( Kapital-i, in 'I, myself', now spels Il as in isle or aisle.
Leter y spels sym for seem or seam and partys for parties.
Leter w spels swn for soon. )
Links to sektions:
I was told I was 'kondesending' about a woman being wel-red in popular siens. It was a reminder how sensitiv women ar, with regard to being tryted as intelektual equals. My replI was that, in my own rydings of popular siens, I had kom akros thry women sientists, hw shud hav won nobel prizes.
In fakt, I kan think of 4. That being the kais, it is probably only the tip of an Isberg of hiden injustis to the sientifik abilitys of women. This is not ment to be a komprehensiv kais for women's intelektual rIts. It is just som-thing I notis'd a litl of, without even lwking for it. Nor is it ment to belitl the present atempts being mayd in edukation, to enkuraj girls and yung women to bekom sientists.
If words ar to myn wat they say, I dont belyv in 'feminism', as a uon-sided sexism, any mor than 'maskulinism'. It is arguabl that we now hav a 'feminist' kultur in this uon-sided sens. That is to say an exesiv pasivity towards restitution for pepl hw ar rong'd by krIm or sivil injustis.
But wat, yu may ask, is maskulinism? Perhaps it is shown most blatantly in many old aktion movys. Al the agresiv kompetition, al the fIting, rasing, chasing, al the kurajus akts ar left to the men. The woman's rol is to stand in the wings, in a sort of agonis'd dither, wIl the men slug it out. She then fals into the arms of the viktorius mayl in a swwn of admiration and adoration.
In my mis-spent yuth, at the kinema, I remember being exasperated by this konventional viw, wich I now kal maskulinism. Som-tIms, the skript was enliven'd by a spirited woman. But I lern'd to expekt she wud be the uon with the trajik ending, wIl the pasiv or 'womanly' woman was the uon hw liv'd hapily ever after, with the hero.
Of kors, not al the old aktion films wer lIk that. Uon, that was not expekted to bekom a klasik, was a Western, wich every-uon has syn, High Noon. Hyr, al the towns folk shun the sherif, asking for help against a gang, gathering to gun him down. Uon man trIs to mak him chanj his mind. But only maks things wors, by fIting him.
Left on his own, the sherif, uon of Gary Cooper's fIn manly rols, is surpris'd from being redus'd to tyrs, by a boy bursting into the ofis. The boy's ofer of help, against harden'd kilers, has to be refus'd.
MynwIl, the sherif's fiancée is lyving on the train. A Spanish woman ( with her nationality's belyf in family loyalty ) tels her she wud never lyv her man. The fiancée's return, with shot-gun, is tru to lIf, in that her presens both helps the sherif and maks him vulnerabl thru her.
Shortly befor world war tw, Lise Meitner work'd out a proses of nuklear 'fision' lyding to the posibility of a chain re-aktion and the unlysh'd enerjy of an atomik bom, on the basis of Einstein's famus mas-enerjy equation.
She was sent to the United States with this information bekaus it was tu danjerus to send the nws by post.
The sekresy, of reserch that wud mak Nobel's lukrativ dynamIt sym
inofensiv in komparison, prevented the nobel komity from hyring about
it in a hury. But that has never byn a bar from sientists resyving eventual rekognition.
In fakt, Einstein's nobel prIz was delay'd, til the evidens for his revolutionary ideas was
mor asur'd. And he never did resyv the prIz for the theory of relativity, with wich his
naim is asociated.
Wen Niels Bohr first herd Meitner's explanation, he exklaim'd, to the efekt, wat fwls they had byn. This syms a rather ungracius aknolejment. After al, yu kud say about many diskoverys that they ar ysy -- wen yu no how.
Meitner work'd with Otto Hahn for thirty yers. LIk Bohr, Hahn was a nobel laureat. In his auto-biografy, he dekrI'd som il-inform'd jurnalism, making extravagant klaims for wat Lise Meitner was working on. Again, it struk me as kurius that Hahn shud chws to refer to his femayl kolyg, in this negativ way.
