September POTM

Western astrology divides up the apparent path of the sun through the celestial sphere (the portion of the sky we can see from earth as we travel through space) into 12 evenly divided sections. These sections, also represented by date ranges in the year, correspond to the dates when the sun appears to travel through the part of the sky certain constellations are visible (the astrological signs). Each sign is named after a constellation (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn , Aquarius, Pisces), which certainly makes astrology sound scientific. Various cultures have historically studied and assigned great meaning to astrology. The Babylonians and Ancient Greeks helped develop the Western Zodiac used in Europe and the Middle East while the Chinse developed another astrological system also based on 12 sections. Astrology may be pseudoscience, but it’s also fun! Who doesn’t love ascribing vague and often damning personality traits based on the date and time of your birth? So in honor of Virgo season (August 23 - September 22) we’re going to take a look back at some Virgo scientists and wonder…do they fit the astrological profile?

First of all, what is a Virgo profile? Co-Star , a very silly (and fun) astrological app, says Virgo traits include:

• Needs to feel useful
• Has a quick fix for everything
• Judgmental, but with good intentions
• Exceptional spatial awareness
• A million ideas per second.

Okay, these traits actually seem like they could be useful to physics though? Are there any downsides to being a Virgo?

The aptly named Zodiacsign.com says Virgo weaknesses are “shyness, worry, overly critical of self and others, all work and no play.” To sum it up with one word: perfectionism. Virgos are the try-hards of astrology, for better or for worse.

(Normally we only feature photos from our own collections, but there were too many exciting Virgos this month so we have some bonus photos from other collections).

Sarah Francis Whiting, August 23, 1847 – September 12, 1927, the first of our Virgo physicists and the elusive August Virgo, born in fact on the very first day of Virgo season, was an American astronomer who taught at Wellesley College. She graduated from Ingraham University, the first chartered women’s university in the US, in 1865 and was hired by Wellesley in 1876, one year after it opened,, to be its first professor of physics. During her teaching tenure, she observed other professors and modeled the hands-on teaching techniques used by Edward Charles Pickering at MIT and adopted them for her own classes, thus starting the second undergraduate physics laboratory in the country. She also helped establish and became first Director of the Whitin Observatory at Wellesley and mentored Annie Jump Cannon . If all of that isn’t Virgo energy I don’t know what is.

Katherine Johnson, August 26,1918 - February 24, 2020, was one of the main characters in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures, where she was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson for her work at NASA. In the movie we see her help integrate NASA’s Langley office in the 1950s and work on John Glenn’s mission to space. However, she was a trail-blazer long before then. In 1939 Katherine, alongside two male students, was selected by the President of West Virginia State to help integrate West Virginia University. You can read more about Katherine Johnson and other West Computers in Margot Lee Shetterley’s 2010 book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, which inspired the film.

Norman Foster Ramsey Jr., August 27, 1915 - November 4, 2011, was a physics professor at Harvard for most of his career and won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the separated oscillatory field method, which led to the construction of atomic clocks (which are incredibly helpful in GPS).

Norman Ramsey worked well into his 90s and may be one of the most interviewed people in our oral history collection (I refuse to look at the statistics).. We don’t know much about this photo of Norman Ramsey, his wife, and daughter on a (wintry?) picnic by the sea, but they all look so happy. I think it’s a wonderful photograph and I’m impressed that they all look so cheerful at the beach because when I’m lugging my kids’ beach toys through the sand I don’t look nearly so joyful.

Carl David Runge, August 30, 1856-January 3, 1927, was a German mathematician and physicist. He grew up in Havana, Cuba, because his father worked at the Danish Consulate, but the family later moved to Germany, which is where he received his PhD in 1880. Runge’s phenomenon and the Runge-Kutta method are both named after him, what could be more Virgo than that? Eponymous is a Virgo’s middle name! Also his mustache game was fierce.

Ernest Rutherford, August 30, 1871 - October 19, 1937, is often described as the “father of nuclear physics” but everyone fails to mention he was the first Nobel Laureate from Oceania. Born and raised in New Zealand, he discovered alpha and beta rays, proposed the laws of radioactive decay, and came up with the Rutherford model for the atom based on his experiments with radioactivity. He had a long and storied career, including winning the 1908 Nobel prize in Chemistry for his work on radioactive substances. After his death in 1937, he was interred in Westminster Abbey near Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. In 1997, rutherfordium, a new element, was named in honor of him. If you thought he was anything other than a Virgo you were clearly fooling yourself.

Hermann von Helmholtz, August 31, 1821 - September 8, 1894, was a German physician and physicist, confusing spellers everywhere for all time (at least he wasn’t also a psychic). He worked on theories of vision and spatial perception and many other physiological phenomena as well as physics research on energy, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, and philosophy of science. THIS MAN IS A VIRGO FOR SURE. He clearly didn’t trust any other scientists and decided to do all the science himself (joking). Apparently Alexander Graham Bell’s inability to read German and his misunderstanding of Helmholtz’s acoustical theories led him to inventing the telephone . Yay?

