Did anyone see NOVA's Einstein's big idea on the legacy of great women in

[NNadir]

science?

I don't regularly watch NOVA anymore, but my wife encouraged me to watch tonight's program, Einsteins Big Idea with my kids.

It was basically a re-enactment of the lives of some important scientists who laid the groundwork for Einstein's famous equation.

Oddly enough, or maybe better put, appropriately enough, there quite a bit in their about great women in science. Many people are familiar of course with Lise Meitner, the great physicist who correctly explained nuclear fission for the first time and went on to be screwed out of a Nobel Prize for her work. But there were two great women scientists identified of whom I was unaware.

Probably the pre-eminent among these was Emile du Chatelet, who, in spite of being a woman in age where the role of women in science was strictly more or less forbidden, demonstrated the concept of energy as a function of the square of velocity. Until tonight I must admit I was completely unfamiliar with her.

The other great woman scientist was Lavosier's wife, Marie Ann Lavosier, who apparently played an important role in his discoveries, the most important of which were the conservation of mass and the elements oxygen and hydrogen.

It was a nice show, a little hammy, but overall well done I thought. I recommend it.

[we can do it]

1. GREAT SHOW -

Too bad we never heard of any of the women before, however it is not surprising.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. Here is a brief bio of Emilie du Chatelet

http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/chatelet.htm

[Democrats_win]

4. Her part of this program is great too.

[Democrats_win]

3. Wonderful show.

[mzteris]

5. You forgot his WIFE!

My son said he thinks she was the "real brains" behind a lot of his 1905 work.

He also said, "Mom, what would it be if you squared C-squared? You know C to the 4th power? would that change things?" "But if you can't GO any faster than the speed of light, how can you square it?"

My son wants to explore string theory, too. I can see what we'll be doing all day tomorrow.....

Oh - yeah - NOVA has weblinks and other discussions about this and other shows. Classroom activities, too.....

(btw - Whatever happened to Einstein's son? Does he have descendents living today? )

[NNadir]

7. The role of Einstein's wife in his work has been over represented.

Dr. Maric had no scientific career after her divorce. She failed her doctoral examinations on the first pass. She never published important work in physics under her own name, even though she lived until 1948.

Einstein had a very passionate romance with her, and there is no doubt that she was a sounding board for many of his ideas since she certainly was literate in physics, but there is little to support the romantic contention that she, and not Einstein, was the either the author or the originator of his great scientific work.

Meitner and her newphew Frisch, on the other hand, published the fission explanation of Hahn's experimental work before Hahn published it. Meitner's long scientific career extended well before the discovery of fission and long afterwards. Meitner was an outstanding on unmistakable scientific force. One of the elements of the periodic table, Meitnerium, element 109 has been named for her. Along with Marie Curie, she is only one of two women scientists to have been so honored.

Meitner was a great scientist. Maric was the educated wife of former wife of a great scientist.

[mzteris]

6. oh yeah - your icon

- thanks! I was trying to figure out who the physicist on the show reminded me of. :)

[Skinner]

8. I Tivo'ed it. Haven't watched it yet.

Did anyone watch the Nova a few weeks back about Rosalind Franklin, the woman whose X-ray photos of DNA were (basically) stolen by Watson and Crick. Great show. Makes you wonder if she deserved to share the Nobel:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/

[phantom power]

9. She should definitely have shared that nobel.

She did all the heavy lifting when it came to the x-ray crystallography. And with out that, they'd never have deduced the structure.

[NNadir]

10. This points out that the Nobel committee isn't the last word.

The prize is very prestigious, and over all, for the majority of cases, the prestige is deserved.

But we should delude ourselves into thinking that the prize is the final measure of how much one has contributed.

Many prizes have turned out to be less than appropriate, even absurd. I note that Henry Kissinger was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. This would be just shy of giving one to Bush.

Women are way under represented as Nobel laureates although Marie Curie was one of two people to have received the prize twice. (The other was Linus Pauling who is the only person to have received the prize in two different areas, Chemistry and Peace.)

Overlooking Franklin and Meitner's work has to rank as one of the greatest stains on the history of Nobel Prizes, Kissinger notwithstanding, because the prizes awarded for their two areas of work, nucleic acid structure and nuclear fission, represent two of the most important - and practical - concepts ever developed in science.

This is off topic, but I'll remark that I will elevate my opinion of the Nobel Prize of Literature if Kurt Vonnegut lives long enough to receive it for Slaughterhouse Five. (I don't even know if it's been nominated.) For my dime, there has been no finer and succinct depiction of what war is all about. Ever.

[struggle4progress]

15. You're forgetting John Bardeen 1956/1972. eom

[NNadir]

19. Yes, I am. You are right.

Bardeen shared his second Nobel with the infamous Shockley.

This has nothing to do with my error, or anything to do with Bardeen, along with the Nazis Stark and Lenard, Shockley has an interesting place among Nobel Laureates in that he was a virulent racist. Shockley phrased his racism in "scientific" terms, by appeal to genetic arguments, genetics being a subject about which he knew next to nothing.