I mak no klaims to understand the staits of mind of thys formost sientists with regard to
Meitner. How-ever, ther is historikal evidens of a mayl chauvinist
atitud that women ar no beter than they shud be. Boys may be brot up with the
belyf that they ar going to be the uons hw ar going to do greit things in the world.
In quIt resent yers, I herd a woman, of rural bak-ground, say her dauter was
'only a girl.' And the saim expresion, resently, from a boy on tv. Tho, that was
gud-humoredly chalenj'd.
How-ever, we kan saifly asum that Bohr's old sparing partner, Albert Einstein thot Lise Meitner deserv'd a nobel prIz, bekaus he pointedly refer'd to her as 'the German Curie'. He was trying to harnes German national prId to her kaus. LIk her, he was a German Jew: he from Switzerland, she from Austria. And both wer fors'd, by Nazi rasism, to bekom emigrés.
Implisit in the kondukt of fysikal experiments ar sertain asumptions. Wen spel'd out, they sym no mor than komon sens. It is thot not to mater to the out-kom of experiments wen or wer they ar kondukted in spas or tIm, as such. LIkwIs, it was thot that an experiment that was syn, as if in a miror, kud not be distinguish'd from direkt observation of it.
This was a miror imaj ( or 'parity' ) konservation law of fysikal experiments. Up til the twentieth sentury, only tw forses of natur wer nown, gravity and elektro-magnetism. ( Electrik and magnetik forses resyv'd a unifI'd trytment in the nIntynth sentury. ) Tho, Isaac Newton antisipated ther mIt be mor forses of natur.
Tw mor wer diskover'd, as it began to be rylIs'd that atoms wer ryl but not the basik indivisibl bilding bloks of mater. The 'strong fors' bound the konstituents of the atom. The 'wyk fors' was asociated with the spontanus disintegration of sertain of the unstabl hevy elements in radio-aktiv dekay.
By the midl of the twentieth sentury, exampls of the wyk fors inter-aktions, pos'd a dilema, involving either uon 'stranj' sub-atomik partikl that violated parity konservation, or tw such partikls, with aparently identikal propertys.
The fysisists Chen Ning Yang and Tsung Dao Lee propos'd experiments 'to determin
wether wyk inter-aktions diferentiat the rIt from the left.' The first tym, to kary out thys
tests, was heded by ther frend and felow Chinese-born American, Madam Chien-Shiung Wu.
Martin Gardner deskrib'd her, in The Ambidextrous Universe as:
widely regarded as the world's leading woman physicist. She was already famous for her work on weak interactions and for the care and elegance with which her experiments were always designed.
This kompliment reminds me of Elizabeth Barrett being kal'd the world's greitest woman poet.
In other words, she was very gud -- for a woman!
In Martin Gardner's words:
Madame Wu's experiment provided for the first time in the history of science a method of labelling the ends of a magnetic axis in a way that is not at all conventional. The south end is the end of a cobalt-60 nucleus that is most likely to fling out an electron!
It was pointed out that but for Yang and Lee teling the experimenters wat to do, the experiments kud never hav byn perform'd. This tasitly explain'd wI the tw theorists got the nobel prize but not the lyding experimenter, hw verifI'd the violation of parity.
But experimental ability is also a gift. Ironikly, Yang was lejendary for his
mal-adroitnes any-wer nyr a fysiks lab. ( Wer ther's a bang / Ther's Yang. ) This is
in no way ment to be disparajing of the man, hw went onto further greit things in
mathematikal fysiks -- the Yang-Mills geij-fyld theory.
It is myrly that experimental ability is equally to be respekted as theoretikal ability.
And the nobel komity rekognis'd this, for exampl, with regard to the elektro-wyk theorists -- and ther experimental demonstrators ( as led by Carlo Rubbia, at the CERN laboratory, in Switzerland ). This was the theory that gav a unifI'd explanation of tw of the for nown natural forses, the elektro-magnetik and the wyk forses.
