"Sailing in Paper Boats" Sexual Trauma, Psychosis, and a Critical Examination of the Freudian Metaphor in Antonia White's Autobiographical Fiction.

PubMed

Newton, Marcia Anne

2016-01-01

This paper is part of a larger project on Catholic writer Antonia White’s series of autobiographical novels, Frost in May, The Lost Traveller, and The Sugar House, in which readers are presented with a Freudian Oedipal drama that reaches a dramatic climax in the last autobiographical novel in the series, Beyond the Glass, where the main protagonist spirals into psychosis. A central question addressed is whether or not White’s autobiographical fiction is an unconscious projection of sexual trauma from her own history. Psychoanalytically speaking, the answer depends upon whether one subscribes to Freudian or Ferenczian perspectives. The paper also addresses the question of whether White’s accounts of psychosis in her autobiographical fiction are real and meaningful descriptions of lived traumatic experiences. Jacques Lacan asserts that it is impossible to authenticate narratives of psychosis and for readers to draw any meaningful value from them because they lack a coherent transfer of metaphorical language from the unconscious to the conscious in the pursuit of truth of a lived experience. He uses Judge Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness to support his case, a text in which Schreber confesses to only being able to communicate his experiences in similes and metaphors; therefore, he claims his experiences cannot be understood. I argue that Lacan does not give due credit to Schreber’s attempts to grapple with spiritual and sexual preservation in the throes of delusion through the agency of his alter egos. These alter egos are the other “self,” a deluded self that offers, paradoxically, truth to emotional experience of a man’s ego in crisis. Schreber shares these pursuits with White’s alter egos in her autobiographical fiction, “The House of Clouds” and Beyond the Glass. In an analysis of White’s texts as recollections of her personal history, I highlight how White’s experiences shape her testimony in its raw portrayal of an identity in crisis.

Recent work of decay spectroscopy at RIBF

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Söderström, Pär-Anders

2014-09-01

β- and isomer-decay spectroscopy are sensitive probes of nuclear structure, and are often the only techniques capable of providing data for exotic nuclei that are producted with very low rates. Decay properties of exotic nuclei are also essential to model astrophysical events responible for the evolution of the universe such as the rp- and r-process. The EURICA project (EUROBALL RIKEN Cluster Array) has been launched in 2012 with the goal of performing spectroscopy of very exotic nuclei. Since 2012, four experimental campaigns have been successfully completed using fragmentation of 124Xe beam and in-flight-fission of 238U beam, approaching for example the key nuclei 78Ni, 110Zr, 100Sn, 128Pd, and 138Sn. This contribution highlights the experiments performed, results obtained, and discusses the future perspective of the EURICA project. In collaboration with Shunji Nishimura, Hidetada Baba, RIKEN Nishina Center; Frank Browne, Brighton University; Pieter Doornenbal, RIKEN Nishina Center; Guillaume Gey, Universite Joseph Fourier Grenoble; Tadaaki Isobe and Giuseppe Lorusso, RIKEN Nishina Center; Daniel Lubos, Technische Universitat Munchen; Kevin Mochner, University of Cologne; Zena Patel and Simon Rice, University of Surrey; Hiroyoshi Sakurai, RIKEN Nishina Center; Laura Sinclair, University of York; Toshiyuki Sumikama, Tohoku University; Jan Taprogge, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid; Zsolt Vajta, MTA Atomki; Hiroshi Watanabe, Beihang University; Jin Wu, Peking University; and Zhengyu Xu, University of Tokyo.

Discoveries, Achievements, and Personalities of the Women Who Evolved the Harvard Classification of Stellar Spectra: Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, and Annie Jump Cannon.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Welther, Barbara L.

2010-01-01

In 1915, the year in which Cannon (1863-1941) completed her work of classifying stars for The Henry Draper Catalogue, she published a popular article entitled, "Pioneering in the Classification of Stellar Spectra.” In it she gave a historical overview of the field in nineteenth-century Europe. She also detailed the context for the structured and routine work she and her colleagues had been engaged in for several years in America. The motivators that kept Cannon and the other women working diligently were the exciting prospect of making new discoveries, the reward of publicity, and their own personal pride. Usually, the discoveries consisted of finding a peculiar type of spectrum and identifying the star as a nova or variable. Such a discovery often resulted in a newspaper headline about the star and a story about the discoverer. This paper will outline the contributions each woman made to the classification system, her style of working, the papers she wrote and published, and the rewards she reaped for her dedication to the field.

Prediction of an internal boundary layer on a flat plate after a step change in roughness using a near-wall RANS model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chu, Minghan; Meng, Fanxiao; Bergstrom, Donald J.

