“Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist, directs and controls the first nuclear chain reaction in his laboratory beneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, ushering in the nuclear age. Upon successful completion of the experiment, a coded message was transmitted to President Roosevelt: “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.”
Following on England’s Sir James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron and the Curies’ production of artificial radioactivity, Fermi, a full-time professor of physics at the University of Florence, focused his work on producing radioactivity by manipulating the speed of neutrons derived from radioactive beryllium. Further similar experimentation with other elements, including uranium 92, produced new radioactive substances; Fermi’s colleagues believed he had created a new “transuranic” element with an atomic number of 93, the result of uranium 92 capturing a neuron while under bombardment, thus increasing its atomic weight. Fermi remained skeptical about his discovery, despite the enthusiasm of his fellow physicists. He became a believer in 1938, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for “his identification of new radioactive elements.” Although travel was restricted for men whose work was deemed vital to national security, Fermi was given permission to leave Italy and go to Sweden to receive his prize. He and his wife, Laura, who was Jewish, never returned; both feared and despised Mussolini’s fascist regime.
Fermi immigrated to New York City–Columbia University, specifically, where he recreated many of his experiments with Niels Bohr, the Danish-born physicist, who suggested the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. Fermi and others saw the possible military applications of such an explosive power, and quickly composed a letter warning President Roosevelt of the perils of a German atomic bomb. The letter was signed and delivered to the president by Albert Einstein on October 11, 1939. The Manhattan Project, the American program to create its own atomic bomb, was the result.
It fell to Fermi to produce the first nuclear chain reaction, without which such a bomb was impossible. He created a jury-rigged laboratory with the necessary equipment, which he called an “atomic pile,” in a squash court in the basement of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. With colleagues and other physicists looking on, Fermi produced the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and the “new world” of nuclear power was born.”
This week in History: November 29, 1942 - Coffee rationing begins November 30, 1864 - Battle of Franklin, Tennessee December 1, 1955 - Rosa Parks ignites bus boycott December 2, 1777 - Philadelphia nurse Lydia Darragh overhears British plans to attack Washington’s army December 3, 1967 - First human heart transplant (1818- Illinois becomes the 21st state) December 4, 1783 - George Washington bids farewell to his officers December 5, 1933 - 21st amendment is ratified; Prohibition ends
Often in the discussion of civil rights history, Asian-Americans are overlooked. Let’s reverse that trend and learn a little bit about Yuri Kochiyama. The disappearance of her father following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and her subsequent imprisonment in a Japanese internment camp inspired a lifetime of human rights activism and scholarship. She met her husband, Bill Kochiyama, while “interned” in Jerome, Arkansas.
In 1960, she relocated to Harlem, where she became familiar with the one and only Malcolm X. She has advocated on behalf of Puerto Rican sovereignty, peace movements, the rights of political prisoners, and nuclear disarmament.
Author Diane Fujino does Kochiyama significantly more justice in her NPR Brief.
Otto Hahn won the 1944 Nobel prize of chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission, which was a joint project with Lise Meitner. Meitner was nominated 48 times, and never won a Nobel.
On February 25, 2019 The NJ Assembly unanimously voted in favor of designating an Official State Microbe, Streptomyces griseus. This brings NJ one step closer to being the second state in the US (and the world) to have a symbolic microbe.
This action sequence shows me (seated) casting the vote for Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (standing) in the Assembly Chamber. Wow, that was cool, and an honor! ASW Quijano was the principal sponsor in the Assembly. The vote was 76 to zero.
Strep griseus produces streptomycin, the first broad spectrum antibiotic and the first significant antibiotic found in America. It was discovered in 1943 in New Brunswick, NJ
Microbiology at the NJ Historical Commission Forum
Monmouth University hosted the NJ History Forum where I talked about the great history of New Jersey and Microbiology on behalf of my colleagues at Rutgers.
One presentation is titled The 75th Anniversary of the Discovery of Streptomycin (upcoming in 2019); the other is titled An Official New Jersey State Microbe! Streptomyces griseus. The revolutionary antibiotic streptomycin was discovered as a product the microbe Streptomyces griseus isolated from New Jersey soil.
Authors of the presentations are Douglas Eveleigh, Jeff Boyd, Jessica Lisa, Max Haagblom, and John Warhol.
To learn more about microbiology, check out the book:https://tinyurl.com/Warhol-Small-Guide. It costs less than a burger and a Coke, it lasts longer, and is more fun!
This makes it official, we’re presenting at the Microbe 2018 annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
It just struck me that this is an entirely new area of research and activism. Oregon was successful in getting a State Microbe, but I can’t get anyone there to return my phone calls or emails. I think I’m the only one doing this systematically.
[Text ID: “INTERVIEWER: Is this why the language of mysticism is so erotic?
