly instruct his workers and
speed up the installation. In London, he also set
up the Maxim-Weston Electric Light Company.
There, he was not only in charge of starting the
factory, but also for teaching workmen all of the
processes – from glassblowing to filament
production – which were necessary to make
By age 16, at the beginning of the Civil
War, he joined the U.S. Navy, and served as a
“landsman” and cabin boy on a sidewheel
gunboat. Upon receiving an honorable
discharge in 1865, he returned to Boston to find
work.
There, Lewis took an entry-level job as a
“helper” with the patent law firm of Crosby and
Gould. His fascination with making drawings
for patents motivated Latimer to teach himself
mechanical drawing. As both his skills and
confidence grew, Latimer overcame his
employers’ reluctance, and was allowed to
submit finished drawings for various patents.
The quality of his work became recognized and
he was promoted to the position of junior
draftsman. Soon thereafter, he was advanced to
45
Maxim lamps. He succeeded in only nine
months.
In 1918, while Latimer was still with the
Hammer firm, an honorary group dedicated to
keeping alive Edison’s ideals was formed. The
only Black man of the group, Latimer was
invited to become a charter member.
Latimer then signed over his filament
production and other patents for inventions,
such as the threaded socket for light bulbs and
the “water closet” for railroad cars, to his
employer, the U.S. Electric Lighting Company.
Latimer spent the later part of his life
working for various civil rights organizations,
and teaching mechanical drawing and English to
recent immigrants in New York City. He also
was one of the first to join the Grand Army of
the Republic, a society of veterans who had
fought for the North during the Civil War. He
died in 1928 at the age of 80.
Upon his return to the U.S. in 1882,
Latimer left Maxim to find even more
challenging work. During that time, he worked
for the Olmstead Electric Lighting Company of
Brooklyn, New York, and the Acme Electric
Light Company of New York City. In 1884, he
joined the engineering department at the new
Edison Electric Company as a draftsmanengineer. Soon after, the Edison Electric
Company was reformed into the Edison General
Electric Company.
Lewis Howard Latimer is a remarkable
example of how the self-taught son of a
runaway slave rose above his plight to become a
renowned draftsman, inventor, electrical
engineer and patent expert. Throughout his life,
he had the courage to dream and succeed, while
giving of himself to others. He brought light
both to our cities and into our lives. In an effort
to remember his significant contributions, the
Lewis H. Latimer Public School was dedicated
in Brooklyn, New York, in 1968.
Latimer had also become known as an
expert electrical engineer, and wrote a textbook,
Incandescent Electric Lighting – A Practical
Description of the Edison System, which was
published in 1890. This book remained a
standard guide for electrical engineers for many
years.
Books
He began working for the legal
department of the Edison General Electric
Company that same year, serving as an expert
witness and defending Edison’s patents in a
number of court cases. Edison generally won
these cases because of Latimer’s great
knowledge of electricity and the patents
involved. Two years later, the Edison General
Electric Company was merged with a second
firm to create the General Electric Company.
Incandescent Lighting – A Practical Description
of the Edison System. New York, Van
Nostrant, 1890.
References
Blacks in Science and Medicine. Vivian
Ovelton, Sammons Publishing, Hemisphere,
Corporation, New York, 1990.
In 1886, the General Electric Company
and the Westinghouse Corporation set up the
Board of Patent Control. Latimer was appointed
chief draftsman and served as a full-time patent
consultant until 1911, when the Board broke up.
He then became a consultant for the engineering
and patent law firm of Edwin W. Hammer,
where he worked until retirement at the age of
75.
Lewis Howard Latimer: A Black Inventor.
Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, Southfield,
Michigan.
46
University in Massachusetts, as well as his own
growing reputation, Alexander was appointed
professor of vocal physiology at the Boston
School for the Deaf, a department of Boston
University.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: WAVES AND
VIBRATION
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
INVENTOR OF THE TELEPHONE
Soon, his outstanding merit was
recognized, and he began traveling extensively
to give lectures on his methods to other
teachers. He then opened his own School for
Vocal Physiology in Boston.
Speech and how it was produced, had
been a preoccupation of the Bell family for
several generations when Alexander was born
on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Both Bell’s grandfather and father were
elocution teachers who studied the mechanics of
sound throughout their lives. His father also
invented a system for interpreting the sounds of
letters which he called “Visible Speech” – a
written code which indicated the position and
action of the throat, tongue, and lips in forming
sounds. The Bells were particularly interested
in teaching the deaf to speak because both
Alexander’s mother and wife were deaf.
During 1872-1873, Bell again began
experimenting with tuning forks. His schedule
was hectic at that time. As a way to save time,
he moved into the house of Thomas Sander’s
grandmother. (Sanders was one of his deaf
students who later financed many of Bell’s
patents and business endeavors.) Bell also
began consulting with the Williams shop where
Thomas Watson was developing the “multipletelegraph”. This device was based on the
principle of sympathetic vibration—when one
vibrating tuning fork is held near a still tuning
fork, the second will begin to mirror the
vibrations first.
Alexander graduated from high school at
the age of 14, even though many of his teachers
considered him a lazy student. Next, Bell spent
a year in London, England with his 71 year-old
grandfather, then returned home and attend the
University of Edinburgh. He left after a year,
and taught music and elocution for several more
years.
Bell later noticed that threads and tuning
forks vibrated in a similar way. As he began
experimenting with reeds, he found that, when
several sets of them were wired together, he
could transmit many different sounds at the
same time—a different tone for each reed.
These experiments brought Bell closer to his
dream of producing and transmitting complete
multi-toned sound.
Bell’s main interests changed from
elocution to electricity when he and his father
moved to London. There, he read about
Helmholtz’s tuning-fork experiments.
Fortunately, Bell misinterpreted theses findings,
thinking that Helmholtz had actually transmitted
complete vowel sounds by telegraph, rather than
only having produced them. This fundamental
misinterpretation was largely responsible for
Bell’s experiments in transmitting multi-tone
sound using tuning forks and magnets.
During this time, he also became
interested in the Scott phonautograph. This
device recorded sound vibrations on a smoked
drum by using a membrane-covered mouthpiece
to which a bristle was attached. Sound waves
made the membrane vibrate, and those
vibrations were transmitted to the drum, making
a visible record of the sound.
In the 1870’s, tuberculosis was
widespread in England. After two of his
brothers died from the disease, the Bell family
moved to Brantford, Ontario, Canada, to take
advantage of its healthier climate. Because of
his father’s successful lecturing at Boston
With these concepts in mind, Bell spent
several months at the Harvard Medical School
studying the human ear. His interest was so
47
intense that he borrowed an ear from the
university to study when he returned to
Brantford during the summer of 1874. It was at
this time that he merged his understanding of
transmitting sound over the telegraph and the
human ear, and stumbled upon the idea of a
speaking telephone. But, he still hadn’t thought
about the need for a method to control
fluctuations of electrical current before a range
of sound could be produced.
At the same time, Elisha Gray, chief
electrician at the Western Electric factory, was
also working on a multiple telegraph. In an
effort to beat Gray in registering his patents,
Bell quickly documented his experiments, and
took two patents on his multiple-telegraph in
1875 and 1876. These patents included the
fundamental workings of the telephone. After
successfully testing his telephone on miles of
rented telegraph wires, and after Watson
improved the instrument by replacing the old
battery and electromagnetic system with
permanent magnets for better reception, Bell
finally began getting recognition for inventing
the telephone.
Bell shared his latest finding with
Professor Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, who was very encouraging. He then
had the idea that, by passing a non-constant
(intermittent) current through a coil of wire,
sound could be transmitted. In other words, if
sound wave vibrations could be converted into
fluctuating electrical current, the process could
be reversed and the current could be reconverted
into sound waves identical to the original sound.
The first large public exhibit of the
telephone was held in conjunction with the 100th
anniversary celebration of the Declaration of
Independence in 1886 at Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. His invention was widely praised
throughout the world, and Bell offered to sell it
to Western Union for $100,000. That offer was
refused, so he began giving lectures and
demonstrations to earn enough money to carry
on his work.
In June of 1875, Bell and Watson began
experimenting with these ideas. Watson
attempted to transmit sound to Bell on the other
end of the wire by plucking a reed. The
transmitter spring Watson was using became
welded together so that when he snapped the
spring to initiate vibration, the electrical circuit
remained unbroken—but the strip of magnetized
steel which lay over the pole of the magnet
vibrated. This generated electrical current
which varied in intensity and allowed
transmission of a full range of sound over wire.
