An AIP project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation has been working to document and celebrate women’s contributions to the physical sciences. As part of that effort, Niels Bohr Library and Archives fellow Dorothy Tang and I interviewed sixteen scientists.

Rather than focus on the most famous trailblazers, we wanted to hear from those whom historians might otherwise miss. Our methodology was simple: we asked around and thought about people we know or would like to meet. Women who are working in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. Teaching and research faculty and experts in federal agencies. Those who are our friends and family. Budding scholars, scientists in the prime of their careers, retired professionals, and everything in between.

One of the things we have learned about is the different paths that can bring people to science as a profession. Here are excerpts on this subject from four of the interviews.

Emily Brodsky

Emily Brodsky is the daughter of a social worker and an IBM physicist, and she went to school where students were given opportunities to study almost any discipline they felt passionate about. She started college determined to major in math and ancient Greek. She is now a professor of Earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz, chair of the SZ4D (Subduction Zones in Four Dimensions) initiative, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Anna Doel: Do you remember when you started getting interested in science?

Brodsky: It was always part of the air I breathed, right? I was going to amorphous semiconductor meetings as a kid. [laughs] I think one of the most significant parts about growing up in a scientific household is that that was always a possibility. And when I talk to my colleagues and friends who ended up doing other things with their lives, it just often never occurred to people that this was something they could do as a profession. And it was always on the table because it was obvious. Yeah, there was never a time that I didn’t think that I could be a scientist. …

I was very involved in undergrad theater [my first] year, so that’s where I spent most of my time putting on shows and producing shows. And then, at the end of the year, I did a little bit of summer theater and did some canvassing. I got to the end of the year and realized I was supposed to get a summer job, on which I had somehow missed the memo. And so, I got the only job I could get, like, the day that school ended, which was to go sell peace door to door. I was a canvasser for Sane Freeze. And then, eventually ended up driving cross-country. And once I got a little bit of wandering through national parks, I was like, “Oh, this looks better,” and went back and decided geophysics was the way to go.

Helen Jackson

Helen Jackson learned independence the hard way as a child, growing up without parental care or financial stability. With career experience that included work as a mathematician at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, she later pursued a graduate education as a mother of four. A nuclear physicist, one area of her expertise is the intersection of physics and artificial intelligence.

Doel: Did you go to school in DC?

Jackson: Yeah, I went to school locally. I think one of the schools was John Burroughs Elementary. Then, I remember Taft Junior High School, and then I went to three different high schools in DC. I also went to schools in other places like Denver and Arizona. To escape the trauma and the disarray of my environment, I would spend a lot of time at the library. I wanted to get science books, all kinds of science books, and read, and read, and read. I would get math books and work the math problems. I remember getting books that really inspired me; I would get biographies of scientists. One such book was the biography of Marie Curie. And I think by this time, I was going on 11 or 12. I thought, “That is amazing. That’s what I want to be, I want to be like Marie Curie.” At the time, I had never heard of a Black physicist or female physicist, but I don’t think you have to have both to be inspired. …

I would also get books from the library that show you how to do experiments. So, I was making pinhole cameras from shoeboxes and telescopes from paper towel holders. I was taking apart electronics and putting things back together again. By the time I had reached the seventh grade, my grandmother, in whose apartment I was living (she wasn’t there mostly, as she was a live-in maid for a white family in the suburbs), would give me money for A’s, and I was a straight-A student. I would go to a RadioShack and get electronic parts. I built a relay computer. And when I tried it at home, the computer worked, but when I took it to the science fair, it blew the lights out at the school.

Farrah Simpson

Farrah Simpson was the youngest of four, interested in everything school offered, from ballet to tennis. Her parents, natives of Jamaica, received their degrees from US universities and returned home to Mandeville. A Dicke Fellow at Princeton, Farrah is an experimental high energy physicist and a dedicated advocate for mentoring and supporting Black students.

Dorothy Tang: It seems like your parents fostered your interest in science. With them, was there a sense that science is a totally viable career path, and it’s worth traveling across the globe to get an education for?

Simpson: In Jamaica, and I think in the Caribbean, growing up, the careers that you really hear about are either becoming a lawyer or a doctor. So, that’s what I kept hearing, so I actually wanted to become a lawyer. But my parents did foster an environment where education was really important, and they emphasized the importance of education to obtain any opportunity or to open more opportunities. And they also fostered my curiosity about the world because they both loved the sciences. My father is a brilliant businessman and my mother is extremely good at math, and so she fostered my critical-thinking and problem-solving skills a lot, too.

Tang: What were your earliest memories related to scientific education?

Simpson: Science education in Jamaica, especially physics education, tends to emphasize real-world and applied problem-solving. And so I really loved science because it helps me to understand the world around me, especially physics, and that fostered my curiosity. The main memories I have about what really developed my interest in physics were going to what we call extra lessons. So, I had classes outside of regular school, and my siblings went to a physics tutor. And I would tag along with them when they were going to the physics tutor. I was a bit younger. And he always introduced concepts in physics from the perspective of, “How can it help us to understand the way that we see the world and the way things work?” And so, yeah, that’s when I really developed that interest in science and physics.

Tiffany Vance

Tiffany Vance grew up in the Bay Area in an academic family. Her parents, urban geographers, shared their university life and field travel with their child. Tiffany became interested in oceanography, fascinated like many of her peers by Jacques Cousteau’s adventures. A physical scientist at NOAA, she is the program manager for the Ocean Technology Transition, Harmful Algal Bloom, and Coastal Cloud Computing Sandbox Programs.

Doel: Did you go to public schools?

Vance: I did. Berkeley has excellent public schools. I went to a neighborhood primary school, and then a second neighborhood primary school, and then, for fourth through sixth grade, Berkeley had integrated and offered busing. I was bused to the other side of the city for fourth through sixth grade. And Berkeley’s also interesting: there’s one high school, which has 3,000 students in three grades, and it has everything. It’s, “I have colleagues who I’m surprised haven’t won their Nobel Prize yet” to auto shop. It was big enough that it had a full-blown theater. There were probably a half-dozen languages that you could take classes in. Berkeley was interesting—it was the kids who couldn’t cut it in the public schools who ended up in private schools. Which I realize is really different than a lot of places.

Doel: Did you have favorite disciplines in school?

Vance: I actually started doing work with computers when I was in seventh grade. We had access to a Department of Agriculture system. We were using old teletypes with paper tape. So, from an early, early age, programming always intrigued me. I think it’s probably the logic to it. So, I liked that. I hated creative writing. My mother used to have to bribe me with a row of a Cadbury’s chocolate bar for each page of a creative writing exercise.

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Anna Doel
American Institute of Physics
adoel@aip.org

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