PAZ: Yes, because lovers, which is what the mystics are, constitute the greatest image of communion. But even between lovers solitude is never completely abolished. Conversely, solitude is never absolute. We are always with someone, even if it is only our shadow. We are never one—we are always we. These extremes are the poles of human life.”]
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke | Pablo Neruda (?) | Louise Glück, Vita Nova | Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro | Vladimir Nabokov, Mary | Etel Adnan, Jebu | Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary | Bangtan Sonyeondan (방탄소년단), 봄날 (Spring Day) | Artwork by Claude Monet
Physicist, Nobel Prize winner, and popular science author Richard Feynman was born on this day in 1918.
A pioneer in quantum mechanics, Feynman grew up in New York and was educated at MIT and Princeton. During World War II, he was invited to join the Manhattan Project and moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to work on developing the atomic bomb. After receiving his PhD and the end of the war, Feynman went to work at Cornell, where he spent five years. He then moved to CalTech, where he taught and worked from 1950 until his death in 1988.
Feynman’s greatest scientific contributions lie in the areas of quantum mechanics and of quantum electrodynamics, for which he collaboratively won the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for their work on the physics of elementary particles. He also made significant contributions to the discovery of quarks, predicted the advent of nanotechnology, and developed the Feynman diagrams, which are pictorial representations of the math behind the behavior of subatomic particles.
Sometimes referred to as the Great Explainer, Feyman believed in communicating complex ideas in a way that the general public could understand. He was a popular lecturer and wrote a number of books, including his memoir,Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, and The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which Discover named as one of the 25 greatest science books of all time in 2006.
One of his final public milestones came as part of the commission assembled to investigate the 1986 Challenger explosion. Feynman was able to decisively demonstrate that it was a failure of the material comprising the shuttle’s O-ring due to cold weather that led to the accident.
Image Credit: Photo of Richard Feynman, taken in 1984 in the woods of the Robert Treat Paine Estate in Waltham, MA. Copyright Tamiko Thiel 1984 (OTRS communication from photographer) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
“My Catholic upbringing implanted in me a respect for all things visible, connected by the property of esse, that calls for unceasing admiration. I think that the sign of a healthy poetry is striving to capture as much of reality as possible.” – Czesław Miłosz [Flower Garden - 1919 - Emil Nolde]
• PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW: This interview was conducted primarily at Milosz’s home in the Berkeley hills overlooking San Francisco Bay, where he lives with his wife, Carol, and a cat named Tiny. Other portions were recorded before a live audience at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street YMHA in New York. The first part of the conversation in Berkeley lasted four hours without interruption, until the poet looked at his watch and then, somewhat sympathetically, at his exhausted interlocutor to ask, “It is six o’clock, time for a little vodka?” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1721/the-art-of-poetry-no-70-czeslaw-milosz
“Our temptation is always to impose our prejudices or our measure on reality–except when we are faced with a fact that leaves us dumbstruck, and instead of dominating the fact ourselves, we are dominated, overcome by it. If there were no moments of this kind, the Mystery could do anything, but in the end, we would reduce everything to the usual explanations. But not even a Nobel Prize winner can stop himself from being dumbstruck before an absolutely gratuitous gesture. If there were not these moments, we would find answers, explanations, and interpretations to avoid being struck by anything. It is good that some things happen that we cannot dominate, then we have to take them seriously, and this is the great question of philosophy. If the conditions for the possibility of knowledge (see Kant) impose themselves on reality or if there is something that is so powerfully disproportionate that it does not let itself be ‘grasped’ by the conditions of possibility, then the horizon opens. If this were not the case, then we could dominate everything and be in peace, or at least without drama. Instead, not even the intelligence of a Nobel Prize winner could prevent him from coming face-to-face with a fact that made him dumbstruck–instead of dominating, it was he who was dominated. Here begins the drama, because I am called to answer. It is the drama that unfolds between us and the Mystery, through certain facts, certain moments, in which the Mystery imposes itself with this evidence. These are facts that we cannot put in our pocket, which we cannot reduce to antecedent factors.“ ~ Julián Carrón [Head in blue, 1912 - Alexej von Jawlensky]
• …In March 2005, Carrón was elected President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation by the Central Diaconia. More: https://english.clonline.org/fr-carron
“At the Rimini Meeting I was with my teacher, George Smoot, the Nobel Prize Winner for Physics this year. He was very surprised by all the wealth of life that he saw around him, but what struck him most is that all this pivots on the free, gratuitous offer of so many people, young and old. One evening, we went to San Marino for dinner. A boy from Rimini was driving the car we used. As we came back–it was very late–he wanted to pry further: ‘Who provides the cars and the drivers?’ so I confirmed, 'The drivers are all volunteers.’ So he said, 'O dear, so we are making someone suffer who could be at home.’ I translated Smoot’s remark to the boy and he replied at once, 'No, for me it is a joyful suffering.’ I translated his observation to Smoot, who was dumbstruck. A 'joyful suffering.’ I was thinking of Smoot with all his genius, all his tension and his restlessness, incapable because of his history, to see so clearly what that boy saw. One can say 'joyful suffering,’ as Ercole did just now, only in relationship with the Mystery. What is greater–from the point of view of what a man is, that is, of the realization of human life–the genius of a Nobel Prize winner or the simplicity of a person who recognizes the Mystery? It is like having to see again what makes life worth living. One can give his body to be burned, but without this link with the Mystery he cannot be satisfied.” – Unknown [Head in Black and Green, 1913 - Alexej von Jawlensky]
To close out a wonderful Women’s History Month, we would like to introduce you to Barbara McClintock, a genetic scientist, who discovered transposons. Here’s a comic of her research which she was awarded a Nobel Prize for in 1983.