By the end of the night, Bell using their finding,
gave Watson directions for making the first
telephone—a membrane-covered drum joined at
the center to a receiver spring and mouthpiece.
These brought Bell Great financial
success. He interrupted his busy schedule long
enough to get married, and soon after moved to
England to continue his lectures and
demonstrations. Shortly after demonstrating the
telephone to Queen Victoria, he received an
English patent for his invention and formed the
Electric Telephone Company.
As scientific interest grew, so did the
commercial interests of Western Union. The
company was so interested, in fact, that they
hired Thomas Edison to invent a better
telephone transmitter. Then they formed the
American Speaking Telephone Company to
compete with Bell’s telephone company.
Lawsuits soon followed, even though bell had
the advantage of 3,000 telephones in use at the
time. And, he owned almost all the patents
involved. Bell and Western Union finally called
a truce and agreed to split telephone profits—
Western Union got 20% and Bell, 80%. Some
The next day, they strung wire from
floor to floor in the Williams’ shop to test this
new discovery. In their excitement, Bell spilled
battery acid on his pants and cried out to
Watson on another floor, “Watson, please come
here. I want you.” This first telephone
transmission was heard by Watson, and the
development of the modern telephone was
underway.
48
600 other lawsuits followed, and Bell won most
of those.
Institution, and was elected to membership in
the National Academy of Sciences. He was
appointed a regent of the Smithsonian in 1998.
At the age of 33, he was awarded the
1880 Volta Prize for inventing the telephone.
With his prize money, Bell founded the Volta
Laboratory for experimental work. Its many
successes included the disk phonograph record
invented by Emile Berliner. Bell also invented
the first photophone—words spoken into a
mouthpiece, the sound waves the strike a mirror
which reflects light duplicating the sound
waves, and this light is then focused onto a
selenium cell wired to a telephone.
After the Smithsonian, he helped
organize and finance the National Geographic
Society, where he served as president from
1898-1903. Later, in 1915, both Bell and
Watson were honored by being the first to make
a transcontinental telephone call. Bell’s first
words were the same as those spoken many
years before, “Watson, please come here. I
want you.”
Alexander Graham Bell continued to
follow his interests, and was one of America’s
most vigorous scientists until his death on
August 2, 1922.
Bell was also fascinated by the idea of
powered man-flight. He invented the
tetrahedral cell and incorporated it into his 42foot kite, which he called an arodrome. The kite
became airborne by towing it behind a boat.
After more experimentation, another kite was
built which carried a passenger aloft for several
minutes at an altitude of several hundred feet.
More enthusiastic than ever, Bell teamed up
with Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle builder
from Hammondsport, New York, to found the
Arial Experiment Association and develop a
powered glider. The first public flight of this
powered glider was in March of 1908.
Books
A complete list of Bell’s publications is found in
an entry by H.S. Osborne, “Alexander Graham
Bell,” in the Biographical Memoirs of the
National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 23, 1945.
Bell’s notebooks, letters, and other documentary
materials are housed at the National Geographic
Society. Bell’s court testimony concerning the
telephone is found in The Bell Telephone,
Boston, 1908.
Bell’s many other interests included
genealogy, which prompted him to write several
articles on hereditary deafness. And, he studied
genealogy of animals, with an eye toward
increasing production by selective breeding. He
raised sheep at his Nova Scotia, Canada estate
and through his discoveries, sheep production
grew and the cost of sheep products was
decreased.
References
American Inventors. C.J. Hylander, The
MacMillan Company, 1934, Chapter 14, pp.
126-139.
Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and
Technology. Isaac Asimov, Doubleday and
Company, Inc, Garden City, New York, NY,
1982, pp. 513-514.
With his wide interests and insatiable
curiosity, the late 1800’s were a very busy time
for Bell. He continued to improve the
telephone, became very wealthy, and donated
much of his profit to scientific research. With
the help of his rich father-in-law, Bell also
began publishing the Journal of Science in 1882.
At the same time, he contributed to establishing
an astrophysical observatory at the Smithsonian
Dictionary of Scientific Biographies. Charles
Coulston Gillispie, Charles Scribner’s and Sons,
New York, Vol. I, pp. 582-583.
49
EARTH
SCIENCE
50
Ammundsen had disappeared while searching
for a group of Italian explorers lost in the polar
ice. Boyd offered her crew, ship and supplies to
the Norwegian government to help with their
rescue mission. During this time, she met
several other polar explorers who accepted her
almost as a professional equal. After four
months, the mission was called off. Survivors
of the Nobile expedition were found: Raold
Ammundsen was not. For her part, Louise
Boyd was honored by the King of Norway and
the French government.
EARTH SCIENCE: GEOSPHERE
Louise Arner Boyd (1887 – 1972)
ARCTIC EXPLORER ON SCIENTIFIC
EXPEDITIONS
As a younger, Louise Arner Boyd was
expected to be accomplished in activities like
shooting and horseback riding. But Louise had
greater adventures in mind - - she dreamed of
someday going to the North Pole.
Louise Boyd’s father was a wealthy
mining operator in California, and she had two
brothers, both of whom died of rheumatic fever
when she was a teenager. Her parents were also
in poor health, but Louise led a very active
outdoor life.
On her third expedition in 1931, she was
the first to explore the inner ends of the King
Oscar Fjord (or Fiord), also called the Ice Fjord,
in Greenland. With good weather on her side,
she was able to travel farther north along the
Greenland coast than any other American
explorer before her. Boyd studied the geology
and botany of the region, made magnetic
observations, took depth soundings, mapped the
east Greenland fjord region and also took lots of
photographs. An impressed Danish government
named this territory Miss Boyd Land in her
honor.
By the time Ms. Boyd was 33, both her
parents had died and she found herself the head
of the Boyd Investment Company of San
Francisco, California. A prominent Bay Area
socialite, she enjoyed traveling to England,
France, Belgium and all of Europe. It was while
on a Norwegian cruise that she saw some of
Arctic regions for the first time. As in her
childhood, Louise’s sense of adventure surfaced
once again.
At the onset of World War II, the areas
visited by Ms. Boyd during the late 1930’s
became a part of the war zone when Norway
and Denmark were invaded. At that time, she
was writing a book about her findings in these
regions, and the United States government told
her how valuable these reports and photographs
would be to the war effort – hers were the few
accurate materials the government could use of
defense purposes.
She read all she could about the region,
collected maps and photographic equipment,
and organized her first expedition. Louise
chartered a Norwegian boat, the Hobby, and
invited some friends to accompany her. She
then led a team of six researchers on a venture
which included microscopic study of arctic flora
and fauna.
The U.S. War Department enlisted Ms.
Boyd as a technical adviser and selected her to
lead an investigation of magnetic and radio
phenomena in the Arctic waters. (All of her
activities during the war were kept secret.) The
department of the Army rewarded her with a
certificate of Appreciation for “outstanding
patriotic service to the Army as a contributor of
geographic knowledge.” After the war ended,
she was free to publish her book of the Denmark
and Norway regions, and The Coast of
Ms. Boyd took all the expedition’s
photographs and did much of the surveying. In
fact, it is said that her expeditions were
uneventful because she planned them so
thoroughly, anticipating any and all problems
that might arise.
During preparations for her second
expedition, Ms. Boyd learned that Raold
51
Northwest Greenland was finally published in
1948.
In her sixties, Louise Boyd had one more
dream: she wanted to fly over the North Pole.
So, she chartered a plane and did it—the first
privately funded flight over the region and the
first such flight by a woman.
By the time she died in 1972, Ms. Boyd
had spent almost every penny of her inherited
fortune on explorations and scientific
expeditions. But, Louis Boyd viewed these
contributions to the welfare of the world as part
of a great personal reward for reaching her
goals, and a pleasure which she had thoroughly
enjoyed.
References
Christian Science Monitor. P. 15, June 19th,
1959.
National Cyclopedia of American Biography
vol. G (1943-46).
Coast of Northeast Greenland. Louise Boyd.
American Geographical Society. 1949.
Further Explorations of East Greenland. Louise
Boyd. In Geographical Review, July 1934.
52
As a part of the expedition’s strategy,
Borup and Marvin were sent back early on for
additional supplies and fuel. Bartlett was sent
ahead to set the trial north. The weather, a
major concern for a successful mission, was
good, with temperatures ranging from 5o F to
32 o F below zero. However, Borup and Marvin
failed to return with the needed fuel. After a
week’s delay, the group pushed ahead anyway.