Madame Wu's result was just as epochal in the twentieth sentury history of fysiss. In justis, not to mention kurtesy, a nobel prize shld also hav byn hers.
James Watson's famus story, of the serch for the jenetik koud, The Double Helix,
starts by saying only fIv pepl in the world mater'd, in its diskovery. At any rait, uon of
thys was the krystalografer, Rosalind Franklin.
Linus Pauling was nown to be on the war-path for his third nobel prIz. ( He did eventualy
win an other -- for pys, tho. ) His son kaim over
to Cambridge. With Amerikan jenerosity, he sided with Francis Crick and Watson, in ther
rais to byt his father.
Wen Pauling kaim out with his model of a tripl helix, it didnt sym quIt rIt.
As Crick said, natur dos things in pairs.
Uon of the tayl's rekuring fyturs was going round to tak an other lwk at wat
'Rosie' had don. They didnt der spyk to her in such familiar terms, how-ever. And Watson
relats that she gryted ther dubl helix idea with a woman's fury and skorn.
In a later edition of his bwk, Watson sympathises with her for the difikultys she must hav fais'd, as a woman in siens. She was to dI yung of a painful ilnes, bravly kontinuing her work til the end. Her nout-bwks show she was moving towards the dubl helix explanation.
From Watson's akount, uon sertainly gets the fyling that the superb quality of her X-ray
difraktion studys wer Crick and Watson's window on the problem.
In The Physicists C P Snow said Rosalind Franklin got 'a raw dyl'. She shud
shurly hav sher'd that nobel prIz.
Jocelyn Bell was the first to diskover an astronomikal objekt, that was to bekom nown as a pulsar, short for pulsating star. This klas of things wer later to be identifI'd as nutron stars. LIk blak hols, the posibility of ther existens had byn theoris'd, but fw had belyv'd in them.
Apart from blak hols, nutron stars ar stars in ther most katastrofikly kolaps'd stait, okuring in super-nova explosions. This produses an enormusly inkrys'd spin, the figur-skater efekt, naim'd after the inkrys'd spin of a skater after she draws in her arms. With it, gos a greitly inkrys'd magnetik fyld, hws pols may difer from the axis of spin. The former is wip'd round eksentrikly, by the later, drawing in nyrby charged partikls to produs a rotating bym, a lIt-hous efekt.
The regularity of this puls'd radio signal mayd Anthony Hewish's Cambridge tym think,
at first, that ther nw larj aray radio teleskop's rekording was artificial. How-ever,
only the world's best atomik kloks kud kyp such akurat tIm, so it was no human
interferens.
An extra-terestial kontakt was next thot of -- LGM or litl gryn men. But then Bell
found an other such signal.
In his bwk, Perfect Symmetry, Heinz Pagels said of Bell:
It was ( Hewish's ) extreme good fortune to have Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, on his team. Examining the output of the antenna which swept the sky as the earth rotated, she observed 'a bit of scruff' -- a distinctive radio signal -- coming from a particular spot in the sky. It would be rather easy to disregard such a signal as nonsense noise. The actual output of the antenna was recorded as a line trace on a paper roll, and the 'bit of scruff' was just some short jumps in the trace on hundreds of yards of paper, every inch of which was examined by Bell.
A month later, she saw the signal again and soon thereafter analysed the 'scruff' in detail. She saw that it consisted of periodic pulses about one second long.
Som pepl thot Jocelyn Bell shud also hav had a nobel prIz. After al, pepl
think the idea is that the prIz shud go to the person hw first maks a first klas diskovery.
And it dos sym to me that they ar rIt that she shud hav had a sher in the glory at
Stockholm.
But for her, som other radio astronomy grup kud wel hav snatch'd the prIz first.
Also, it was a lost oportunity to rIt in the sky wat a dilijent yung woman in siens
mIt achyv -- and be fuly rekognis'd and rewarded for.
Richard Lung.