2017-11-01

An in-house computational fluid dynamics code was used to simulate turbulent flow over a flat plate with a step change in roughness, exhibiting a smooth-rough-smooth configuration. An internal boundary layer (IBL) is formed at the transition from the smooth to rough (SR) and then the rough to smooth (RS) surfaces. For an IBL the flow far above the surface has experienced a wall shear stress that is different from the local value. Within a Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) formulation, the two-layer k- ɛ model of Durbin et al. (2001) was implemented to analyze the response of the flow to the change in surface condition. The numerical results are compared to experimental data, including some in-house measurements and the seminal work of Antonia and Luxton (1971,72). This problem captures some aspects of roughness in industrial and environmental applications, such as corrosion and the earth's surface heterogeneity, where the roughness is often encountered as discrete distributions. It illustrates the challenge of incorporating roughness models in RANS that are capable of responding to complex surface roughness profiles.

Layered Double Hydroxides: Potential Release-on-Demand Fertilizers for Plant Zinc Nutrition.

PubMed

López-Rayo, Sandra; Imran, Ahmad; Bruun Hansen, Hans Chr; Schjoerring, Jan K; Magid, Jakob

2017-10-11

A novel zinc (Zn) fertilizer concept based on Zn-doped layered double hydroxides (Zn-doped Mg-Fe-LDHs) has been investigated. Zn-doped Mg-Fe-LDHs were synthesized, their chemical composition was analyzed, and their nutrient release was studied in buffered solutions with different pH values. Uptake of Zn by barley (Hordeum vulgare cv. Antonia) was evaluated in short- (8 weeks), medium- (11 weeks), and long-term (28 weeks) experiments in quartz sand and in a calcareous soil enriched with Zn-doped Mg-Fe-LDHs. The Zn release rate of the Zn-doped Mg-Fe-LDHs was described by a first-order kinetics equation showing maximum release at pH 5.2, reaching approximately 45% of the total Zn content. The Zn concentrations in the plants receiving the LDHs were between 2- and 9.5-fold higher than those in plants without Zn addition. A positive effect of the LDHs was also found in soil. This work documents the long-term Zn release capacity of LDHs complying with a release-on-demand behavior and serves as proof-of-concept that Zn-doped Mg-Fe-LDHs can be used as Zn fertilizers.

Student trajectories in physics: the need for analysis through a socio-cultural lens

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zapata, Mara

2010-09-01

An analysis of student connections through time and space relative to the core discipline of physics is attempted, as viewed through the lens of actor-network-theory, by Antonia Candela. Using lenses of cultural realities, networks, and perceived power in the discourse of one specific university in the capital city of Mexico and one undergraduate physics classroom, the trajectories and itineraries of students are analyzed, relative to a physics professor's pedagogical practices. This ethnographic study then yields comparisons between Mexican undergraduate students and students from the United States. Actor network theory recognizes that the symbiotic relationship existing between an actor and a continuum of space and time is defined by the symbiotic yet interdependent relationships and networks of practice (Lemke in Downward causation: Minds, bodies, and matter 2000). As part of this study and in line with actor-network-theory, human actors and non-human participants were viewed in relation to how subjects acted and were acted upon within networks of practice. Through this forum I reflect on this work with particular focus on the issues of situatedness of actors from a sociocultural perspective and how established networks viewed within this perspective frame and subsequently impact student trajectories and itineraries. In essence I argue for a need to look at a myriad of further complexities driving the symbiotic relationships being analyzed.

Anterior uveal spindle cell tumor in a cat.

PubMed

Evans, Paige M; Lynch, Gwendolyn L; Dubielzig, Richard R

2010-11-01

To describe a case of anterior uveal spindle cell tumor in a cat with features similar to spindle cell tumor of blue eyed dogs. A 10-year-old female spayed domestic short-haired cat was referred for an iris mass OS. The mass was solitary, nodular, nonpigmented, located medially, and causing dyscoria. A diagnosis of a benign epithelial tumor was suggested by a FNA of the mass. The cat was lost to follow-up for 2 years, after which time she re-presented with glaucoma, blindness and grossly evident iridal mass enlargement OS. Transconjunctival enucleation was performed and the globe submitted for histopathology. Histopathology of the enucleated globe revealed the superior iris to be infiltrated and effaced by a large population of neoplastic spindle cells. The cells were arranged in streams and bundles and exhibited Antoni-A and Antoni-B tissue patterns, which are characteristic of Schwann cell tumors. Mitotic figures were rare and cellular pleomorphism moderate. Immunohistochemical staining was positive for S-100 protein and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and negative for Melan-A. Interestingly, there was no histological evidence of glaucoma. Based on its histopathologic characteristics, this iris tumor was diagnosed as a Schwann cell variant of a peripheral nerve sheath tumor (PNST) closely resembling the spindle cell tumor of blue-eyed dogs. Anterior uveal PNST has not been previously reported in cats to the authors' knowledge. The presence of Antoni type A and type B tissue patterns along with immunohistochemical staining may facilitate a diagnosis of PNST and rule out malignant melanoma. © 2010 American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists.

From Greenhouse to Icehouse: Evidence of Climatic Changes Across the Marine Eocene-Oligocene Transition From the Massignano GSSP Section (Central Italy)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coccioni, R.; Marsili, A.; Montanari, A.