Three days later, Henson was sent ahead to
blaze a trail for five marches (each marched was
designed to be equivalent to 12 hours of travel),
and Marvin and Borup finally arrived with the
fuel.
EARTH SCIENCE: GEOSPHERE
Matthew A. Henson (1866 – 1955)
And Robert E. Peary (1856- 1920)
CO-DISCOVERERS OF THE NORTH
POLE
Of the many adventures in the Arctic,
there is a story which is perhaps most famous of
all. And, it forever intertwined the lives of two
men – Matthew A. Henson and Robert E. Peary.
These two joined forces in 1887 and spend some
20 years learning about travel and survival in
the Arctic before they eventually reached the
North Pole.
At the end of each march, igloos were
built, men and dogs ate, and, of course, they
slept. This plan worked well because when
crew members reached one of the campus at the
end of the march, fewer igloos would need to be
built because some were already there. Along
the way, the crew made soundings of the arctic
waters to measure their depth using piano wire
with a lead weight tied to the end.
Unfortunately, Macmillan developed a bad case
of frostbite on his foot and was sent back to
cape Columbia.
Earlier expeditions were designed to
explore the untouched Northern region of
Greenland, and these trips ultimately penetrated
deeper inland than any before them. In 1891,
Peary organized an expedition for the push
north to prove Greenland was an island. During
this trek, he also discovered what may still be
the largest known meteorite, weighing some 90
tons. In his honor, the northern most section –
free of the ice cap which covers most of
Greenland—was named Peary Land.
After two marches or so, the core group
caught up with Henson’s division which had
made camp to repair their sledges. Then, after
two more marches, Borup turned back with his
division – his job was done. He had carried his
heavy sledge through the ice floes, but he lacked
experience. And he, too, had a case of frostbite.
During the next 12 years, Peary and
Matthew Henson’s North Pole expedition crew
made several trips to Greenland. In doing so,
they fine-tuned their survival skills, learning to
live like the Eskimos. And, they managed to get
closer and closer to the North Pole, their
ultimate goal.
On of the strategies for the long journey
was to allow some crew members to turn back
so the core group could carry on with fewer
worries about losing people, time, and running
out of food.
It was 1909 when an extensive crew was
organized to make the journey of all journeys.
This group included Admiral Peary, explorer
and weather meteorologist; Ross Marvin,
secretary and assistant; Dr. J.W. Goodsell,
expedition surgeon; George Borup; Captain Bob
Bartlett and 17 Eskimos. Leaving from Cape
Columbia, the 17sledge (sled) crew began the
drive to the Pole, some 413 miles through what
has been termed “a white hell.”
This left a total of 12 men. Henson and
Bartlett were sent forward to make their march
and camp. Peary and the rest of the core group
would follow 12 hours later. When the core
group arrived at camp, Henson and Bartlett
started out on the next march. Marvin was next
to be sent back after the expedition had reached
53
a position of 86 o 38’ (86 degrees and 38
minutes). The North Pole was at 90 o.
their journey, left out Henson’s contributions
and those of the Eskimos—indicating that he
(Peary) was the “one” who reached the North
Pole first.
Here, the ice was level but treacherous.
It surged together, opened up, and ground
against the open waters. After making it beyond
some bad floes, it was time for Bartlett to turn
back. He had hoped to make it as far as 88 o but
as 87 o 48’ there were not enough supplies for
his division to remain. At this point, the crew
was 133 nautical miles from the Pole and had 40
days of food left (50 if they used the dogs for
meat). But, they not only had to make it to the
Pole; they also had a return trip to think about.
Needless to say, this caused problems
between Henson and Peary which continued
until their deaths. The saddest part, perhaps, is
that they likely admired on another and
considered each other a friend. But, this lack of
recognition by Peary hurt Henson deeply,
especially coming from a friend.
The National Geographical Society
recognized Peary as an explorer and dubbed him
founder of the North Pole. But, Henson was
never recognized by the society, even in light of
all evidence of his critical role.
They decided to make five marches of
25 miles each. Barring bad weather, they would
be able to make it their goal with one final push
forward at the end of the fifth march. The crew
moved ahead, often pushing beyond their limits
and receiving minimal rest before starting out
again. They made the five marches in about
four days. Measurements showed them to be at
89 57’, only three nautical miles from the North
Pole, and Peary was showing the wear from the
journey. Matthew Henson and his crew of
Eskimos continued the lead, allowing Peary
some time to recover. Not only did they reach
the Pole, but Peary’s division went beyond it by
about 10 miles.
Today, however, after lengthy debate,
both are recognized as co-founders of the North
Pole. Matthew Henson and Admiral Robert
Peary are buried side-by-side in Arlington
National Cemetery, with plaques
commemorating their remarkable achievements.
References
A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. Matthew
Henson. Arno press, New York, 1969.
Unfortunately, there has been a lot of
debate over the role Henson played during the
journey, not to mention who actually arrived at
the North Pole first. Much of the trip’s
documentation indicates that Matthew Henson
played a Pivotal role in the survival and success
of the expedition team. Crew members were
very dependent on weather data because the
ability to predict storms was crucial to their
survival. But, Henson was not only the weather
meteorologist, he was also fluent in the
language of the Eskimos, was a master sledge
and dog handler, and a craftsman who, along
with the Eskimos, built and repaired many of
their igloos.
To Stand at the North Pole: the Dr. Cook—
Adm. Peary North Pole Controversy. William
R. Hunt. Stein and Day, New York, 1981.
Peary, the Explorer and the Man. John Weems.
Houghton Mifflin, 1967.
To the Top of the World: the Story of Peary and
Henson: Pauline K. Angell. Rand McNally,
Chicago, 1964.
Across Greenland’s Ice-fields. Mary Douglas.
Nelson, New York, 1897.
Discovery of the North Pole: Dr. Frederick A.
Cook’s Own Story of How He Reached the
North Pole Before Commander Robert E. Peary.
James Miller ed., Chicago 1901.
A well-known story says that Admiral
Peary, when telling the rest of the world about
54
The Life of Matthew Henson. Joan Bacchus.
Baylor Publishing Co. and Community
Enterprises, Seattle, WA, 1986.
55
The United States Navy was so
interested in this work that she was awarded a
Fullbirght Scholarship which took her to Faud
University in Egypt – the first woman to work at
the university’s Ghardaqa Biological Station.
Here, she collected some 300 species of fish,
three of them entirely new, and some 40
poisonous ones. Of particular interest to the
Navy was her research on the puffer or blowfish
type of poisonous fish. Hers was one of the first
complete studies of Red Sea fish since the
1880’s.
EARTH SCIENCE: HUDROSPHERE
EUGENIE CLARK (1922- )
“THE SHARK LADY”
Eugenie Clark is originally from New
York City. Her father died when she was only
two years old, and she was raised by her
Japanese mother. While at work on Saturdays,
Mrs. Clark would often leave Eugenie at the
Aquarium. Here, Eugenie discovered the
wonders of the undersea world. One Christmas,
she persuaded her mother to get her a 15-gallon
aquarium so she could begin her own collection
of fish. That collection broadened to eventually
include an alligator, a toad and a snake – all
kept in her family’s New York apartment.
Eugenie received her Ph.D. from New
York University in 1951. Her work has paid
particular attention to the role nature plays in
providing for the survival of a species as a
whole – rather than each individual member or a
given species – and special adaptations some
animals have made to escape their predators.
Examples include the chameleon which is
capable of changing its color to blend in with its
surroundings, or the African ground squirrel
which pretends it is dead because many animals
will not eat the flesh of prey that is motionless
or already dead.
When Eugenie entered Hunter College,
her choice of a major was obvious – zoology.
She spent summers at the University of
Michigan biological station to further her
studies. After graduation, she worked as a
chemist while taking evening classes at the
graduate school of New York University and
earned her master’s degree studying the
anatomy and evolution of the puffing
mechanism of the blowfish. Next, Eugenie
went to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in
California and began learning to dive and swim
underwater.
Eugenie Clark’s most renowned work
studied the shark, hence her nickname “The
Shark Lady.” And she spent a lot of time
speaking to groups about how sharks lives in an
attempt to lessen our fear of this creature.
