Einstein’s Successors and
Their Creativity
By Tom Cardaro
Area of Research
 I’m going to be exploring why the next
Einstein could be a woman, how long
women have been competent scientists,
why it has taken women this long to be
acknowledged, and the list of women who
have the best shot at being Einstein’s
successor.
21st Century Mysteries
• Successors of Einstein are trying to figure
out mysteries surrounding:
– Ghostly neutrinos
– Rolled-up dimensions
– Clouds of super-cooled gas that can freeze
lightbeams
Who are Einstein’s Successors?
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Many are women
Womens’s work counters the claim that women
might be innately less suited for math and
science
This hypothesis was raised by Harvard President
Lawrence Summers in January.
Time Magazine’s cover in January: “Who Says a
Woman Can’t Be Einstein?”
Women of the Einsteinian
Revolution
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Women were involved
Einstein’s first wife, mathematician
Mileva Maric, was said to have helped
Einstein with his research during his
miracle year of 1905.
Einstein referred to the research as
“our work” in letters to Mileva.
Women of the Einsteinian
Revolution Cont’d
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In 1905, Marie Currie won 2 Nobel
Prizes for her research on radioactivity.
She participated with Einstein at the
Solvay Conferences in the early 20th
century.
Currie’s daughter, Irene Joliot-Currie
won her share of a Nobel a decade
later.
Woman Scientist Downsides
 Over
the decades, women have had to
cope with social stereotypes and
discrimination which made it hard for them
to advance to higher halls of research.
 The tides started to turn only as recently
as in the past generation.
Women Scientist Statistics
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There is still a huge gender gap in
academia
Only 7% of the tenured and tenure-track
positions are filled by women in the top 50
research universities.
Women are more likely to make the next
scientific breakthrough.
Because of the collaborative nature of
scientific research, the next breakthrough
paper will list female as well as male
names.
Einstein’s Female Successors
 Presumptuous to just label candidate as
“another Einstein.”
 Pioneers in particle physics and
cosmology
 A couple are from Harvard
Lene Vestergaard Hau
Danish-born
Studies Bose-Einstein condensates which are
clouds of ultra-cold atoms whose behavior was
predicted by Einstein’s theories.
The clouds act like one big atom
Clouds created in a lab only a decade ago
Using lasers, Hau has been able to slow pulses
of light in the atom cloud to a dead stop then
start it up again
Deborah Jin
 Received MacArthur in 2003 for her work with
ultra-cold condensates
 Figured out how to create a “super atom” from a
class of quantum particles known as fermions
 This class contains the subatomic particles:
protons, neutrons, electrons
 The process works with “ordinary stuff”
meaning that it could lead toward breakthrough
technologies ranging from better atomic clocks
to superconducting circuitry
Janet Conrad
• Physics professor at Columbia University in New
York who commutes to Fermilab in Chicago to
work on experiments relating to neutrinos.
• Might hold key to mysteries of dark matter and
dark energy
• Focus of work is a 40-foot-round, oil-filled metal
sphere designed to detect the oscillations
between different “flavors” of neutrinos.
• Results could help physicists readjust their
calculations for the universe’s matter content;
the standard model
Ann Nelson
 Nelson
concentrates on theories that
go beyond the standard model at the
University of Washington
 Proposed an explanation that links
dark energy interactions between
neutrinos and particles called
accelerons.
 The expansion of the universe should
slow down to crawl in a billion years.
Marcela Carena
► Has
worked on at least six mysteries of
modern physics including dark matter,
supersymmetry, extra dimensions, matterantimatter imbalance, Higgs boson, and the
grand unified theory
► Key question has to do with finding the
energy level that marks the transition
between ordinary particles and
supersymmetric particles
Maria Spiropulu
 Looking into supersymmetric particles and
other phenomena beyond the standard model
 Could point to extra dimensions
 Gearing up for the 2007 startup of the greatest
particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider
 Promises that the LHC experiments will stun
the world and realize some of Einstein’s
dreams about bridging the gaps in theories
relating to particle physics, gravity, and
cosmology
Lisa Randall
Trying to figure out how to make out of
string theory
Possible dimension rolled up into compact
scales that can’t be measured
Possible infinite dimension that blends in
with others but in very small scales
Five-dimensional theory could answer the
question, Why is gravity so much weaker
than the other fundamental forces of
physics?
Licia Verde
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Behind the highest-resolution picture ever made of
the Big Bang’s microwave afterglow, produced
WMAP
University of Pennsylvania cosmologist trying to
build on results and figure out how the universe’s rate
of expansion has changed over time
Using the light observed in certain kinds of galaxies
as “cosmic chronometers,” matching up their ages
with outward velocity
Could show how dark energy’s effect has changed
over the course of billions of years
Eva Silverstein
1999 MacArthur Fellow and a string
theorist at Stanford
Studying subjects ranging from dark
energy and the accelerating universe to
cosmic and the fabric of space-time
Concepts include references to donut-hole
“handles” in space continuum that can
appear and decay dynamicallyfundamental questions go back to
Einstein’s day
Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara
Played a key role in developing LQG, an
alternative to string theory
 LQG seeks to fulfill Einstein’s dream of unifying
quantum theory and general relativity
 LQG doesn’t dwell on extra rolled-up dimensions
of space
 Lays out a mathematical system of loops that
interact to form “spin networks,” the quantum
foundations for the realities that each of us
perceive
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Wendy Freedman
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Led the effort to calculate the Hubble constant,
which describes the universe’s expansion rate
Concluded that the universe is expanding at a
rate of 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec
with a 10% error margin
Astronomers used the number to estimate that the
universe is 13 to 14 billion years old
Angela Olinto
• Working with the biggest particle
accelerator of them all: the flux of highenergy cosmic rays from far-flung regions
of space
• The University of Chicago astrophysicist
studies particle phenomena that can reach
energies 100 million times than those
achieved by the Large Hadron Collider
Relations to Einstein
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Lene Vestergaard Hau worked on theoretical
physics and was able to slow down and stop a
beam of light
Deborah Jin won a genius grant award and was
named researcher of the year
Also born in Europe and having worked in
Switzerland, Maria Spiropulu has some of the
most far-reaching ideas just like Einstein
Relations to Einstein
Cont’d
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Lisa Randall was the first tenured female
physicist at Princeton and she worked on
particle theories and space-time just like
Einstein
Eva Silverstein is working on string theory
and space-time
Fotini Kalamara is a theoretical physicist in
mathematics and quantum mechanics
Summary
Despite what one may think, women are just as
competent in the various fields of science as
men are
They are the pioneers of many of today’s
scientific breakthroughs
There is a higher probability that a woman will
write the next big scientific paper.
The twelve female scientists mentioned are just
a few of the ones who could become Einstein’s
successer.
Many of the females have things that connect
them to Einstein
Sources
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A Century of Einstein: Women on the
Frontier:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7374458/p
age/1/