2004-12-01

The transition from global "greenhouse" conditions of the early and middle Eocene to global "icehouse" conditions of the early Oligocene marks a turning point in Cenozoic Earth history which was marked by reorganization of global ocean circulation patterns and significant turnovers in the marine and terrestrial biota (Prothero et al., 2003) and led to the development of the first East Antarctic ice-sheet, close to the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (33.7 Ma). The Massignano GSSP for the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (Premoli Silva & Jenkins, 1993), exposed in an abandoned quarry in the Monte Conero area, on the Adriatic coast of central Italy, was investigated at high-resolution in order to provide evidence for climatic changes across the marine Eocene-Oligocene transition. The Massignano section is 23-m thick and consists of alternating reddish/greenish-grey marls and calcareous marls with several biotite-rich levels of volcanic origin which were deposited in a lower bathyal depositional setting, at a paleodepth of 1000-2000 m (Coccioni & Galeotti, 2003). A complete geological record of 3 myr (from 36.2 to 33.2 Ma according to the time scale of Berggren et al., 1995) is preserved which spans the interval from the latest Eocene to the early Oligocene, from Chron C16n to C13n (Bice & Montanari, 1988; Lowrie & Lanci, 1994), and is provided by an accurate calibration of bio- and geochemical events. Cosmic signatures are also recorded in the Massignano section (Montanari et al., 1993) where three impactoclastic, iridium-rich layers occurs in the middle-lower part of the succession (Montanari et al., 1988, 1993; Bodeselitsch et al., 2004). They are possibly linked to the Popigai and Chesapeake Bay impacts and related to a comet shower over a duration of 2.2 myr (Farley et al., 1998). Calcareous nannofossil and foraminiferal assemblages (Coccioni et al., 2000; Spezzaferri et al., 2002), dinoflagellate cyst palynology (Brinkhuis & Biffi, 1993), ostracod faunas (Dall'Antonia et al., 2003), oxygen and carbon isotopes (Bodeselitsch et al., 2004), and environmental magnetism (Jovane et al., 2004) provide evidence of a major cooling trend with warm pulses. These pulses seems to be global in extent and may have been triggered by multiple impact events during the Late Eocene comet shower that may have played an important role related to the deterioration of the global climate at the end of the Eocene Epoch. The release of methane hydrate during and after an impact in a continental shelf (like the Chesapeake Bay impact) or seafloor, or impacts of 12C-rich comets may account for the observed negative isotope excursions. References Bice D. and Montanari A., 1988. IUGS Spec. Publ., Graf. Aniballi, 111-117; Bodeselitsch B. et al., 2004. E.P.S.L., 223, 283-302; Brinkhuis H. and Biffi U., 1993. Mar. Mic., 22, 131-183; Coccioni R. et al., 2000. Terra Nova, 12, 258-263; Coccioni R. and Galeotti S., 2003. In: Prothero D.R. et al., (eds.), 2003. Columbia Univ. Press, 438-452; Dall'Antonia B. et al., 2003. Mar. Mic., 48, 91-106; Farley K.A. et al., 1998. Science, 280, 1250-1253; Jovane L. et al., 2004. Geoph. Res. Let., 31, L15601, doi:10.1029/2004GL020554; Lowrie W. and Lanci L., 1994. E.P.S.L., 126, 247-258; Montanari A. et al., 1993. Palaios, 8, 420-437; Montanari A. et al., 1988. IUGS Spec. Publ., Graf. Aniballi, 195-208; Premoli Silva I. and Jenkins D.G., 1993. Episodes, 16, 379-382; Prothero D.R. et al., (eds.), 2003. Columbia Univ. Press, 541 pp.; Spezzaferri S. et al., 2002. J. Foram. Res., 32, 188-199.

The Supreme Court retreats another step on abortion.

PubMed

Rosoff, J I

1990-01-01

The 1973 "Roe v. Wade" decision is being further dismantled by the Supreme Court. However, in recent decisions, the new Court majority (except Justice Antonia Scalia) seems to say that there is a constitutional right to abortion. The "Hodgson v. Minnesota" and "Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health" decisions addressed difficult topics; the ability of a minor to give informed consent; and the rights of parents with regard to minor children. In most circumstances, medical treatment of children must be authorized by a guardian. However, in many states, children may seek treatment for pregnancy, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and psychological disturbances. In "Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth" and "Bellati v. Baird," the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional protection of abortion could not be conditioned by age, and that parents could not say no to their daughter's wish to have an abortion. If a girl did not want to notify her parent, she could go to a judge instead. The Court never ruled on whether parental notification was constitutional, or whether 1 parent (and, if so, which) or both had to be notified. All of these issues were addressed in "Hodgson" and "Ohio" in ways that were damaging to the welfare and rights of women. In "Hodgson," the Court decided that states may require both biological parents to be notified as long as they have judicial bypass. In "Ohio," the Court approved the state's complicated legal judicial bypass proceedings. It also ruled that the proceedings do not have to be anonymous, just confidential. The reasoning behind the decisions is ambiguous and contradictory. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed that the Minnesota law is very stringent. She said that it was "unreasonable when one considers that only 1/2 of the minors in the State of Minnesota reside with both biological parents." The Court's majority explained that a 48-hour waiting period between the notification and the abortion might place a burden on the rights of the minor, but the Court considered that burden "minimal." The future constitutionally of abortion is on the line. The impending Court changes are the forerunners of more retreat from abortion rights.