In the late 1940’s, Clark began
experiments for the New York Zoological
Society on the reproductive behavior of platies
and swordtailed species. And, she conducted
the first successful experiments on artificial
insemination of fish in the United States.
References
The Lady and the Sharks. Eugenie Clark.
Harper & Row, New York, 1969.
Lady With a Spear. Eugenie Clark. Harper,
New York, 1953.
The Office of Naval Research sent her to
the South Seas to study the identification of
poisonous fish. Here, she visited places like
Guam, Kwajalein, Saipan, and the Palaus. She
explored the waters with the assistance of native
people from whom she learned the technique of
underwater spear-fishing. Through her work,
she identified many species of poisonous fish.
Artificial Insemination in Viviparous Fishes.
Sciences. December 15, 1950.
56
to three oceans where she discovered several
new varieties of marine life, including a distinct
red algae never seen before. She received her
Ph.D. from Duke University in 1966.
EARTH SCIENCE: HYDROSPHERE
SYLVIA EARLE (1935- )
DISCOVERED 153 SPECIES OF MARINE
PLANTS
As the lead scientist of the U.S.
Department of the Interior’s Tektite program,
Dr. Earle and an all-woman team of scientists
and engineers went on a two-week research
expedition. The team lived underwater near the
island of St. John for the entire time. From their
studies of nearby reefs, 153 different species of
marine plants, including 26 never before
recorded in the Virgin Islands, were discovered.
Unfortunately, however, these discoveries went
relatively unnoticed. Instead, the news media
concentrated more on the fact that the research
team was all female – labeling them
“aquachicks” and “aquababes.”
Sylvia Earle has spent her life observing
nature and admiring the beauty of the undersea
world. As a child, Sylvia grew up on a small
farm in New Jersey where she and her two
brothers enjoyed exploring nearby woods and
marches. They would also take in sick and
abandoned animals, and nurse them back to
health. Encouraged by her mother, Sylvia found
the natural world a constant source of
fascination.
It was during family excursions to Ocean
City, New Jersey that the sea world opened up
to her. Sylvia fished for eels and crabs, grew to
love the fresh salt air and to respect the power of
the sea. The Earles moved to the west coast of
Florida when she was 12, so the Gulf of Mexico
became her backyard and then began collecting
sea urchins and starfish.
Although this reaction upset Dr. Earle,
she did not stop moving forward. In 1977, the
National Geographic Society, the World
Wildlife Fund, and the New York Zoological
Society sponsored an expedition to learn about
the humpback whale. Dr. Earle and other
scientists studied the whale’s mysterious and
intensely resonant songs as well as their
behavior. They also studied the barnacles, algae
and parasites which live on the whale’s hide.
Earle swam side by side with these gentle
giants.
Sylvia started first grade at the age of
five, so she was always the youngest in her
class. Nevertheless, she made top grades all
through school. She and her brother were the
First to go to college, and Sylvia was anxious to
do well. Her strongest interest lay in the study
of underwater plants and animals.
Dr. Earle strongly believes that the more
we know about the ocean, the more we will take
and preserve it. As for the whales, she says we
must do more than just stop killing them; we
must also protect the places in which they live.
Later, in graduate school at Duke
University, Sylvia realized that all of life is
connected – that everything on earth is
dependent upon plants. If the energy of the sun
was not captured in plants through
photosynthesis, there would be no animals and
no human beings. She learned that the first link
in the ocean’s food chain is marine plant life.
While participating in the Scientific
Cooperative Ocean Research Expedition, Dr.
Earle not only made the longest and deepest
dives ever recorded by a woman, but she also
discovered a new genus of plant living at 250
feet below the surface. Another record-setting
dive took place in the bottoms of the Pacific
Ocean off Oahu, Hawaii. This time she wore a
suit of experimental design that resembled those
used by astronauts. Here, she observed a small
In 1964, Sylvia Earle took part in the
International Indian Ocean Expedition. The
only female among 60 males, she journeyed to
Rome, Nairobi, Athens and various islands in
the Indian Ocean. Future expeditions took her
57
green-eyed shark, a sea fan with pink polyps,
and giant spirals of bamboo coral that looked
like a field of bedsprings. These emitted a
luminous blue light when she touched them.
Dr. Sylvia Earle is convinced that, if
people could see what is happening to our
oceans, they would not like it. She wants us to
understand that what we do in one place
ultimately affect everybody because the health
of the whole world depends upon the health of
our oceans.
References
Exploring the Deep Frontier; the Adventure of
Main in the Sea. Sylvia Earle. The Society,
Washington, DC, 1980.
Life with the Dutch Touch. Sylvia Earle. The
Hague, Government Publishing Office, 1960.
Breakthrough : Women in Science. Diana
Gleasner. Walker and Company, New York,
1983.
58
around cape Horn at the southern tip of South
America, thus making steamer-railroad routes to
the west useless.
EARTH SCIENCE: HYDROSPHERE
Matthew Fountain Maury (1806 – 1873)
He was also involved in the field of
marine micropaleontology. Around this time,
U.S. Navy vessels were beginning to make use
of submarine telegraphy. They sounded
(measured depth of) the North Atlantic under
Maury’s direction from 1849 to 1853. Using
these findings, Maury prepared the first
bathymetrical (deep sea sound) chart of contours
located 1,000 fathoms under the surface.
PAVED WAY FOR SCIENTIFIC
APPROACH
Matthew F. Maury was the seventh child
of a family in Virginia which originally came to
the U.S. from Ireland. In 1825, he joined the
U.S. Navy and served at sea until 1839 when a
stagecoach accident left him unable to return to
sea duty. Maury was reassigned to apost in
Washington, D.C., where he became an
advocate for naval reforms, Southern
expansionism and increasing scientific study
which could improve sea travel. He joined the
Confederacy in 1861, and served in England for
the Confederate Navy during the Civil War.
Maury organized the Brussels
Conference in 1853, but his efforts to unify
international weather reporting for both land and
sea ran into opposition from a group he had
helped found – The American Association for
the Advancement of Science (A.A.A.S.).
Upon his return to the United States,
Maury went to work for the new National
Observatory. But, he was not an accomplished
astronomer and his shortcomings in the area
caused problems. Even though Maury was in
charge of the observatory for 17 years, his
contributions to astronomy were considered
small. His failures in astronomy may have been
due, in part, to the fact that he was mainly
interested in improving navigation technology,
so he was more concerned with the earth and
less with the heavens.
As happened before, Maury’s style of
promoting his ideas as being more worthy and
important than others caused a problem. The
A.A.A.S. felt that, just because Maury was
qualified at sea observations, this did not make
him a qualified land meteorologist. So, he was
only to organize uniform weather reporting of
sea conditions. Maury meant well, but he had
made errors and was unwilling to revise some of
this theories. After his death, however, the
system was extended to include both land and
sea meteorology.
Maury used ships’ logs, which noted
winds and currents, to chart general circulation
patters of atmosphere and oceans. He began
publishing these Wind and Current Charts, and
gave them to mariners free of charge in return
for similar information from their own ships’
logs. As a result, he was able to develop a
series of charts and sailing directions which
gave a climatic picture of surface winds and
currents for all oceans.
Matthew Maury’s most significant
contributions may have come in the form of
stimulating other researchers to improve their
own theories and research. That’s because he
was inflexible and refused to revise his own
findings, even when other evidence proved
contrary to his stated theories.
References
As it turns out, Maury was interested in
improving sea technology in order to show that
sailing was superior to the steam propulsion
engines being invented in the mid 1800’s. He
claimed that his charts shortened sailing routes
Ocean Pathfinder: a Biography of Matthew F.
Maury. Frances Williams. Harcourt, Brace and
World, New York, 1966.
59
The Physical Geogrpahy of the Sea. Matthew
Maury. T. Nelson, New York, 1863.
The Physical Geography of the Sea, and its
Meteorology. Matthew Maury. Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1963.
60
slower, thus cooling the warmer air. But, this
process of molecular conduction is slow – far
too slow to prevent air temperatures from
getting so high as to cause damage to life forms
like plants and people.
EARTH SCIENCE: ATMOSPHERE &
WEATHER
Margaret Lemond (1946- )
INVESTIGATING THUNDERSTORMS
AND SQUALLS
In order to cool off properly and
maintain reasonable temperatures, warm air
must be able to rise far up into the cooler
atmospheric regions. This is called convection,
and is where the condition known as an unstable
atmosphere enters the picture. “Unstable”
simply means that a small section of air is ready
to rise high, if it is given a little push to get it
moving – like starting a rock slide by tossing a
single stone to the side of a rocky hill. All those
other rocks begin to tumble because the rocky
hill is unstable.