On this day in 1903 Pierre Curie, accompanied by Marie Curie, gave a Friday Evening Discourse at the Ri, simply titled ‘Le Radium’.
That same year Pierre and Marie were awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on the spontaneous radiation discovered by Henri Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize.
Pierre Curie used an early sample of radium during his Discourse demonstration and stored it in this copper alloy pot and box, which are still radioactive to this day.
A visitor passes in front of one of the artworks by Nobel Prize in Literature 2000, Chinese writer and artist Gao Xingjian, during the worldwide presentation of the exhibition ‘Gao Xingjian. A Call For Renaissance’ at the Kubo Kutxa Foundation in San Sebastian, in the region of the Basque Country, northern Spain, Oct. 15, 2015. (EPA/JAVIER ETXEZARRETA)
Ralph Bunche was a man of many firsts. He was the first African-American valedictorian at UCLA. The first African-American in the country to receive a Ph.D. in political science. And the first African-American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche is considered the “Father of Peacekeeping” for negotiating an end to the first Arab-Israeli war while working at the United Nations.
In 1949, Bunche stood in his hotel room on the Greek island of Rhodes with members of the Israeli delegation and the Egyptian delegation. These were two groups of people, in a room together, that hadn’t been able to reach a resolution over the control of Palestine in more than 30 years. Now, in the midst of the first Arab-Israeli war, Bunche had been sent by the United Nations to end the conflict. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but was determined to find a resolution.
Ralph J. Bunche shaking hands with Louise Ridgle White, future Los Angeles Assemblywoman candidate. Credit: Rolland J. Curtis, Rolland J. Curtis Collection of Negatives and Photographs/Los Angeles Public Library
How did Bunche crack the code on making peace? To understand his impact, we have to rewind a bit. Born to humble beginnings in Detroit, Michigan, Bunche was raised by his grandmother after his parents passed away. Early on, it was clear he was someone to watch. In high school, he was known as an expert debater and was named his class valedictorian. In 1923, he enrolled at UCLA, supporting himself with an athletic scholarship and a janitorial job. Bunche graduated in 1927, with a degree in international relations, and was once again the class valedictorian.
His graduation speech revealed glimpses of the career he would have as a peacemaker: “The future peace and harmony of the world are contingent upon the ability, yours and mine, to affect a remedy.”
Ralph J. Bunche, UCLA portrait. June 1927. Credit: UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library
There was no stopping him. He went on to Harvard for graduate studies in political science, and from there he taught at both Howard and Harvard. While at Howard, he became one of the leaders of a group of Black intellectuals known as the “Young Turks.” The Young Turks’ perspective on race set them apart. They argued that issues of “class, not race” were key to solving the so-called “Negro problem.” This line of thinking was later adopted by the civil rights activists of the 1960s, including Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a shift away from the world of academia, he joined the U.S. State Department as an advisor on the future of colonial territories in 1944. Two years later, Bunche was at the U.N. From June of 1947 to August of 1949, he worked on the assignment that would serve as a defining moment in his history and the world’s: the confrontation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
Acting U.N. mediator, Ralph J. Bunche, in Palestine, 1948. Credit: UC Library: A Centenary Celebration of Ralph J. Bunche
In 1949, peacekeeping was a very new concept and Bunche was determined to show that it wasn’t just a fad adopted by the U.N. – he wanted to prove it had long-lasting power. While he stood in his bedroom in Rhodes, with members of both the Israeli delegation and the Egyptian delegation, he revealed two sets of memorial plates bearing the name of each negotiator. He told the negotiators that once they signed the armistice agreement, they’d each get one of the plates as a souvenir. But if they didn’t reach an agreement, he’d break the plates over their heads. He was met with laughter from both sides, but ultimately his plan worked – they signed the agreement.