The development of phlebology in Hungary.

PubMed

Sándor, T; Bihari, I

2013-02-01

Angiology as an independent discipline together with phlebology started in Hungary with the work of Károly Bugár-Mészáros. Major chapters can be read on venous diseases in his book published in 1944. A milestone in pharmacological phlebology was the discovery of the flavonoids by Albert Szentgyörgyi. After World War II Geza de Takats played an important role in the development of modern venous surgery in the USA. On the initiative of Lajos Soltész, the Phlebological Section of the Hungarian Society of Angiology was founded in 1979, chaired by György Radó. András Hetényi, Tamás Sándor and Viktória Várkonyi assisted the organisation of the section. In the 1980s centers were formed throughout the country where up-to-date phlebological treatments were performed. International relationships were built mainly with Austrian and German experts such as Robert May and Oswald Petter. From 1987, under the direction of György Acsády a large scale phlebological activity developed in the country. The section organised courses and training sessions, Hungarian phlebologists presented papers at international conferences, foreign experts visited Hungary. After György Vas's monograph, Attila Nemes and Imre Bihari wrote books on venous diseases. The 1st European Congress of the Union Internationale de Phlébologie, with 1000 participants including the leading phlebologists of the world was held in Budapest in 1993. Érbetegségek (Vascular Diseases) the official journal of the Hungarian Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery was published in 1994 and The Club of Sclerotherapists was formed in 1997. At the regular meetings of the Club, which is now called Hungarian Venous Forum, the lectures cover every aspect of venous diseases and overlapping disciplines as well. Éva Meskó and Zsolt Pécsvárady have played outstanding roles in the organisation of internal medical phlebology. Emil Monos, the investigator of physiological control of haemodynamics of the venous system is a well-known scientist all over the world. Other presidents of the Phlebological Section were András Hetényi who investigated the pathomechanism of chronic venous insufficiency, Tamás Sándor a specialist of the prophylaxis of venous thromboembolism and Gábor Menyhei an expert of venous operations including subfascial endoscopic perforant surgery. A leading person of the phlebology in the country is Imre Bihari who is an expert of sclerotisation, editor of the journal Vascular Diseases, founder of the 'Venous Forum' and present chair of the Phlebological Section. Nowadays Hungarian phlebologists and vascular surgeons are treating the patients all over the world. Peter Gloviczki Professor of Vascular Surgery of Mayo Clinic as well as the 15th president of the American Venous Forum, and Zoltán Várady Professor and founder of the Vein Clinic in Frankfurt support our work in every way. Internationally acknowledged Hungarian phlebologists are Peter Conrad and George Somjen in Australia, Roberto Várnagy and Peter-Pablo Komlos in South America and Attila Puskás in Transylvania.

Optical space weathering on Vesta: Radiative-transfer models and Dawn observations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blewett, David T.; Denevi, Brett W.; Le Corre, Lucille; Reddy, Vishnu; Schröder, Stefan E.; Pieters, Carle M.; Tosi, Federico; Zambon, Francesca; De Sanctis, Maria Cristina; Ammannito, Eleonora; Roatsch, Thomas; Raymond, Carol A.; Russell, Christopher T.

2016-02-01

Exposure to ion and micrometeoroid bombardment in the space environment causes physical and chemical changes in the surface of an airless planetary body. These changes, called space weathering, can strongly influence a surface's optical characteristics, and hence complicate interpretation of composition from reflectance spectroscopy. Prior work using data from the Dawn spacecraft (Pieters, C.M. et al. [2012]. Nature 491, 79-82) found that accumulation of nanophase metallic iron (npFe0), which is a key space-weathering product on the Moon, does not appear to be important on Vesta, and instead regolith evolution is dominated by mixing with carbonaceous chondrite (CC) material delivered by impacts. In order to gain further insight into the nature of space weathering on Vesta, we constructed model reflectance spectra using Hapke's radiative-transfer theory and used them as an aid to understanding multispectral observations obtained by Dawn's Framing Cameras (FC). The model spectra, for a howardite mineral assemblage, include both the effects of npFe0 and that of a mixed CC component. We found that a plot of the 438-nm/555-nm ratio vs. the 555-nm reflectance for the model spectra helps to separate the effects of lunar-style space weathering (LSSW) from those of CC-mixing. We then constructed ratio-reflectance pixel scatterplots using FC images for four areas of contrasting composition: a eucritic area at Vibidia crater, a diogenitic area near Antonia crater, olivine-bearing material within Bellicia crater, and a light mantle unit (referred to as an ;orange patch; in some previous studies, based on steep spectral slope in the visible) northeast of Oppia crater. In these four cases the observed spectral trends are those expected from CC-mixing, with no evidence for weathering dominated by production of npFe0. In order to survey a wider range of surfaces, we also defined a spectral parameter that is a function of the change in 438-nm/555-nm ratio and the 555-nm reflectance between fresh and mature surfaces, permitting the spectral change to be classified as LSSW-like or CC-mixing-like. When applied to 21 fresh and mature FC spectral pairs, it was found that none have changes consistent with LSSW. We discuss Vesta's lack of LSSW in relation to the possible agents of space weathering, the effects of physical and compositional differences among asteroid surfaces, and the possible role of magnetic shielding from the solar wind.

CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery from the Residual Zone - A Sustainable Vision for North Sea Oil Production

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stewart, Jamie; Haszeldine, Stuart; Wilkinson, Mark; Johnson, Gareth

2014-05-01

This paper presents a 'new vision for North Sea oil production' where previously unattainable residual oil can be produced with the injection of CO2 that has been captured at power stations or other large industrial emitters. Not only could this process produce incremental oil from a maturing basin, reducing imports, it also has the capability to store large volumes of CO2 which can offset the emissions of additional carbon produced. Around the world oil production from mature basins is in decline and production from UK oil fields peaked in 1998. Other basins around the world have a similar story. Although in the UK a number of tax regimes, such as 'brown field allowances' and 'new field allowances' have been put in place to re-encourage investment, it is recognised that the majority of large discoveries have already been made. However, as a nation our demand for oil remains high and in the last decade imports of crude oil have been steadily increasing. The UK is dependent on crude oil for transport and feedstock for chemical and plastics production. Combined with the necessity to provide energy security, there is a demand to re-assess the potential for CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR) in the UK offshore. Residual oil zones (ROZ) exist where one of a number of natural conditions beyond normal capillary forces have caused the geometry of a field's oil column to be altered after filling [1]. When this re-structuring happens the primary interest to the hydrocarbon industry has in the past been in where the mobile oil has migrated to. However it is now considered that significant oil resource may exist in the residual zone play where the main oil column has been displaced. Saturations within this play are predominantly close to residual saturation (Sr) and would be similar to that of a water-flooded field [2]. Evidence from a number of hydrocarbon fairways shows that, under certain circumstances, these residual zones in US fields are comparable in thickness to the conventional oil. The application of CO2EOR to ROZ enables a significant contribution to a field's recoverable reserves [3]. This work identifies for the first time the plays of geological conditions that create naturally occurring residual oil zones in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. We present a screening workflow to identify such zones and a methodology for assessing the resource potential and CO2 storage capacity for a number of different fields. Lastly we examine the economic consequences on CO2 storage of the incremental oil produced, and the carbon balance life-cycle. [1] Melzer, S., Koperna, G., Kuuskraa, V. 2006. The Origin and Resource Potential of Residual Oil Zones. SPE Annual and Technical Conference, San Antonio, Texas, Society. [2] Koperna, G., Melzer. S.L., Kuuskraa, V. 2006. Recovery of Oil Resources From the Residual and Transitional Oil Zones of the Permian Basin.. SPE Annual Technical Conference, San Antonia, Texas. Society of Petroleum Engineers. [3] Advanced Resources International, 2005. Assessing Technical and Economic Recovery of Residual Oil Zones. U.S Department of Energy.

Obituary: Edwin E. Salpeter (1924-2008)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trimble, Virginia; Terzian, Yervant