Dr. Margaret Lemone is a meteorologist
who investigates how thunderstorms become
organized into lines, also called squall lines. At
the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
she also studies ways in which these squall lines
affect air movement in the lowest part of the
earth’s atmosphere.
How to thunderstorms happen? Certain
atmospheric conditions must exist for them to
form. First, a fairly deep layer of air in the
atmosphere, about 10,000 feet or more, must be
moist. Second, the atmosphere should be
“unstable.” And, third, there should be few
clouds in the daylight sky, so the sun’s rays can
heart the ground and air near the ground (the
low atmosphere).
An unstable atmosphere occurs when the
difference between warm surface air and the
cold upper atmosphere is great. This is the same
as saying that the rate of temperature decrease is
large. In order for a parcel of this warmer air to
rise, its density must be less than the air
surrounding it. Warmer air tends to be less
dense than cooler air. So it starts to rise in the
same manner as an elevator.
As the ground and lower layers of the
atmosphere are heated by radiation from the
sun, solar energy is absorbed by the ground and
moist air near its surface. Then the temperature
rises. Upper layers of the atmosphere do not
absorb as much of the sun’s radiation – they are
cooler, therefore it is warmer near the ground,
and cooler higher up in the atmosphere.
Thunderstorms help spread out this heat energy
to all layers of the atmosphere, thus cooling off
the surface of the earth – sort of like nature’s air
conditioner during the summer months.
To keep rising and increasing speed
(acceleration), then it must remain warmer and
less dense than the air surrounding it. Once it
meets air that is the same temperature and
density, it stops rising. (The elevator stops.)
The greater the rate of temperature
decrease, the faster it moves upward
(acceleration). As the air rises, heat is
transferred upward and the temperature
difference is reduced. When upward convection
is powerful enough to reach heights of about 10
miles or so in the form of columns of air, we get
very large convection clouds know as
thunderstorms.
Lemone is also interested in a process
called molecular conduction. Here, the warmer
air near the earth’s surface moves upward
toward the cooler air in such a way that heat is
transferred upward. During this process, faster
moving molecules of warmer air bump into the
colder air’s slower molecules. This bumping
causes the slower molecules to move a little
faster, thus warming the colder air. And, it
causes the faster molecules to move a little
In squall lines, we still have air that is
moist and unstable. In this particular case
though, the unstable moist air is concentrated
along a narrow corridor. This atmospheric
61
concentration is usually due to what is called a
cold front. In a cold front, a large mass of cold
air from the north moves southward, pushing
aside the warmer air in its path. This cold air
“wedge” forces warm air to rise.
Because the warmer air meets the
conditions of being moist and unstable, it can
lead to the formation of thunderstorms. And,
since the cold air is heavier than warm air and it
is also stable, the “walls” of the corridor are
maintained. Thunderstorms which form are
confined to this corridor. The corridor and
thunderstorms will move as the cold front
wedge continues to move from north to south.
Dr. Margaret Lemone’s research has
taken her on airplane trips through numerous
cloud systems, including thunderstorms and
hurricanes to help broaden our knowledge.
Because of her work, we more clearly
understand how thunderstorms are organized in
lines, and how these cloud lines affect the air’s
motion in the lowest part of the atmosphere.
References
Thunderstorm Morphology and Dynamic. 2nd
ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1986.
The Thunderstorms. Louis J. Battan. New
American Library, New York, 1964.
62
EARTH SCIENCE: ATMOSPHERE &
WEATHER
wavelengths. The earth’s emissions are in what
are called thermal infrared regions.
Warren Morton Washington (1936- )
Here is where the earth’s atmosphere
comes into the picture. The atmosphere behaves
differently at different wavelengths. Of all the
solar energy entering the planet, about 30% is
reflected back to space by clouds, the earth’s
surface and atmospheric gases. Another 20 % is
absorbed by atmospheric gases, mostly by the
ozone which absorbs energy in the UV and
visible ranges. Water vapor and carbon dioxide
is absorbed into the near-infrared region. The
earth’s surface absorbs the remaining 50 % of
the sun’s emissions, so the surface of our planet
becomes warmer.
METEOROLOGIST WHO STUDIES THE
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
Born in Portland, Oregon on August 28,
1936, Warren Morton Washington went on to
graduate from both Oregon State University
with a B.S. degree in physics, and from
Pennsylvania State University where he
received a Ph.D. in meteorology. In fact, Dr.
Washington was only the second AfroAmerican in history to receive a doctorate in
that subject. His research efforts were initially
in the area of meteorology, but more recently he
has studied the greenhouse effect and its
deterioration of our planet.
Thermal energy emitted by the earth
seeks a different atmosphere – clouds, water
vapor and carbon dioxide – which are strong
absorbers of radiation at the thermal infrared
wavelengths. So, the earth’s atmosphere is
warmed as much by thermal infrared radiation
from its surface as by the energy (radiation)
from the sun.
As an introduction to the greenhouse
effect, we must understand that it is not entirely
bad --- the Earth is able to support life because
of the greenhouse effect. Without it, the Earth
surface would measure about 20 C below zero
instead of 13 C above zero. Problems with this
natural phenomena occur because of man’s
pollution and neglect, to the point where a
natural balance is getting more and more
difficult to maintain. Basically, our biggest
concerns are with the gases that we add to the
atmosphere because these are increasing the
warming effect.
And, the atmosphere itself emits thermal
infrared radiation. Some goes out into space,
while the rest comes back toward earth. Thus,
the earth’s surface is warmed not only by the
sun, but also by the earth’s own atmosphere in
the form of thermal infrared radiation. This is
the naturally-occurring greenhouse effect.
The dangers to our atmosphere come
with the many gases we emit during our
everyday activities. These gases are very strong
absorbers of thermal infrared radiation. And, as
they accumulate in our atmosphere, the
atmosphere is better able to absorb and emit
them, so more energy is emitted downward to
the earth’s surface than normal. The result is
that the earth’s surface is warmed beyond what
would normally occur, and its natural balance is
disturbed.
We all understand the general principle
that the earth is warmed by the sun – that the
sun emits energy and the earth and its
atmosphere absorb that energy. Most of the
sun’s energy covers the ultraviolet [UV], visible
and near-infrared regions. Only a small fraction
of this energy is intercepted by the earth.
In order for there to be some balance of
energy flow, the earth itself emits energy flow,
the earth itself emits energy back to space.
However, the earth emits energy at longer
wavelengths becaue it is much colder than the
sun, and the sun emits energy at the shorter
This can lead to an atmosphere which
holds more water vapor, which is itself a
greenhouse gas, thus adding to the warming
63
greenhouse effect. Snow and ice are good
reflectors of solar radiation, so they help cool
the planet. But, with a warmer earth, there is
less snow and ice, and less reflection of solar
radiation back to space. These along with other
environmental and climatic changes due to the
build-up of greenhouse gases, add to the
warming effect of our planet and further upset
the balance of nature.
Dr. Warren Washington is currently
director of a division of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research.
References
Greenhouse Effect and it Impact on Africa.
London: Institute for African Alternatives,
1990.
Policy Options for Stabilizing Global Climate.
Hemisphere Pub. Corp, New York, 1990.
Our Drowning World: Population, Pollution
and Future Weather. Antony Milne. Prism
Press, Dorset, England: Avery Pub. Group,
New York, 1988.
64
EARTH SCIENCE: ATMOSPHERE &
WEATHER
the liquid’s atoms, there could be many different
reactions.
Donald Glaser (1926 - )
In the simplest case, a high energy
particle increased in energy and extra particles
were produced. Bubbles that formed in the
chamber showed the path that particles traveled
through the liquid. Photography could then be
taken, showing these paths from many angles.
INVENTOR OF THE BUBBLE CHAMBER
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1926,
Donald Glaser gook up the study of both
mathematics and physics while in college. After
completing his bachelor’s degree in these
subjects at the Case Institute of Technology, he
earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and physics at
the California Institute of Technology in 1950.
Dr. Donald Glaser’s work has provided
precise information about thigh energy particles
including masses, lifetimes, and decay modes
never before available to science.
