Friday, October 14, 2011

Twitter Link Roundup for Oct 10-14th 2011

I don't like how Twitter forgets what I've said eventually. So I plan to try a semi-frequent round-up of my favourite Twitter links/Tweets from the week.

Here goes

Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity  (via )


Mathematician and mother - October 2011 - GetSET Women Blog - The UKRC: 


@telescoper: The Astronomy Career Problem - it starts with the PhD

(and related to this check out the astrojc for this week - on the problems with Scientific Careers)

@NtlSTEMCentre: Talking to pupils about  careers? Have you seen our collection of  videos which may help?

@cosmicpinot (which is Brian Schmidt): Adam Riess - on NPR playing a game after the Nobel Prize Announcement - 

What a great idea:  (via and)


And alarmingly: @NatureNews: Physicist languishes in French prison 

Friday, October 7, 2011

Ada Lovelace Day Links from Twitter

A great idea by @alicebell and @allinthegutter to make lists of women scientists to follow (as part of Ada Lovelace Day). 

Alice Bell's Ada list
Emma's List

Other great Ada Lovelace Themed links from Twitter


Free iPad Application "Lovelace and Babbage"

Ada Lovelace Day - Martha Haynes

Today is Ada Lovelace Day - a day named after a women who is widely believed to have been the worlds first computer programmer. You can read more about it at  "Finding Ada" a website which is soliciting stories about inspirational women in science.

 Coincidentally (I think) my former PhD thesis advisor, Martha Haynes, posted the below picture on Facebook today in response to a post by another of her former students about how male dominated Physics colloquia (and the business lounge of Lufthansa Airlines) both are. This is a picture of ALL of the 1989 winners of ALL awards from the (US) National Academy of Sciences. This was the year that Martha and her collaborator (and husband) Riccardo Giovanelli won the Henry Draper Medal "For the first three-dimensional view of some of the remarkable large-scale filamentary structures of our visible universe."

The 1989 Winners of ALL Awards from the (US) National Academy of Sciences 
 Martha is easy to spot - the only winner not wearing a tie (2nd row, 2nd from the left). Riccardo is standing next to her on the extreme left. So in 1989 1/24 prize recipients were women.

 In fact in the 125 years the Henry Draper Medal has been awarded (although note it's not awarded every year), the only female recipients have been Annie Jump Cannon and Martha Haynes.

 Sadly I suspect the situation among such high profile award winners is not much different today, but it is trailblazers like Martha (the first women  astronomy professor at Cornell; and the only one for 20 years) who make life easier for us now.

 Martha's stories of "Haynes and his wife Giovanelli" (among many others) remind me of the pre-conceptions about male scientists, and also make me laugh!

 So today for Ada Lovelace Day Martha is the person I want to mention as an inspirational woman in science.