2009-12-01

Edwin E. Salpeter, who died 26 November 2008 at his home in Ithaca, NY, belonged to the "second wave" of Jewish scientific refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe, those who left as children just before the onset of WWII and so completed their educations elsewhere. Salpeter was born in Vienna on 3 December 1924, and arrived with his family in Australia in 1939, his father was a physicist and a close friend of Erwin Schrodinger. In Australia, he finished high school, and he entered the University of Sydney at the early age of 16. He received his BS and MSc degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Sydney, before moving on to a PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1948, for work with Rudolf Peierls on the electrodynamic self-energy of the electron, the first of more than 380 inventoried publications. He had chosen Birmingham over Cambridge or Oxford because of Peierls, and then chose Cornell over Princeton because of Hans Bethe's presence there. His autobiography describes those as two of his very best decisions ever. Marrying psychobiology student Miriam (Mika) Mark less than a year after arriving at Cornell was surely the third, and they remained in Ithaca the rest of their lives, eventually collaborating on some projects in neurobiology before her death in 2000. Their household was a secular one, but (Ed told a colleague) their two daughters received a basic Jewish education "just in case." Daughter Shelley Salpeter and her son Nicholas Buckley were also collaborators with Salpeter on 21st century projects in meta-analysis, epidemiology, and other statistics-heavy problems in biomedicine. Ed Salpeter is survived by his second wife, Antonia (Lhamo) Shouse. Astronomers may be interested to learn that the Cornell press release announcing his death was prepared by Lauren Gold, daughter of Thomas Gold (and Carrie Gold) the co-author of the steady state theory. Apparently, Ed's father Jakob Salpeter late in life considered the anisotropy reported in the Cosmic Microwave Background and wrote in 1968 to Ron Bracewell and Edward Conklin, who had measured it, expressing puzzlement and doubt that there could be preferred frame effects within special relativity. Ed Salpeter described himself as a generalist, always ready to look at new problems in new fields, and a young colleague quoted him as saying there were problems to be solved on backs of envelopes of various sizes. The result was that he made significant contributions in quantum electro- dynamics (the Bethe-Salpeter equation), nuclear physics (electron screening corrections) and astrophysics (helium burning and beyond), stellar populations (the Salpeter initial mass function and galactic chemical evolution), ionospheric physics (his most-cited paper, because of a Raman-like backscatter effect that is useful for measuring electron densities in laboratory plasmas), equations of state for dense matter (e.g. Jovian planet cores), neutrino emission processes, black hole accretion as an AGN energy source (contemporary with a similar idea from Zeldovich, and before the black hole name had even been coined), interstellar atomic and molecular gas, HI rotation curves, and other aspects of astrophysical dark matter. This is not a complete list! In 2004 a special symposium was organized by his students and colleagues near Siena, Italy, to celebrate the 50 years since his publication of the Initial Mass Function that coincided with his 80th birthday. The symposium proceedings 'The Initial Mass Function: 50 Years Later' was dedicated to Ed 'from whom we have learned so much, to his insight and friendship'. Ed Salpeter received a security clearance in the mid-1950's and kept it up, so that, in addition to evaluating various anti-ballistic-missile defense schemes as a member of the JASONS, he was one of 17 participants in the 1985-87 APS study of directed energy weapons, also known as Star Wars. The panel was unanimous in technical disapproval of the project, and many undoubtedly shared Ed's moral disapproval. His 21 year term as the astrophysics member of the editorial board of Reviews of Modern Physics (1971-92) remains a record and arose from a combination of extremely good judgment and patience with authors, referees, and other editors. His experience as a member of the National Science Board (1978-84) was a less happy one, and he felt he had not been an effective one when the NSF decided to back out of supporting a national-facility large millimeter dish, leaving that territory to individual university groups and the Europeans. How many students did Ed Salpeter have? Well, lots. He was advisor or committee chair for students in computer and geological sciences as well as in physics and astronomy, and was sometimes part of teams he called "two chiefs and one Indian" for additional students. No complete list seems to exist, but the incomplete lists add up to at least 55. Of those, you are likely to have heard of or know (because we do!): Hubert Reeves (who has great-grandstudents of his own!), George Helou, Vahe Petrosian, Bill Newman, Nathan Krumm, Bruce Tarter, Jonathan Katz, Lars Bildsten, Allen Boozer, Bruce Draine, Robert Gould, Nicolas Krall, Richard Lovelace, David Stevenson, Hugh Van Horn, Lyle Hoffman, and Edvige Corbelli. Thus he lived to achieve that mark of maturity, being invited to retirement parties for ones students. Former students, collaborators, and all spoke uniformly of his generosity, quick understanding, and willingness to discuss science on any and all occasions. Among the honors Ed Salpeter received were four honorary D.Sc.'s, five academy memberships, and major prizes from the Royal Astronomical Society, the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the American Physical Society, the Royal Swedish Academy, and the Astronomische Gesellschaft (AG). The text of his AG lecture was published in English, but he told one of us that he felt he no longer had a native language, because he couldn't really think in German any more, but his English was noticeably accented. EES was not the only Nazi refugee astronomer to deliver the (Karl) Schwarzschild lecture. Martin Schwarzshild (who had a Goettingen PhD) provided his lecture in German, but a 1968 speaker, Peter A.G. Scheuer (who left Germany at age 9) was asked to continue in English after the first two sentences. In his long and spectacularly productive life Ed Salpeter remained a modest person who loved to have a good time, on the ski slopes, or throwing large parties at his home. Most of all he enjoyed working closely with his students who have been deeply inspired by his keen intuition.

