Wikipedia editing can sometimes be intimidating just because of the sheer scale of the site. There is so much to edit, so many pages to create, and so many things to link and cite and copy edit… it can be overwhelming! 

This older couple (or middle-aged, depending on the definition of old age) are Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Albert Einstein. Although they do not have an Instagram account nor Facebook profile and died years ago, luckily they are still remembered. Memory of their achievements prevails and has not yet drowned in the sea of YouTube streams, junk knowledge and fake news.

These inconspicuous photographs are hiding a certain mystery… Well, as strange as it sounds, nobody knows when they were taken. I do not mean the exact day or month… there is no agreement even on the year! This has led to confusion and dissemination of false information.

I decided to take up the challenge and become an amateur Sherlock Holmes. If you are curious how I managed the investigation – read on. Let’s get started.

May 16th is the International Day of Light, celebrating the first fruitful laser trial by physicist Theodore Maiman in 1960. The study of light has led to many advances in technology and improvements to our everyday lives, which is why it is a UNESCO event. From UNESCO's website:

Without light, our planet would be but a cold and barren place. Indeed, where there is light, there is often an abundance of life. Yet light represents even more for humanity. Light goes hand in hand with knowledge; it is a lens through which to see and understand the world.

Scientists are not generally thought of as “laborers” but scientists have been part of the labor movement and there are several current unions representing scientists today, like MOSES, CAPS, and the IFPTE (does anyone love an abbreviation or acronym more than a union?) . Additionally, more and more universities are facing pressure from graduate student unionization movements, so as we recognize the work of long under-recognized groups of both the past and the present, it is important to remember that science is work, and depends on the dedicated labor of people from all walks of life to make its great discoveries. So in celebration of workers everywhere (traditional and nontraditional, paid and unpaid), let’s take a look at some photos!

Art and physics may not always be the most obvious subject pairing, but within our collections there are many examples of overlap between these two realms. Delving into our photo archives reveals many instances not only of physicists as appreciators of art – taking in exhibits, or with paintings in their offices – but also of these scientists as both subject and artist.

Today, we know that the gender gap in physics is large. This gender gap might lead to the misconception that, with a few famous exceptions like Marie Curie and Lise Meitner, women were rarely involved with physics until very recently. However, women have always been involved with physics, throughout the history of physics. Historian Joanna Behrman notes in her article “Physics … is for girls?” in Physics Today magazine,

At the dawn of the 20th century, more than half of secondary-school physics students were female, but by 1950 only 20–30% were.

Physics has never been a static discipline, but significant change happened in the field during World War II, sometimes known as “The Physicist’s War.” The changes are complex and driven by a wide variety of factors, but one impetus for the changing status of the field was the race to make nuclear weapons for the war and subsequent deployment of nuclear weapons, which threw the discipline of physics into the spotlight and increased its desirability as a career. This, combined with societal trends of the 1950s that emphasized women’s place in the home, may have contributed to the idea of physics being a field for men.[1] For this Photos of the Month, I explored the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives to take a look at images in our collection of women involved with physics before World War II in the United States - some subjects well-known, some less-known, others unknown.

At the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, we see many different types of published resources such as manuscripts, periodicals, textbooks, and rare books. But for Women's History Month, our staff explored two types of materials that are as creative and entertaining as they are educational and informative: graphic novels and children's picture books. Read our staff reviews of these illustrated stories of women in physics below.

This month’s Photos of the Month was inspired by a recent episode of the podcast Unexplainable. (Shout out to the Unexplainable crew, who have used resources from our library & archives in previous episodes and provided some of the references used in this blog post!)

When it comes to historical research, I am a bit of a completionist. There are different styles of doing history, and mine is to be exhaustive. The thing is, with historical research, there are so many sources out there, likely in so many different archives, that for any one project it’s nearly impossible to fully research anything. You just get to a point where you can say “good enough.”

Wikipedia is a beacon of seemingly infinite information in our online lives: a jumping off-point for research, a quick fix to a debate, or a rabbit hole of factoids in which to lose yourself. In March of 2022, I started as Wikipedian-in-Residence here at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, and since then have been finding ways to bring the NBLA to Wikipedia and vice versa. Here's a bit about what I’ve been up to and an overview of what Wikipedian-ing has looked like for me. 

What Exactly is a Wikipedian-in-Residence