Bernard Lovell, August 31, 1913- August 6, 2012, worked on cosmic ray research until World War II, when he began working on radar systems to be used in the war. After the war, he went back to cosmic ray research, but found that Manchester had too much background interference, so he moved to the Jodrell Bank Observatory (pictured here) and constructed what was then the world’s largest radio telescope, eponymously (I told you Virgos love naming stuff after themselves) named the Lovell Telescope. After his death, his diary was digitized by the University of Manchester and made accessible to the public . In it he discusses his life and research, as well as his view that the Soviet Union tried to assassinate him in the 1960s by poisoning him with radiation (clearly Virgos are great secret-keepers because he kept that one in the vault).

Max Delbrück, September 4, 1906 - March 9, 1981, was a German-American biophysicist who started his interest in science with astronomy and astrophysics but soon moved on to theoretical physics during the breakthrough years of quantum mechanics. During his studies, an encounter with Niels Bohr, who speculated that quantum mechanics might have applications to scientific topics besides physics, led Max towards an interest in biology. . As a result, he shifted his focus to studying bacteriophages, or “phages,” and moved to the United States. While at Caltech he worked with the Phage Group (Delbrück was referred to as the Pope, classic “fun” Virgo nickname) partially pictured here. Delbrück’s research on phages confirmed some of Darwin’s theory that genetic mutations happen at random rather than according to a predetermined plan. This research led to a three-way split in the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Partially inspired by Delbrück, Erwin Schrodinger wrote What Is Life?, which is about how physicists could work in biology. Biologist James Watson, of Double Helix fame (or infamy depending on who you ask), studied with Delbrück but was also inspired by the character in Schrodinger’s book.

Arthur Holly Compton, September 10, 1892 - March 15, 1962, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his discovery of Compton scattering which…well, I don’t really understand it, but I know it was an essential step in establishing quantum mechanics. His experiment helped convince physicists that light sometimes acts like a wave and sometimes acts like a particle, which should be impossible in classical mechanics. But Compton wasn’t done there. He continued his research with X-Rays and later became interested in cosmic rays. During World War II he worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory, which got absorbed into the Manhattan Project, developing a plutonium-based nuclear reactor. However, my favorite Compton fact is that he invented a more gentle version of the speed bump called the “Holly hump” which is still used at Washington University campuses. What could be more Virgo than redesigning one of life’s little inconveniences to be slightly less inconvenient? If you have experienced the “Holly hump” please tell us if it’s a superior bump experience!

Irène Joliot-Curie, September 12, 1897 - March 17, 1956, was from one hell of a physics dynasty. Her parents were Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska-Curie, both Nobel Prize winners. But Joliot-Curie, ever the Virgo, did not let their two Nobel Prizes intimidate her; she won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie. During World War I, Irène worked as a nurse radiographer, helping doctors find shrapnel inside soldiers’ bodies. She married Frederic Joliot in 1926 and they worked together throughout their lives, just like her parents. Their research on radioactivity led to the discovery of positron emission or beta decay, in which they were able to turn one element into another (boron into radioactive nitrogen, magnesium into silicon, etc.) by exposing the elements to radiation. Positron emission made it much easier and cheaper to obtain radioactive elements for research (or weapons production) than extracting them from natural ores. This led to their 1935 Nobel Prize. She continued to work in physics throughout her life, despite major illnesses, World War II, and challenges from a patriarchal society (she applied to the French Academy of Sciences regularly despite knowing they would not accept women).She died at age 58 from leukemia, possibly due to radiation exposure during her research.

Edward Bouchet was born September 15, 1852 and he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D in physics as well as the first to earn one in any subject from any American university. Virgos love to be first. He completed his dissertation at Yale in 1876 and afterwards he became a teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth for 26 years. He resigned in 1902 over the political disagreement between advocates of industrial education and advocates of collegiate education for Black students and spent the rest of his career teaching at various schools around the country. Edward Bouchet died in 1918 and was buried in an unmarked grave in New Haven’s Evergreen Cemetery. In 1998, Yale finally placed a headstone on his grave (pictured below).

Edwin McMillan, September 18,1907 - September 7, 1991, won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Glen Seaborg for research on transuranium elements, through which they discovered the radioactive elements neptunium and plutonium (and continued the solar system naming of uranium). During World War II, McMillan worked on the Manhattan Project but afterwards he devoted his research to the cyclotron and the development of a synchrotron, a cyclic particle accelerator. Although it was technically invented by Vladimir Veksler in 1944, the first synchrotron was actually constructed by McMillan at Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in 1945 (McMillan entirely missed Veksler’s invention because the paper was only published in a Soviet journal). In this photo he’s pictured in the control room with major focused Virgo energy.