Obituary: E. Dorrit Hoffleit, 1907-2007

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trimble, Virginia

2007-12-01

For Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit, who died on 9 April 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, shortly after her 100th birthday, World War II, in which she did at least her fair share of the work, was "the war," but she also lived through World War I ("the Great War" until she was well into her 30s), Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and (we hope) most of Iraq. Hoffleit's early years were difficult, and she described her own life as having led "From Early Sadness to Happy Old Age" (Comments on Astrophysics, 18, p. 107, 1996), with a late autobiography entitled Misfortunes as Blessing in Disguise(American Association of Variable Star Astronomers, 2002). The name Dorrit came from Dickens, but her parents, who called her Dorchen in childhood, were German immigrants, and some of her classmates refused to play with her "because she's German!" Home oscillated between a failing farm in Florence, Alabama, where she was born on 12 March 1907 and rented space in the railroad town of New Castle, Pennsylvania, where her father was a bookkeeper for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Older brother, Herbert (1905-1981) was, perhaps inevitably, the favored child, a precocious student (Harvard PhD at 22) and devoted to that most respectable subject, Latin language and literature, of which he was a professor at UCLA from 1927 (when it was the Southern Branch of the University of California) until his retirement. He took the teaching part of his career more seriously than the research part (though he was not the most memorable of the three Latin professors I had there), but, at a time when Dorrit's publications outnumbered Herbert's by something like fifty to one, she remarked, a little sadly, that the only thing about her that her mother, who lived until 1974, really approved of was her long hair. Dorrit soon started catching up! She was the only member of the Radcliffe class of 1928 who had taken a graduate course in mathematics. She turned down a better paying job as a statistician to start work the next year as a research assistant (later research associate) at Harvard College Observatory, then directed by Harlow Shapley, about whom her opinion was much warmer than that expressed by Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin. Dorrit's immediate supervisor at Harvard was Henrietta Swope, daughter of the President of General Electric, and eventually best known for work at Mount Wilson Observatory with Walter Baade on variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds, published in papers that continued to appear long after Baade's death. Hoffleit's first ten papers were also on variable stars and appeared in Harvard Observatory publications. But the MA she completed in 1932 was on the light curves of meteors and was published in the Proceedings of the United States National Academy of Sciences. By this time, Dorrit had established a work pattern that was to persist right up to retirement - at least 40 hours per week on whatever the current boss thought she should be doing, and another 20 or so on other astronomical research that interested her. Hffleit had supposed that an MA would be her highest degree, but Shapley urged her to go on for a PhD, with, it would seem, a bit of urging on both sides from Bart Bok, who informed her that "if God recommends that you do something, it is your duty to do it." The thesis (PhD 1938) was on yet a third topic, spectroscopic parallaxes. This means determining the luminosities of stars, hence their distances, from line width and ratio diagnostics in their spectra. The pioneer was Antonia Maury, whose insights were not appreciated by Shapley's predecessor, E. C. Pickering. Another valuable Hoffleit mentor was Ernst Öpik, on a three-month visit to Harvard in 1934, from whom Dorrit learned stellar statistics and half a dozen other things. The thesis also provided her "break out" paper into the Astrophysical Journal (on CN as a giant/dwarf discriminator). Hoffleit began to branch out into astrometry, comets, and other parts of astronomy and, starting in 1941, began writing about eighty short news notes per year for Volumes 1-15 of the newly for med Sky & Telescope. And then there was a war. Women were not, of course, drafted nor required to find state-side war work to avoid deployment overseas, but Dorrit, still mindful of her German heritage, volunteered. After about six months working under Zdenek Kopal on preparation of firing tables for Navy cannons, she returned briefly to Harvard, having been employed (and paid) at roughly the high-school student level by the Navy. But soon it was on to the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground and another computing job, this time for trajectories of anti-aircraft missiles. The other job opportunity was to measure missile tracks on photographic plates, which she would have preferred, but this would have placed her in the department headed by Edwin P. Hubble. No love was lost between Harvard's Shapley and Mount Wilson's Hubble, partly due to scientific differences, but also partly due to their very different views on what scientists should do in war time, so perhaps is was just as well she ended up in the computing section. There was another stage of fuss and bother to be got through before Dorrit received an appropriate, "professional" (meaning with PhD) rank and the commensurate salary. To the Colonel who complained that women were forever leaving their jobs to get married, she mentioned only her age, and not her early resolve never to marry or to have children, because of a deep worry that they might inherit the mental instability that had led to her maternal grandmother's institutionalization and early death. By the end of the war, her position, salary, and responsibilities a good match to her skills and credentials, Dorrit willingly put in another three years with the Army, working on reduction of records of "DOppler Velocity and Position" data for the captured V-2s being flown from White Sands Missile Range. But it was not the astronomy she loved, and late 1948 saw her back at Harvard (though with a consultant's appointment at Aberdeen for another ten years), salary cut back by a factor two, but with tenure as an astronomer, a bigger office, and an enormous pile of plates from the Blömfontein station to be measured for spectroscopic parallaxes. She undertook that and a wide range of other projects, with full support from above as long as Shapley was director. It must mean something that the next director, Donald H. Menzel, who eventually precipitated Hoffleit's departure from Harvard, had also been born in a Florence (Colorado, rather than Alabama), but what really mattered was that he wanted to move Harvard in the direction of his own field of astrophysics and saw no good reason to maintain extensive plate files or people who extracted