During the decade that followed, the
scientific community was developing a giant
particle accelerator, forerunner of today’s
modern supercolliders. Scientists using these
accelerators were generating high energy
particles, but they had no clear or reasonable
way to study them. So, Dr. Glaser set about
studying the properties of various liquids and
solids which he thought might make the
observation of high energy particles more
practical.
References
The Principles of Cloud-Chamber Technique.
J.G. Wilson. Cambridge University Press.
1951.
Cloud Chamber Photographs of Cosmic
Radiation. George D. Rochester. New York,
Academic Press, Londong, Pergamon Press,
1952.
Fundamental Theories in Physics Proceedings,
Orbis Scientiae, New York, Plenum Press, vii,
248p. 1974.
Glaser was fascinated with the instability
of superheated liquids. He reasoned that, if we
greatly reduce the surface tension of a
superheated liquid – increasing vapor pressure
at the same time – we should be able to see
ionizing radiation passing through the liquid in
the form of bubbles. High Energy particles
(ionizing particles) produced by colliders are too
small to be seen by the human eye, and too fast
to be effectively detected. So, using the
superheated liquid, scientists would be able to
observe them and follow the particles’ paths.
Cloud and Bubble Chambers. Cyril Henderson.
Methuen, London, 1970.
In 1960, Dr. Donald Glaser was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Physics for hi invention of
the bubble chamber – a device to detect the
paths of high energy atomic particles. As these
ionizing particles were generated by particle
accelerators, they traveled into the bubble
chamber through a superheated liquid such as
liquid hydrogen, deuterium, or helium. As these
high energy particles passed near the nuclei of
65
Observatory. Dr. Pickering held an unpopular
belief that certain types of astronomical research
could best be done by women. So, he had
several women on his research staff and invited
Miss cannon to join them.
EARTH SCIENCE: SOLAR SYSTEM,
GALAXY & UNIVERSE
Annie Jump Cannon (1863- 1941)
“CENSUS TAKER OF THE SKY”
Now thirty-four, Annie found herself
entering yet another phase of her career. Her
job at the Harvard Observatory was to classify
stars according to their spectra. As seen through
a telescope, stars are tiny dots of light with
features of brightness and color only. When the
light of a star is passed through a prism at the
end of a telescope, a ribbon of multicolored
lights like a rainbow results – much like that
candelabrum in the attic when Annie was a
child.
As a child, Annie Jump Cannon would
climb up into the attic of her home in Dover,
Delaware. Peering beyond the treetops, she
developed the ability to recognize constellations
and larger starts. By candlelight, she tirelessly
reviewed the astrological charts she found in
one of her mother’s textbooks. In fact, Annie
would light the attic with a candelabrum
decorated with long glass prisms. She enjoyed
watching the rainbow colored lights cast by
these prisms onto the floor, the walls and the
ceiling.
While in school at the Dover Academy,
Annie’s teachers determined that she had
unusual abilities which should be encouraged.
But, in the 1800’s, society frowned on women
attending college for intellectual challenge.
They believed this type of experience would
break a woman’s mind and health. Fortunately,
Annie’s father was a little more enlightened and
traveled north to locate more advanced schools
for his daughter. He settled on Wellesley in
Massachusetts.
These star spectra are crossed from top
to bottom by dark lines and bands; every color
and band has meaning. A star is made up of
various elements. These elements give off
various radiations at different wavelengths,
causing the different colors – a star’s spectrum.
A detailed spectrum analysis can tell an
astronomer the elements of a star’s make-up.
Taking into account all of the colors and bands,
not only the star’s composition, but also its
temperature, speed of rotation, size, and the
speed at which it moves through space can be
determined.
It was not until her mother’s death, many
years after Annie had earned her bachelor’s
degree in science and had returned to Dover,
that she turned her attention back to astronomy.
This loss proved devastating for Annie and she
turned to the heavens in her quest to find
answers to the meaning of life. The questions
which arose during this star searching occupied
her mind and provided many hours of relief
from overwhelming grief and loneliness.
Ms. Cannon reviewed thousands of star
spectra on photographic plates which came into
the Harvard Observatory. This work resulted in
the largest single library of information about
stars. Prior to Annie’s work, there was no
standard system for recording all of the data.
So, she revamped the inadequate Henry Draper
classification scheme which used 28 spectral
classes and their subdivisions. This system is
now called the Harvard system.
Annie eventually realized that she had to
keep her mind occupied, so she returned to
Wellesley and Radcliffe and took graduate
courses in astronomy, mathematics, and physics.
At Radcliffe, she came to know Dr. Edward C.
Pickering, director of Harvard University’s
Dr. Cannon’s work was recorded into
what are called the Henry Draper Catalogues,
where the spectra of some 400,000 stars are
documented. This catalogue is of great
importance to astronomers all over the world
66
because its classifications are the work of a
single observer.
Other contributions included the
discovery of five of the infrequent Novae – stars
that blaze with a great intensity, then suddenly
die down again a star’s explosion. Annie Jump
Cannon also discovered some 300 variable
starts, whose brightness varies. First they glow,
brightly, then dim, and then glow brightly again.
References
An Atlas of Stellar Spectra: With an Outline of
Spectral Classification. W.W. Morgan, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL 1943.
The Story of Variable Stars. Leon Campbell.
The Blakiston Co., Philadelphia, 1941.
Nineteen Maps of the Small Magellanie Cloud
Presenting the Harvard Variables. Sergei
Gaposchkin. Harvard College Observatory,
Cambridge, 1966.
67
Banneker farm. The Ellicotts were working
toward developing the area into a successful
center for wheat and flour milling, complete
with saw mills, flour mills, an iron foundry and
a general store. One of the Ellicott brothers had
a son, George, who was interested in science.
Benjamin enjoyed the friendship of his
neighbors, especially George because of their
common interest in science. Banneker taught
himself astronomy using textbooks George
loaned him, and the pair used the mills as an
observatory.
EATH SCIENCE: SOLAR SYSTEM,
GALAXY AND UNIVERSE
Benjamin Banneker (1731 – 1806)
ASTRONOMER, INVENTOR, WRITER
AND MATHMATICIAN
Benjamin Banneker was born in
November of 1731 in Baltimore County,
Maryland. His father, Robert, was a freed
Negro slave who took his wife’s surname at the
time of their marriage because he did not have
one of his own. Benjamin’s mother was the
daughter of an indentured English woman and a
freed Negro slave. It was this maternal
grandmother who was able to establish a small
tobacco farm and purchase two slaves. She then
gave them their freedom and married one of the
two – Banneker. He is said to have been an
African prince.
Banneker even learned to project lunar
and solar eclipses, and to calculate an ephemeris
(a table giving the predicted positions of solar
bodies over a period of time).
During that same year, U.S. President
George Washington appointed Major Andrew
Ellicott, a cousin of George, to survey the
Federal Territory (now Washington, D.C.)
because it was the site of the new national
capital. The Major needed someone competent
to serve as his assistant and to use scientific
equipment. He met Banneker on a visit to the
Mills. After a few hints from George, Major
Ellicott enlisted Banneker as his scientific
assistant until such time as the Major’s brothers
could join him. At that time, Banneker returned
to his farm and continued his astronomical
observations.
Benjamin’s father purchased a 100– acre
farm with is savings and built a log cabin home.
Benjamin was raised and spent most of his years
here. Grandmother taught him to read and write
using the Bible, and he also attended the local
school.
Benjamin had a healthy appetite for
reading, but books were scarce. So, he taught
himself literature, history, and mathematics
during the hours following his workday on the
farm. He excelled in math, and enjoyed
collecting and creating mathematical puzzles.
He eventually took over his parent’s farm and
was excellent at this, too.
With the help of George Ellicott and the
Pennsylvania and Maryland abolition societies,
his ephemeredes were finally published in 1792
as part of a series of almanacs that carried
Banneker’s name. In fact, the almanacs were
such a success that he took up calculations for
future publications full time.
One day, a traveling salesman showed
Benjamin a pocket watch. He had never seen
such a thing and was so fascinated by it that the
salesman gave it to him. Its gears and wheels
struck Banneker as a mathematical challenge.
He went on to design and build the first allwood striking clock ever built in the United
States. It kept perfect time for some 40 years.
Prior to its publication, Banneker had
sent a copy of his ephemeris to Thomas
Jefferson, who was then the Secretary of State.
Jefferson was so impressed with Banneker’s
work that he forwarded it to the Academie des
Sciences in Paris, along with a letter in which
Banneker urged the abolition of Negro slavery.
