Friends, Fellowship, and Feasts

Every year, Thanksgiving seems to get lost in the marketing steamroller that takes us through the fall holidays, from Halloween through Christmas. But as a foodie, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays – gathering with friends and family, baking bread and pies, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with some mulled cider, roasting a turkey that hopefully has legs unlike one unfortunate year... 

In the spirit of the holidays, this month’s Photos of the Month is all about friends enjoying being with one another and sharing a meal. Let’s dig in! 

(L-R): Jay Frogel, Allan Sandage, Vera Rubin, and Martin McCarthy share a meal. Credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Rubin Collection. Frogel Jay D1. 

This is one of my favorite photos, and the one that inspired this month’s theme. The core of this photo is Allan Sandage and Vera Rubin, center, who worked together since the 1960s. Sandage invited Rubin to the Palomar Observatory around 1965, at which point Rubin became the first woman to (legally) observe at one of the big observatories. This photo was likely taken at the June 1980 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which took place in College Park, MD, and would explain why so many astronomers from all over the world were gathered in one place - Jay Frogel (left) was at the Ohio State University Astronomy Department and Martin McCarthy (right) was an astronomer at the Vatican. 

(L-R): Emilio Segrè, Elfriede Segrè and Ernest Lawrence enjoying a meal. Credit: Photo by S. A. Goudsmit, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Goudsmit Collection. Segrè Emilio C1a. 

Italian physicist Emilio Segrè visited Ernest Lawrence’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley, several times in the mid-1930s to study radiation. In 1938, while Segrè was on a summer visit to the lab, Benito Mussolini’s government passed antisemitic laws in Segrè’s home country of Italy that, among other restrictions, barred Jews (like Segrè) from university positions.  Lawrence offered Segrè a position as a research assistant in the lab, allowing him to emigrate to the US with his wife, Elfriede, and their son, Claudio.  

Left to right: Mark Leising, Donald Clayton, and Kurt Liffman at dinner in Clayton's home. Credit: Photo by Nancy Clayton, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. Leising Mark C2. 

Fast forward to the early 1990s and we find Mark Leising, Donald Clayton, and Kurt Liffman having dinner at Clayton’s home. Leising and Liffman were both Calyton’s PhD students at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Leising graduated in 1986 and joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. Liffman graduated in 1988 and now teaches at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is a visiting scientist at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. It’s nice to see students and mentors staying in touch, even after they leave school.  

(L-R): Ron Buckmire, Abba Gumel, Ronald Mickens, and Talitha Washington at dinner after the Special Session for Ronald Mickens' 70th Birthday at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, California. Credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Ronald E. Mickens Collection. Mickens Ronald D5. 

Ronald Mickens is a physicist and mathematician known for his work on nonlinear dynamics, especially nonlinear oscillations and numerical analysis. He has also done significant work on the underrecognized history of Black scientists, which he donated to the American Institute of Physics (us) as the Ronald E. Mickens collection on African-American physicsts, circa 1950-2008. The January 2013 Joint Mathematics Meeting was just before Dr. Mickens’ 70th birthday, so in honor of his birthday and all his great work, Ron Buckmire, Abba Gumel, and Talitha Washington organized a special session on nonstandard finite-difference discretizations and nonlinear oscillations, followed by the dinner in the photo. 

Starting second from left, L-R: Arthur Eddington, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, and William Marshall Smart at a Royal Astronomical Society Club Dinner. Others unidentified. June 12, 1936. Credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Eddington Arthur E1. 

Like many scientific societies of the 19th century, the Royal Astronomical Society was founded over dinner, and sharing meals continues to be an important part of the culture of the group. Of the three men highlighted here, Sir Arthur Eddington was the first to be elected a Fellow, which he achieved in 1906. Seated to his left are theoretical physicist Subrahmanya Chandrasekhar (elected in 1933) and astronomer William Marshall Smart (elected in 1915). Chandrasekhar is one of Eddington’s most notable students, and Smart worked under Eddington’s direction at the Cambridge University Observatory in the 1920s. They doubtless would have been sharing ideas with each other and other scientists over dinners like this. 

Jeanne Ting, daughter of Samuel Ting, takes photos of the Queen Silvia of Sweden during the Nobel dinner reception, 1976. Credit: Photo by Leif R. Jansson/Svenskt Pressfoto, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Eleanor Dahl. Ting Samuel D12.

I’ll close with this photo because it’s adorable. I love that Jeanne is so excited about being at the Nobel dinner honoring her dad (Samuel Ting won the physics prize in 1976) that she’s running around taking pictures. She is now Dr. Jeanne Ting Chowning, Associate Vice President of Science Education at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. I hope she’s still taking pictures, though!