data from them. Dorrit went job hunting, and, when the dust had finally settled, she was ensconced in two positions that she would occupy officially for the next twenty years (and unofficially long beyond that). It was in those two contexts that most of us came to know her. Hoffleit became, half-and-half, both director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory from 1957 to 1978 and a research astronomer at Yale (1956 to official 1975 retirement) under its long-term director Dirk Brouwer, where her primary task was to be preparation of astrometric catalogs. The Observatory directorship first. Maria Mitchell (MMO) was (and is) a small, private observatory on Nantucket Island (Massachusetts) founded as a memorial to the first woman astronomer in the USA by her family and friends. The primary instrument was a 7.5" refractor used (1912-1995) primarily for photographic monitoring of variable stars. Hoffleit proposed to work on some hundreds of her Harvard discoveries, employing for the first time during each summer a small group of undergraduate women to acquire additional plates, measure them, determine periods, and so forth, the results eventually to be published, often in the Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, where MMO papers still turn up, though perhaps not so many as in Dorrit's day. She would also continue education and public outreach activities in the local community that her predecessor, Margaret Harwood, had established. Summer research experience for undergraduate opportunities have become common, but they were rare in 1957, especially for women students, and the ones who came to MMO (more than one hundred over her term) were undoubtedly very strongly motivated. They left even more so, with the striking result that about 25 of the Hoffleit students became professional astronomers. A few of the earliest are now retired; many remain in stellar astronomy, but others have spread across the Solar System and the galaxies. According to a list compiled by Dorrit, with minor additions, these are, in chronological order: Margo Friedel Aller, Andrea Knudsen Dupree, Barbara Welther, Gretchen Luft Hagen Harris, Nancy Houk, Martha Safford Hanner, Diane Reeve Moorhead, Nancy Remage Evans, Catherine Doremus Garmany, Jane Turner, Jean Warren Goad, Karen Alper Castle, Marcia Keyes Rieke, Judy Karpen, Karen Kwitter, Esther Hu, Bonnie Buratti, Harriet Dinerstein, Melissa McGrath, Constance Phillips Walker, John Briggs, Deborah Crocker, Edward Morgan, and Karen Meech. The program went co-ed shortly before Dorrit handed it over to Emilia Belaserne). A special paragraph must go to Janet Akyüz Mattei. She came to MMO in the summer of 1969 upon the recommendation of Paris Pismis, an Armenian-Turkish-Mexican astronomer who had known Janet in Turkey and was a very old friend of Dorrit's (and of mine). Janet's own obituary sadly appeared in these pages (BAAS, 36, pp. 1681-82, 2004), the last 30 of her only 61 years having been spent as the director of AAVSO. Among the many important things Janet did in that directorial capacity was to persuade Dorrit Hoffleit to write up the story of her life for publication by AAVSO in 2002, from which much of this material has been taken. And then there was Yale. "Dorrit Hoffleit?" "You know. The Yale Bright Star Catalogue." Indeed the Yale Bright Star Catalogue: the Third (1964) edition on her own; the Fourth (1982) with Carlos Jaschek; the 1983 Supplement; and the Fifth (1987) Edition with W. H. Warren. The value of these would be hard to overestimate. They were cited one hundred or more times per year from 1985 to 1999 (compared, to about twenty citations per year to Annie J. Cannon's HD catalogues and about 600 per year to the multiplet tables of Charlotte E. Moore during the same period). But there were also her contributions to a number of other Yale catalogues of positions and proper motions, and, especially, the 4th edition of the General Catalogue of Trigonometric Parallaxes with W. F. van Altena and J. T. Lee, plus a large number of papers based on subsets of the stars in these catalogues and compilations. Dirk Brouwer, who had chaired the search committee that selected Hoffleit as director of Maria Mitchell, was also department head and observatory director at Yale when she arrived there. Late in 2006, when Dorrit had become even more forthcoming than in her autobiography, she admitted in an extended phone conversation that he had been a very traditional director, not just primarily committed to positional astronomer (one of her own loves) but also of the opinion that the staff should work primarily on his projects. Yet the unexpected death of Brouwer in January 1966 could have been a disaster. The newly appointed acting director, Rupert Wildt (of H-minus opacity fame) made clear that the future of the department would lie with astrophysics, and he did some firm "deaccessioning" of non-tenured staff in celestial mechanics and astrometry. But when Pierre Demarque took up the chairmanship, making clear that it would not be for the rest of his life, he was very glad to have Hoffleit's programs continue and, in fact, gave her a good deal more freedom to choose then than had Brouwer. Dorrit used part of that freedom to begin writing about the history of astronomy, first book reviews and obituaries, but soon also articles on the history of variable star astronomy, a long 1993 article on women who had worked in the field (and she included supernovae!), and, most notably, the 1992 volume Astronomy at Yale 1701-1968. Eventually her historical interests were bound to overlap her own lifetime, and her last publication was the written version of a talk she gave at the April 2000 meeting of the American Physical Society on the pioneering women of stellar classification - Fleming, Maury, and Cannon (Physics in Perspective, 4, pp. 367-495, 2002). Among the honors bestowed upon Hoffleit, primarily rather late in her life, were two DSc's (Smith College 1984, Central Connecticut State University 1998), the George van Biesbroeck Prize (American Astronomical Society and University of Arizona, 1988) for extraordinary service to the astronomical community both as a mentor and as a cataloguer, and an asteroid (3416) in 1987. With no children or grandchildren of her own, Dorrit established close relationships with her brother's two children, many of the Maria Mitchell "girls," and the children of her younger Yale colleague Robert Zinn. In a slightly more ideal world, this piece would have been written either by Janet Mattei of AAVSO or by Martha (Liller) Hazen, whose friendship with Dorrit went right back to the plate stacks of Harvard. Both predeceased her. Dorrit once said of Annie J. Cannon that she (AJC) was the happiest person that she (EDH) had ever known. I am not quite sure we can say that, in turn, about Dorrit Hoffleit, but she certainly was in the running. And part of what it made it so wonderful to encounter her was not just that you were glad to see her, but that she was glad to see you.