I get invited because I’m a scientist. At Tech Trek, I join the Professional Women’s Night, when campers meet women who are math or science professionals, and I make presentations. For this I thank the camp directors, Carol Holzgrafe and Colleen Briner-Schmidt, a science teacher.
As a scientist, I help test athletes for prohibited performance-enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids. I’ve worked at three Olympics.
One year at Tech Trek, Colleen the science teacher asked me whether I’d had to surmount obstacles to become a scientist because I’m a woman; whether as a girl, I was ever discouraged from being a scientist. Were there few women scientists around, if any, when I was young?
No, no, and no! Quite the contrary. My mother was a pharmacist like my father. I knew many women who were pharmacists or medical doctors, and one who was a physics researcher.
Plus, every day on my way to school in Paris (France) where I grew up, I walked past a building…
…with a stone plaque on the wall that said, “Here, Marie Curie discovered radium.”
Marie Curie was a scientist. She discovered radium and polonium, two chemical elements, and studied the kinds of rays of energy or particles they give off, or radioactivity. As a result, our understanding of matter and energy, and science itself changed forever. Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes for her work.
So I always knew that women could be scientists.
Speaking of role models, Colleen the science teacher knows a boy who, when he was five years old, loved to watch Sesame Street. Astronaut Sally Ride appeared on it. He loved her, and oh he would’ve loved to be an astronaut, but he didn’t think he could, because he thought it was a woman’s job.
Of course, that’s not true, and the boy soon learned this. Astronauts are chosen for what they can do. It doesn’t matter if they’re men or women.
Isn’t it amazing what we think we can or cannot do, what we’re even capable of imagining, depending on what we experience as we grow up?
So I start this blog to help girls and boys unleash their imaginations and potential, by helping them follow STEM professionals at work, do fun activities, and link to valuable resources.
LINKS
● For more on Marie Curie, such as tons of details, photos, and quotes from her autobiographical notes, see “Marie Curie and the science of radioactivity” by the American Institute of Physics - Center for the History of Physics.
● Read a Smithsonian Magazine article on Marie Curie's passion for science, despite the barriers she faced because she was a woman.
● A new play, Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie, written by the actor and director Alan Alda, debuts November 9, 2011. Read his interview.
● What are some of the careers that match your interests and favorite school subjects? Find out at this career info site. Examples of STEM careers are under Math, Science, Computers, Managing Money, and several other subjects.
● If you are curious about a particular STEM career and would like a quick-and-easy overview, look for that career at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center and click on "Listen to the podcast..." about it. For example, the Veterinarian podcast offers a rounded overview of the profession, the required schooling, specialties, a day-in-the-life of a veterinarian, salary info, where veterinarians work, and the awesome job market in the years ahead.
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Updated November 9, 2011
This is truly wonderful, the info you are giving and the lovely, casual, spritely but not the condescending tone...and the GREAT story about the boy and Sally Ride! ccongratulations! ex animo, Vicki
ReplyDeleteCaroline,
ReplyDeletewelcome to the blogosphere! I'm really excited about your new blog, and love that story about the boy whose first exposure to an astronaut was a woman and so thought he couldn't grow up to be one!!! Great points, and what a wonderful resource for kids you've created!
Namaste,
Lee