Topic 137: Intellectual Pioneers

Carol:

Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat           

I love the inventiveness of the designers who can stylize the word “Google” to pay tribute to a special event or person. Thursday’s tribute showed  a science lab table set up with glass vials, a flame, even a coffee pot, and a maze of tubes configured to spell out G-O-O-G-L-E. Aha, it was Robert Bunsen’s 200th birthday.
 

Name  recognition.  We throw around  lots of names without having any idea what they signify. I haven’t been in a science lab for many years, but I recognize a Bunsen burner or a Petri dish. Just as I know what Apgar score, Morse Code, Richter Scale and Braille system refer to. Significant inventions, but what do we know about the inventors and scientists whose names have been branded into our memory banks?
 

I’m probably typical of many Americans who accumulate trivial “factoids” about popular culture and celebrities but can’t name a pioneer in mathematics, astrophysics, biochemistry, or macroeconomics. Well, maybe I can name somebody, a man whose creative and intellectual interests span so many fields that, according to Wikipedia, his books are found in 8 of the 10 major Dewey Decimal System categories, the man who made robotics famous, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992).
 

Rowena Morril's painting of Asimov.

I never really thought much about the science—or the scientist—behind my favorite science fiction: the Foundation Series, Nightfall, and the Robot Series.  Out of respect for the subject, I will head to the Isaac Asimov Homepage, a site that is short on glitz and long on substance. It  lists all of the books and essays this prolific author has written, including 1600 essays from science fiction magazines and other sources such as Science World, Chemical and Engineering News, The Humanist, and Space World. The topics touch on just about every “logy”: psycho, geo, zoo, bio.  According to homepage authors Seiler and Hatcher, Asimov’s genius  was not just in the breadth of his intellectual curiosity and his depth of knowledge but in his ability to explain complex information in a simple way.
 

In 1982, the 2nd  Revised Edition was published of Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. The book contains 1510 names, some of which would surprise no one (Newton, Kepler, Faraday) and a few who might seem out of place (Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth). In a 2009 review of the book, Robert Wilfred Franson comments: “Asimov's scope is the vast range of human science and technology. He seems equally at home in discussing theory and experiment and invention, medicine and chemistry and rocketry.” Just as Seiler and Hatcher noted, Franson emphasizes Asimov’s ability to make complex material accessible to a general audience.
 

Dr. Asimov collected numerous awards  over the years, including 14 honorary doctorates.  He has been recognized by such diverse groups as the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, the American Heart Association, and of course the science fiction community.   An asteroid is named after him, and in 2009 a crater on Mars. Behind all the scientific accolades and writing accomplishments was a man with a personality, humanity and sense of humor: “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
 

It looks like I missed the Isaac Asimov Memorial Panel Debate at New York’s Hayden Planetarium again this year. The topic was “The Theory of Everything… Still Searching.” Quite an impressive group of credentials although, of course, I didn’t recognize any  of their names. They are mostly Physics professors working on string theory, superstring theory, loop quantum gravity, and the detection of dark matter. Asimov would have loved it.

Sources:
Franson, Robert Wilfred.  Review.
Johns Hopkins University. Bio of Edward Seiler.  
Isaac Asimov Home Page.
Isaac Asimov Biography. Wikipedia.
Rowena Morrill  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaac_Asimov_on_Throne.png

Megan:

So, this is one of those topics that gets Mom all excited because it means research. When I moaned about it, she suggested I write about the president of the college I went to because she was the first female president of a college west of the Mississippi. I find that difficult to believe because the school, first a seminary then a college,  is 158 years old, and has always been west of the Mississippi. Also, it has always been a woman’s college except for two weeks in 1990, which resulted in the college needing a new president.  Anyway, I know there was a female president before this one. But I’m not going to prove it because I’m not in the mood for research right now.

I was talking to my Dad on the way home tonight about how I completely forgot to mention this website in the interview I had last week – didn’t conceal it on purpose, but actually forgot to mention how I’m spending half my days. And he said that if they find it (and they will) they’ll probably want to hire my mom instead because her essays are researched and mine are silly. And I was like, thanks a lot jerk. But I didn’t actually say that, because I don’t speak that way to my father.

Look. I like this project. I didn’t think we’d make it this long, but I’m glad we’re still doing it. But this is not a job for me. I write this stuff mostly to be funny, or at least entertaining. Occasionally a topic really interests me and then I do the research, but not everything excites my curiosity. If this were my job, it would be different. I’d be answering questions, or hopefully, helping people learn how to answer their own questions. But I’m only willing to put a certain amount of time into these essays – like a maximum of an hour – because I have a lot of research and reading to do that is unrelated.

Getting my master’s degree and starting out my career in England has handicapped me. I am not saying I am unqualified to work in this country because that is absolutely not true. But librarianship is practical career and it involves a lot of different skills, most of which are honed on the job. So, while I don’t have a job, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out the American way – the American vocabulary, the American resources. I’ve taken classes since I got back, and spent a lot of time reading professional literature.  I’m not trying to hint that I am an intellectual pioneer, self-training for the job I eventually hope to land. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere at all without the wealth of information and advice available to unemployed librarians concerned with keeping their skills up-to-date. There are a lot of us, working while unemployed. This website is the thing I do when I’m either reflecting on it, or I want a break from it.

Especially when I realize that the thing that would help me the most, I haven’t done. I should be volunteering in a library. But I really thought that at any moment I might find a job and I didn’t want to let anyone down by suddenly quitting. Which was not a concern I had when starting this project – although it is now.

Anyway, another reason writing this essay isn’t like a job: I’m actually writing this in the middle of the night, in the middle of my bed, wearing the nightgown I tried to dress Milo in earlier today. I wish I had been able to video him running up the stairs while the little dress slid further down with each step. By the time he reached the top, it was just hanging off his tail. You probably had to be there.  

Milo wishes he wasn't there.

PS: Mills College is named after its founders, Cyrus and Susan Mills. Susan became as president of the college in 1890 and served for 19 years.  I knew this already. I’m guessing what my mom actually meant to say was that Mills was the first women’s college established west of the Rockies, and is the second oldest women’s college still in existence.

PPS: Mom has clarified to say that she meant Aureilia Henry Reinhardt (Mills President 1916 – 1943) was the first female president.  But as we’ve already established, that is wrong too.

www.mills.edu