Ralph Bunche speaks on world peace at the meeting of American Association for the United Nations in Los Angeles, 1951. Credit: CriticalPast
His achievement in reaching the 1949 armistice agreement was the reason he received the Nobel Peace Prize a year later. Though they were original, the plates weren’t his secret ingredient for peacekeeping. Bunche believed there was no human problem that couldn’t be eventually be solved. He had great empathy and was interested in improving the lives of ordinary people. According to Sir Brian Urquhart, former Undersecretary General at the U.N. and one of Bunche’s colleagues, Bunche was an incredibly good listener. All these traits, along with his own unique creativity and humor, truly made him the Father of Peacekeeping, and his pioneering methods are still used by the U.N. today.
Ralph J. Bunche and Charles E. Young in front of Bunche Hall, UCLA 1969. Credit: UC Library: A Centenary Celebration of Ralph J. Bunche
It’s always big ideas that propel people to big success. Marie Curie’s work is a great example, not just for the history of chemistry and physics, but for women in the sciences as well. After being rejected from the men-only University of Warsaw, Curie’s perseverance and curiosity for big ideas took her to the Sorbonne in Paris. Her groundbreaking work with radioactivity heralded her as the first-ever female recipient of the Nobel Prize, and the only woman in history to win twice for her work in two different fields.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 – David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane, J. Michael Kosterlitz – “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”
They revealed the secrets of exotic matter
This year’s Laureates opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states. They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films. Thanks to their pioneering work, the hunt is now on for new and exotic phases of matter. Many people are hopeful of future applications in both materials science and electronics.
The three Laureates’ use of topological concepts in physics was decisive for their discoveries. Topology is a branch of mathematics that describes properties that only change step-wise. Using topology as a tool, they were able to astound the experts. In the early 1970s, Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless overturned the then current theory that superconductivity or suprafluidity could not occur in thin layers. They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism, phase transition, that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures.
In the 1980s, Thouless was able to explain a previous experiment with very thin electrically conducting layers in which conductance was precisely measured as integer steps. He showed that these integers were topological in their nature. At around the same time, Duncan Haldane discovered how topological concepts can be used to understand the properties of chains of small magnets found in some materials.
We now know of many topological phases, not only in thin layers and threads, but also in ordinary three-dimensional materials. Over the last decade, this area has boosted frontline research in condensed matter physics, not least because of the hope that topological materials could be used in new generations of electronics and superconductors, or in future quantum computers. Current research is revealing the secrets of matter in the exotic worlds discovered by this year’s Nobel Laureates.
The house in Washington DC where Woodrow Wilson lived out his retirement, purchased less than two weeks after the awarding of the Peace Prize.
December 10 1920, Kristiania [Oslo]–The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize had largely been suspended during the largest war Europe had seen in centuries; the exception being the 1917 prize, which was awarded to the Red Cross. With peace largely concluded in Europe, in December1920 the Nobel committee awarded the 1919 and 1920 prizes. One was given to Léon Bourgeois, first President of the League of Nations and a long-time advocate for an international criminal court and the formation of an organization similar to (if not even broader in scope than) the League. The other was given to President Wilson, for his efforts in the creation of the League. The American ambassador to Norway accepted the prize on his behalf, and read a short statement by Wilson:
In accepting the honor of your award, I am moved by the recognition of my sincere and earnest efforts in the cause of peace, but also by the very poignant humility before the vastness of the work still called for by this cause….
I am convinced that our generation has, despite its wounds, made notable progress, but it is the better part of wisdom to consider our work as only begun. It will be a continuing labor. In the definite course of the years before us there will be abundant opportunity for others to distinguish themselves in the crusade against the hate and fear of war.
To the great disappointment of Wilson (and the world), the United States had not joined the League of Nations, and would never do so; the awarding of the Peace Prize swayed few minds.
The $29,000 in prize money was highly welcome in the Wilson household, and was a not-insubstantial increase to his savings. His term as President would end in a few months without a pension, and his health problems limited his potential to earn an income. Less than two weeks later, Wilson would purchase a house in Washington DC for his retirement–even with the prize money, his friends had to put up two-thirds of the $150,000 purchase price.
Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
(Beloved, 1987)
Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 - August 5, 2019) - women in history(40/?)
Toni Morrison was an American writer who was known for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience). She won the Nobel prize for literature in 1993.
Toni published her first book, The Bluest Eyes, in 1970 in which she talks about a black girl who is obsessed with white beauty standards. In 1973, her book Sulafollowed.Song of Solomon came out in 1977; in this book, Toni intruduces her first male protagonist and she blends African American folklore and history in a book about the search for identity. Ten years later the critically acclaimed Belovedcame out. In this work, Toni tells a story, based on true events, of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. This book won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Toni wrote many other books, in which she talked about many aspects, important to the black community, such as a Black utopian community (Paradise, 1998).
What is always central in the works of Toni Morrison is the Black American experience: her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity in an unjust society.