The Academie did not have a chance to act on
In 1771, the five Ellicott brothers
purchased a tract of land adjacent to the
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this body of work because the French
Revolution began. But, Banneker and Jefferson
began corresponding, and some of these letters
were included in future almanacs.
Just short of his 75th birthday, Benjamin
Banneker died. During his burial, Banneker’s
house caught fire and burned to the ground,
destroying all its contents – including the
wooden clock, his books and his writings.
Fortunately, however, all the books and
instruments which had been loaned to him by
George Elliott had just been returned.
Among these articles was found a book
of entries of accounts and astronomical notes.
Also, his astronomical journal, which contained
the original collection of calculations for each of
Banneker’s ephemeredes, a selection of
borrowed scientific works, some of his creative
writings, the original manuscrips of his first
almanac of 1792, and a few personal letters.
Banneker’s scientific works have been
examined, and modern scientists confirm that he
was an extremely accomplished mathematician.
His ephemeredes rank highly among others
compiled by leading scientists of the same time
period. And, he was living proof that all mean
are created equal. As Senator Majes McHenry
said of Banneker: “I consider this Negro as a
fresh proof that the powers of the mind are
disconnected with the color of skin.”
References
The Life of Benjamin Banneker. Silvio Bedini.
Scribner, New York, 1971.
Memoir of Benjamin Banneker. John H.B.
Latrobe. Printed by John D. Toy, Baltimore,
1845.
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EARTH SCIENCE: SOLAR SYSTEM,
GALAXY & UNIVERSE
together – called double stars – and measured
hundreds of them.
Sir William Herschel (1738 - 1822)
During an observation of double stars in
March of 1781, Herschel saw a pair in which he
believed one of the stars was a comet or a
nebula. (Nebula refers to a star that lacks a
definite shape or form). When Herschel looked
for this days later, he discovered it had moved.
So, he recorded its new position and began
tracking it regularly. This “comet” turned out to
be the planet Uranus, originally called
Georgium sidus or star of George after King
George III of England. IN honor of this
discovery, Herschel was presented the Copley
Medal of the Royal Society.
DISCOVERED THE PLANET URANUS
Sir William Herschel, originally
Friedrich Wilhelm, was born in Hanover,
Germany, the son of a musician in the
Hanoverian guard. At age 14, Herschel joined
the guard himself, and some years later left
Hanover for Yorkshire, England. After
conducting a military band there, he moved to
Leeds, England, to be a concert manager.
It was during these years that Herschel
began to make notes on his observations of the
stars. Once his sister, Caroline, came to live
with him, Herschel’s interest in astronomy
grew. He purchased textbooks on the subject,
and equipment such as a two-foot reflecting
telescope. Thus began a new phase of his life.
King George III then began to support
Herschel’s work by moving him into a newlybuilt observatory. Later, the work of Herschel
and his sister Caroline led to royal support for
construction of a new 40-foot telescope, the
largest of its time. He subsequently made a
number of other discoveries including satellites
to the planet Uranus.
Herschel soon realized that larger
reflecting telescopes were very expensive. And,
since he could not find exactly what he wanted,
Herschel began to design and build his own.
With the help of his sister and brother, over 400
telescope mirrors were ground and polished. Of
the various kinds of mountings they made, a
seven-foot Newtonian telescope became his
prize.
In his paper, “Motion of the Solar
System in space” (1783) Herschel carefully
documented the movements of seven bright
stars, and showed that their movements
converge on a fixed point over time – the point
form which the sun is receding.
He also developed a map of the Milky
Way by making calculations and counts of
visible double stars. This map dating back to
the late 1700’s has been shown to be generally
accurate.
During early observations, Herschel
viewed the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter,
and the details of our moon. He even calculated
the height of the mountains on the moon’s
surface. Then, in 1777, he turned his attention
Mira Ceti, a star whose brightness varied
periodically. The idea behind this “annual
parallax” is that the apparent relative positions
of stars shift as the earth circles the sun.
References
William Herschel and His Work. James Sime.
T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1900.
These kinds of measurements were
difficult to make. In fact, the first annual
parallax was not measured until 1838.
However, Herschel did observe the relative
positions of pairs of stars which are close
William Herschel and the Construction of the
Heavens. Michale Hoskins. American Elsevier
Pub. Co., New York, 1963.
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Stories of Scientific Discovery. D.B.
Hammond. The University Press, Cambridge,
England, 1933.
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APPENDIX A
CULTURALLY RELEVANT
MATERIALS FOR
SCIENCE EDUCATION
MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
CULTURALLY RELEVANT MATERIAL FOR INTEGRATION INTO THE STATE
K – 12 SCIENCE OBJECTIVES
The Michigan Department of Education, in an effort to promote an academic environment that fosters
equity for all students, is recommending the integration of culturally relevant material into the state
science objectives. The purpose of this material is to provide sample resources for teachers that
demonstrate the significant achievements in important scientific fields made by women and various
minority groups. Integrating culturally relevant material into the science curriculum should be guided
by goals that promote the following concepts.
 Relating the study of science to familiar perspectives of diverse cultural and racial groups that are
traditionally underrepresented in science, e.g., African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and
females.
 Presenting scientific concepts and experiences to promote an understanding and appreciation of
different cultures and their influence on the nature and structure of the scientific enterprise.
 Creating a learning environment that reflects equitable contributions to support and encourage the
pursuit of science as a career.
Culturally relevant science education embraces multiple levels of integration. These include the
following approaches: 1) featuring significant contributions and achievements of selected role models,
2) restructuring or transforming the curriculum to include scientific concepts embedded in multicultural
perspectives, and 3) developing thinking and decision making skills to promote positive, cultural change
through scientific means. Implementing a variety of approaches can result in an enriched multicultural
curriculum that provides effective instruction and optimum outcomes for all students.
The K-12 science objectives feature 13 content areas which provide the framework for the essential
knowledge that all students should attain to achieve scientific literacy. The following compilation
identifies examples of male and female scientists from many ethnic backgrounds. These scientists were
selected because their achievements relate to the concepts in the objectives. They demonstrate that
many groups have contributed, throughout the years, to science and technology. Teachers are
encouraged to supplement this list with other examples that may represent additional underrepresented
groups.
For more information about culturally relevant material, please contact the Michigan Department of
Education, Science Education Specialist, at (517) 373-4223.
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Culturally Relevant Material
Examples Connected to the State Science Objectives
LIFE SCIENCE
Cells
Katherine Esau (1898 -) known as an expert on the subject of plant viruses, focused her
research on cells and tissues that produce food for plants. Her studies led to a greater understanding of
the physiological and structural features of the phloem tissue.
Ernest E. Just (1883-1941) devoted a significant part of his life’s work to cell physiology. He
focused his research on understanding life itself and evolution through the study of cells.
Frank Young (1931 -) conducted extensive research in fundamental genetics of bacteria and
bacteria cells. His primary goal as commissioner of the United States Food & Drug Administration is to
find effective drugs and vaccines for AIDS.
Organization of Living Things
Gerty Theresa Cori (1896-1957) along with her husband, investigated how the body grows and
the chemical processes performed in food digestion. Gerty Cori’s research lead to these chemical
changes being named the Cori Cycle. She shared with her husband the 1947 Nobel Prize in medicine
and physiology.
Daniel Hale Williams (1858-1931) in 1893, was the first surgeon anywhere to perform a
successful heart operation. He founded Provident Hospital in Chicago which was the first interracial
hospital established in America. During his first year as chief surgeon at Freedman’s Hospital in
Washington D.C., he performed 533 operations.
Robert K. Jarvik (1946-) invented the Jarvik-7 artificial heart. Dr. Barney Clark, the first
recipient of the Jarvik-7 survived 112 days with the artificial heart. Improvements on this technology
have helped to prolong lives threatened with heart disease.
ECOSYSTEMS
Rachel Carson (1907- 1964) was concerned about the environment and the conservation of the
nation’s wild birds, mammals, fish, and other forms of wildlife. She devoted much of her life to
preventing the destruction or depletion of our natural resources. Her book, “Silent Spring” warned of
the dangers of pesticides and their damaging effects on the environment.
Grace Chow is a civil engineer who is concerned about protecting our natural environment.
