Happy Ada Lovelace Day

palladias

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, when STEM enthusiasts highlight the work of modern and historical women scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. If you run a blog, you may want to participate by posting about a woman in a STEM field whom you admire. But I'd love to have people share women scientists/mathematicians/authors in the comments that they think we could all stand to read more about.

Women in STEM fields (living or dead, fiction or nonfictional) that you'd like us to know more about (preferably with a little precis and a link
Books about women in STEM fields that are awesome
Books written by women about STEM subjects that are awesome
Studies about sexism (or ways to combat it) in STEM fields (and anywhere else)
Practical things you or organizations you're with have done to cut down on careless or intentional sexism. (how did you implement it, how did you measure the effects, etc)

Women in STEM fields (living or dead, fiction or nonfictional) that you'd like us to know more about (preferably with a little precis and a link
Books about women in STEM fields that are awesome
Books written by women about STEM subjects that are awesome
Studies about sexism (or ways to combat it) in STEM fields (and anywhere else)
Practical things you or organizations you're with have done to cut down on careless or intentional sexism. (how did you implement it, how did you measure the effects, etc)

This is simply untrue. Rutherford, and the discovery of radon, revealed that.

From the Nobel Prize website:

Marie discovered that thorium gives off the same rays as uranium. Her continued systematic studies of the various chemical compounds gave the surprising result that the strength of the radiation did not depend on the compound that was being studied. It depended only on the amount of uranium or thorium. Chemical compounds of the same element generally have very different chemical and physical properties: one uranium compound is a dark powder, another is a transparent yellow crystal, but what was decisive for the radiation they gave off was only the amount of uranium they contained. Marie drew the conclusion that the ability to radiate did not depend on the arrangement of the atoms in a molecule, it must be linked to the interior of the atom itself. This discovery was absolutely revolutionary. From a conceptual point of view it is her most important contribution to the development of physics. She now went through the whole periodic system. Her findings were that only uranium and thorium gave off this radiation.

These experiments were conducted in 1897. Radon was discovered in 1900, and Rutherford's research on the transmutation of elements began in 1900 and he performed his gold leaf experiment in 1911. I will admit that I was wrong about Marie Curie being the first scientist to propose that atoms had an internal structure. JJ Thomson hypothesized that electrons were building blocks of atoms in 1897. But as far as I can tell, Marie Curie was the first scientist to realize that radiation is attributable to internal properties of atoms. If you have any evidence suggesting otherwise, please present it.

Is it not at least equally likely that the present is crazy, and the past was wise?

No, it is not. Knowledge is generally cumulative, although there are occasional setbacks.

Anyway, I just responded to correct your factual claim. I'm bowing out of this exchange now, because feeding trolls is bad.

Is it not at least equally likely that the present is crazy, and the past was wise?

No, it is not. Knowledge is generally cumulative, although there are occasional setbacks

There are frequent major setbacks

If it is not "at least equally likely", it is still quite likely - particularly in matters influenced by politics, where knowledge, for obvious reasons, does not accumulate.

To defend the present, one has to argue truth, not cite today's authorities. One has to compare today's authorities with the evidence on which their claims are supp... (read more)

-3sam034514y

Untrue - and for evidence of it being true, you would need to quote a paper by her issued before she was made into a mascot, not a paper about her after she was made into a mascot. For her to be the first scientist to realize that, she would have to issue a paper in which she asserted that, which she did not do. What she in fact did was measure various samples prepared for her by her husband and another of his assistants, using a radiation measuring device invented and built by her husband, and as a result of these measurements, she did in fact assert that: [...] From which other people, Rutherford and people around him, concluded that the radiation arose from the internal structure of the atom. Marie Curie was not able to draw the conclusion you and the twenty first century Nobel committee attribute to her, because the radioactivity she measured was not in fact exactly proportional to the amount of uranium, due to the build up of radon after purification. To make the discovery you attribute to her, would have needed to first discover radioactive decay, or at least first discover radon. She strongly suspected the conclusion you attribute to her, and did experiments intended to show it, but her results were confounded by radon. Since the measured radioactivity was not exactly proportional to the amount of the element, the evidence that she thought she saw seemingly showed that radioactive decay was influenced, at least to some extent, by the chemical form. Which is why the discovery of radon by Rutherford and his people was far more important than the discovery of radium by Pierre Curie and his people: because it enabled Rutherford to draw the conclusion that you falsely attribute to Marie Curie. The reason Pierre Curie's group gets bigger publicity than Rutherford's group is that one of the people in Pierre Curie's group was a woman. The discovery of radon made it possible to do measurements that substituted "exactly", for "generally", to measure that radi

-1sam034514y

I claimed history was rewritten in the period 1906, 1911. To refute that claim, you need early sources, pre 1906 sources, not today's sources. Perhaps you should instead look at 1900 sources, stuff published shortly after Pierre Curie discovered radium, rather than post hoc rationalizations published after Marie Curie had already been made a mascot. The original basis for making her a mascot was the discovery of radium - in which her role was minor and peripheral. First they made her a mascot, then they discovered her contributions were absolutely revolutionary. What was revolutionary was the discovery of radioactive decay, that radioactivity arose from the transmutation of the elements, which discovery came from Rutherford and the circle of people around him, not from Pierre Curie and the circle of people around him, and came from the discovery of radon, not the discovery of radium. Pierre Curie's big contribution was to invent and build a device for quantitatively measuring radioactivity, and then set his wife to work measuring the radioactivity of various samples that he and his other assistants prepared. So even if the discovery that radioactivity was independent of the chemical form of the element was "absolutely revolutionary", it can even less be attributed to Marie Curie than can the discovery of radium.

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Happy Ada Lovelace Day

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Happy Ada Lovelace Day

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