Lenard and Stark are alleged by some to have appealed to so called "German Physics," which according to them invalidated "Jewish physics - in particular Einstein - because of their intellectual weakness in the field in which they won their Nobel Prizes, Physics. It is said that these two were unable to comprehend the implications or validity of Relativity simply because their own fields had passed them by. In other words, they were ossified classical physicists. It is said that their enthusiasm for embracing the Nazi ideology of "German Physics" was motivated to a large extent by the fact that they were intellectually intimidated by the implications of relativity.

These examples show that one can be a very high level expert in one area, and be completely ignorant in other areas, and why the logical fallacy known as "Appeal to Authority" is a highly suspect refuge of people who can't think.

It is worth noting that Pauling was very close to solving the problem that Watson, Crick, and Franklin solved. Although his original work was in the theory of chemical bonds, he was also accomplished in the structural chemistry of large biomolecules such as proteins, an area where he had already demonstrated helical structure. This is not quite so far removed from the physical chemistry of bonding, since the latter is an inherently geometrical conception. As some are aware, modern computational chemistry methods in conformational analysis are very much dependent on the foundation that Pauling provided.

In the case where Pauling had deduced the structure of DNA before the aforementioned triumvirate, he would have been worthy of three Nobel Prizes, two in chemistry, and one in peace. Pauling was one of the greatest American Scientists, and his 1939 book, The Chemical Bond remains an important read for chemists in my view. Although there are others, Pauli's works come to mind, few technical books stand up quite so well in time.

Interestingly, Pauling is most popularly famous for his wild zealous promotion of Vitamin C as a cure all. This, in my view, was a less than stellar line of advocacy and wasn't likely to make Pauling eligible for a prize in medicine.

In these times, with American science being eviscerated through mysticism and denial, it is painful to reflect on the great first rate home grown American scientists, men like Seaborg, Feynman, Compton, Lawrence, Millikan, Woodward and many others. I note that one of the huge supporting experiments lighting (pun intended) the way for Einstein's relativity work was an American experiment, for which Michaelson (who moved to the US when he was 2 years old) won the 1907 Nobel Prize, becoming the first among a long line of American Scientists who would win that prize.

(Theodore Roosevelt had been awarded the Peace Prize the year before, but he was, of course, only peripherally a scientist.)

[AZCat]

20. I didn't know the Nobel Prize went only to Michelson

I had assumed since the experiment was always named the "Michelson-Morley experiment" that both were recipients of the prize. I now know better.

[Lithos]

11. There was a technicality

She was dead (1958) at the time the Nobel was awarded in 1962 to Watson and Crick. The Nobel prize is only awarded to living recipients.

Now that said, makes you wonder if she would have gotten it if she were still alive in 1962.

L-

[Skinner]

12. I was not aware that you had to be alive to get a Nobel.

Why would they do that? It seems totally arbitrary.

[bananas]

14. I think it's because the real prize is the money for more research

IIRC the idea is to give some bright people a lot of money so they can take a sabbatical and get really creative, and maybe come up with something for mankind that wouldn't happen otherwise.
If the person is dead, there's no point.

on edit:
I browsed around the nobel.org website and couldn't find anything about WHY Nobel created the prize. However, this wiki article is pretty interesting: "Why Isn't There a Nobel Prize in Mathematics"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Isn't_There_a_Nobel_Prize_in_Mathematics
"The monetary award is quite large, <snip> This was originally intended to allow laureates to continue working or researching without the pressures of raising money."

[Lithos]

18. I believe

Because the goal was to provide renumeration to the recipient, the resulting statutes were designed to prohibit the nomination of deceased people. There is a legal distinction between the individual and their estate. I also think there is a practical side to this in that it prevents people from looking back and nominating famous members from history to whom no prize could effectively be awarded (ex. Da Vinci).

L-

[AZCat]

16. Minor point...

The prize can be awarded to those that were alive when they were nominated, but passed away before the prize actually awarded.

The two individuals that this has applied to are Daig Hammarskjold and Erik Axel Karlfeldt.

[Beetwasher]

13. Yup, Last Night, It was Very Well Done

I enjoyed it!

[supernova]

17. Wahh! I forgot!

x(

I was going to record it because I really wanted to watch it. I had to go out and I forgot to set the Tivo. Drats. Does anybody know if Nova will repeat it?

[Angry Girl]

21. Don't forget Rosalind Franklin - screwed by Watson & Crick

In April of 1953, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins identified the substance of life -- the structure of DNA.

They later shared a Nobel Prize. Their discovery depended heavily on the work of a woman, chemist Rosalind Franklin, whose research was used without her knowledge or permission. Watson's memoir of the discovery dismisses Franklin as frumpy, hostile and unimaginative. A later work by a friend casts Franklin as a feminist icon, cheated of recognition.

<snip>

It was Franklin's photographic skills that made the discovery possible, says Maddox. "She could take photographs of crystals… and interpret the patterns." She had "a particular genius at aligning hand and mind."

She did not know the other men were using her research upon which to base the article that appeared in the journal Nature. She didn't complain either. This may be thanks to her upbringing, says Maddox. Franklin "didn't do anything that would invite criticism… (this was) bred into her."

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/oct/darklady/

[Lithos]

22. See post #10 and the chain below it

The Nobel prize is only awarded to people living at the time of nomination. She died in 1958, the award was made during the 1962 nomination cycle.

So, at this point, if this rule was not in place, it is pure speculation to wonder if she would have been nominated or not. My guess is no seeing as she was being forgotten by that time, but that's only a guess.

L-