Grace and colleagues developed a system for recycling waste water. Once recycled, the water is treated
and used for irrigation of farms, parks and golf courses.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) is considered the father of our modern day environmental
movement. His studies of wildlife enabled him to form the principle of the science of wildlife
management. He also developed the land ethic which reflects a conviction of individual responsibility
for the health of the land.
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Heredity
Barbara McClintock (1902- ) devoted many years of her life to studying and cross breeding the
corn plant. She provided the instability of genes and their relationship to the organisms as a while.
This breakthrough opened avenues for more research in the field of genetics.
James E. Bowman, Jr. (1923- ) identified the genetic structure of red blood cell enzyme and
hemoglobin differences in various populations around the world. He promoted changes in legislation
regulations related to sickle cell traits and disease. Dr. Bowman has authored more than 80 scientific
publications in the field of human genetics.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) experimented with methods for improvement of cultivated plants.
His principle work, plant hybridization, was the outcome of ten years of tedious experiments in plant
growing and crossing, seed gathering, and careful observing, labeling, sorting and counting almost
30,000 plants.
Evolution
James Goodall (1931-1990) has devoted her career to learning about humankind through the
study of apes. She lived with the apes, became their friend, and gained their confidence. Her research
on apes has revealed information on the study of prehistoric man and his evolutionary development.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was an anthropologist who lived among primitive cultures and
compared them to more civilized cultures. Her study provided insight for further research in the field of
anthropology.
Charles Darwin (1809-1822), long considered the father of the theory of evolution, performed
experiments to prove that evolution takes place by a process called natural selection. “Survival of the
Fittest” was Darwin’s explanation of why man has become the highest form of animal on earth.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE
Matter and Energy
Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was a physicist at a time when women in the sciences were met with
great opposition. She became a major contributor to the world of science with her theories and
discoveries in atomic fission. Her years of work made the use of atomic energy and power possible for
all.
Meredith C. Gourdine (1929- ) as an engineering scientist, developed the process of
refrigeration for preserving food, supplying cheaper power for heat and light, and removing salt from
sea water, making it safe to drink. He is best known for his work in electrodynamics in which he
discovered a way to produce high voltage electricity from natural gas.
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) began his life’s work on theories of the behavior of electrodes in
solids. His work with the neutron led to discoveries of a nuclear chain reaction that produce incredible
amounts of energy in a split second and the use of the atomic fission reaction during World War II.
Fermi was honored for his work with the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938.
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Changes in Matter
Marie Curie (1867-1934) discovered the elements radium and polonium. She was one of only
two scientists in history to receive to Nobel Prizes.
Chien Shiung Wu (1915- ) distinguished herself in the field of nuclear physics by devoting her
career to studying the nucleus, or core, of the atom particle. In her further research, she perfected the
development of radiation detection devices. She was the first woman to teach the subject of physics at a
major American university.
John Dalton (1766-1844) is considered the “father of the atomic theory” because of his work in
chemistry. This theory states that all matter, not just gases, consist of small particles called atoms.
Motion of Objects
Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906-1972) became the first physicist to explain how the particles in
the nucleus are arranged. She was also part of the Manhattan project, the secret bomb development
research team, during World War II. Her hard work was rewarded when she accepted the 1963 Nobel
Prize for physics, becoming only the second woman in history to receive the honor.
Robert McNair (1950-1986) received a doctorate in physics and received national recognition
for his work in laser physics. In 1978, as one of only 35 applicants from a pool of 10,000 to be accepted
into NASA’s astronaut program, he became the second African American to fly in space. His promising
career was cut short in January 1986, when he and six other crew members died in the explosion of the
space shuttle Challenger.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) conceptualized the law of relativity, a very important theory which
stated that everything is in fact in a constant state of motion. This motion is dependent upon the
relationship of the object and the observer’s perception of the object. In 1922, Einstein was awarded the
Nobel Prize in physics.
Waves and Vibration
Shirley Ann Jackson (1946- ) has performed outstanding work at the Fermi Accelerator
Laboratory in the area of nuclear research as a theoretical solid state physicist. One of her best known
research projects was the study of the force that holds the hadron (proton and neutron) together.
Louis Howard Latimer (1848-1928) patented a process for making a carbon filament for light
bulbs and also invented the bulb’s threaded socket. He worked with Thomas Edison and introduced a
new dimension to electrical lighting.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) invented the telegraph and then the telephone. He
developed an instrument designed to carry sound. This proved that sound wave vibrations could be
turned into a fluctuating electric current that could be reconverted into sound waves identical with the
original at the other end of the circuit. In 1950, Bell was elected to a niche in the Hall of Fame for Great
Americans.
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EARTH SCIENCE
Geosphere
Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1972) made seven expeditions into the Arctic region in search of
scientific data. Her expeditions charted, photographed and mapped the East Greenland Fiord region. In
1955, in her sixties, she was the first woman to fly over the North Pole.
Matthew Alexander Henson (1866-1955) as an invaluable contributor to Admiral Peary’s
expedition demonstrated his expertise in navigation by the stars. He was awarded a medal in 1909 from
the Geographical Society of Chicago as “the first Negro in the country to be honored for scientific
achievement in the geographical fields.” Finally, in 1944, the congress of the United States recognized
his part in the quest toward the North Pole with the issue and presentation of a medal.
Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920) was driven by an early goal to be the first man to reach the
North Pole. He pursued this treacherous journey by exploring the continent of Greenland and proving to
the world that it was an island. On April 6, 1909, Admiral Peary and his men reached a 23-year goal,
they crossed the North Pole.
Hydrosphere
Eugenie Clark (1922- ) nicknames “the shark lady” led a celebrated career as an oceanographer.
Her book Lady With A Spear describes stories from her years of underwater exploration and
experimentation. Among her long list of achievements are studies of reproductive behaviors of certain
fish species and explanations of behavior patters of sharks.
Sylvia Earle (1935- ) began her study of marine botany after realizing that everything on earth is
dependent on plants. She spent over 5,000 hours conducting research under the surface of the sea.
During her years of study, she led or participated in 40 expeditions of all the major oceans of the world.
Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) devoted his years in the navy to the study of ocean
winds and currents. His research brought him international acclaim as he contributed to the world a new
understanding of how to better control the ocean. His efforts made ocean travel safer and easier for
those who came after him.
Atmosphere and weather
Margaret Lemone (1946- ) as a meteorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
looks at how thunderstorms become organized in lines and how these cloud lines affect the air motion
through the lowest part of the Earth’s atmosphere. Her research has taken her on air flights through
numerous cloud systems, including ocean thunderstorms and hurricanes.
Warren Washington (1936- ) is currently the director of a division of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research. His research involves the examination of the greenhouse effect and the possible
deterioration of the planet brought on by industrial growth and waste. He was the second African
American to earn a Ph.D. degree in meteorology.
Donald Glasser (1926- ) won the 1960 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the bubble
chamber. His invention allows scientists to find new, precise data and pictorial information about high
energy particles in the air that were not understood before.
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Solar System, Galaxy and Universe
Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) acquired an early interest in constellations and large stars.
This interest led her to become the world’s most famous woman astronomer. She has classified almost
400,000 stellar bodies resulting in her being called the “Census Taker of the Sky.” She developed a
classification system that the Harvard Observatory still uses today.
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) was an early American astronomer who was extremely
competent in astronomical studies. His aptitude in mathematics and knowledge of astronomy enabled
him to predict the solar eclipse that took place on April 14, 1789. He developed an almanac believed to
be the most accurate of his time. Banneker also produced the first wooden clock ever built in the United
States.
William Herschel (1738-1822) devoted his entire life to astronomy. He recorded observations
daily using a telescope that he made himself. He discovered the planet Uranus, which was the first
planet discovered in historical times.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Michigan Department of Education
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
ROBERT E. SCHILLER
Bureau of Education Services
TERESSA V. STATEN
Associate Superintendent
School Program Services
ANNE L. HANSEN
Director
Curriculum Development Program
NANCY C. MINCEMOYER
Acting Supervisor
Science Education Specialist
MOZELL P. LANG
Science Education Consultant
THERON D. BLAKESLEE
Graphic Designer
STEPHEN LIGHT
Project Coordinator
MOZELL P. LANG
Project Writers
Life and Earth Science
RICHARD A JEETER
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI
Physical Science
MICHAEL FISHER
Glen Oaks Community College
Centreville, MI
Editor
LAURIE KIPP KLECHA
Consultant in Communications & Public Relations
Lansing, MI
March, 1992
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