Short Wave - A Tale Of Two Bengali Physicists

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

When Shohini Ghose was studying physics as a kid, she heard certain names repeated over and over. "Einstein, Newton, Schrodinger ... they're all men." Shohini wanted to change that — so she decided to write a book about some of the women scientists missing from her grade school physics textbooks. It's called Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe. This episode, she talks to Short Wave host Regina G. Barber about uncovering the women physicists she admires — and how their stories have led her to reflect on her own. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. When I was a kid learning physics in high school, there were a few names that I had heard a lot, like Hubble, Fine Men, Einstein, and Newton, and Schrodinger. And they're all men. Shohenie Ghosh had a similar experience. She's a quantum physicist and a physics and computer science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. And she remembers learning about all these men and being like, hold up, only men? there has to be more to the story. I was certain there must have been other women before me

who were interested in physics. And the more I dug, the more I found that we don't tell their stories. That's when Chohini started thinking she wanted to tell these stories. She found one of her favorite stories as she was forging her own path in physics as a grad student at the University of New Mexico, working in their quantum computing research group. Shohini was digging through the Apollo Lunar Program's history. That led me to the history.

of Fairchild, which was a company that was building these computer chips back then. Fairchild Semiconductor was an early ancestor of Intel, and they had a factory in Shiprock, a local town, on land that belongs to the Navajo Nation. They employed primarily Navajo women to produce these computer chips, which they viewed as unskilled labor. There were no labor laws. There were no unions, so they didn't have to worry about, you know,

fair wages and, you know, work conditions and things like this. So they were there to save money as much as anything else. But turned out these women were really amazing at innovating and building these very robust electronic chips. And that's why those chips were really good for use in these one-shot kinds of projects such as the moon landings. This was a job that needed skill, focus, concentration, accuracy, and the workers at Shiprock managed to reduce the failure rate to 5%,

four times less than any factory. There was a protest at the plant related to the unfair treatment of Navajo workers in the area, and this ultimately resulted in the plant shutting down. Shohini was shocked that in this town she thought she knew so well, there could be this history she'd never heard of. But as she continued researching over the years, she found these women across the globe.

This amazing woman who was born in China. Her name is Wuchy and Qing. Women from Egypt who have been involved in particles. This incredible Brazilian woman, Elisa wrote up a SOA who did this amazing particle physics work, which went unnoticed because she was not based in North America. Shohini ultimately went on to write a book about some of the women's scientists she didn't learn about in her physics textbooks. It's called her space, her time, how trailblazing women scientists decoded the hidden universe. One of the women Shohini writes about is Biba Chodhury, a physicist from the mid-20th century.

It turns out they even grew up in the same city in India, decades apart. I think of all the women that I wrote about, Biba Chaudhuri holds a special place in my heart because she's Bengali. Bipha had become a kind of vital for Shohini. She's a woman that Shohini knew nothing about as a kid but now strongly relates to. Today on the show, the women in physics we don't hear about. A tale of two Bengali physicists working 60 years apart and how they found each other. You're listening to Shortwave. the science podcast from NPR.

Shohini Ghosh and Bibha Chodhari share a few things in common, being Bengali, loving physics, and going to school in Kolkata, formerly Kalkata. And both of them were really encouraged to explore their academic interests as kids. Biba was part of this community in India. That's called the Brahmo community. And this is basically like a, at the time,

it was like a reform movement within Hinduism. And part of their principles involved, focusing on education for girls and women. They both attended all-girls schools. That's why Shohini felt comfortable in a science classroom as a kid, and that likely provided the same comfort to Biba. But Shohini grew up in a free India, and Biba did not. So she did her work in the early 1940s in India,

and that was actually when India was still part of the British Empire. So in that context, it's really interesting because, of course, there was not a lot of funding that the British provided for Indian scientists doing physics in India, because that funding was for British scientists doing work in the UK. Despite that, Biba joined research groups at Calcutta University in India. And so she worked with a colleague of hers, her mentor. His name was Davendra Mohan Bowe's. And the two of them were some of the very, very early explorers of this whole new area called particle physics.

BIPA would go on to help discover not one but two fundamental particles. But in those early days, she was just focused on tracking particle showers of cosmic rays, the high-energy radiation of particles from beyond the solar system. She used this technique where they would take these photographic plates coated with these special emulsions and take them up to the mountaintops and expose them to these high-energy cosmic rays. And by looking at basically the tracks and their shing, and their trajectories, they could calculate properties of these particles, like the energy and from the energy, then the momentum,

and the direction of curvature. They could calculate the masses of these particles. The more curve the path, the heavier the particle. So a light electron might look like a straight line through a photoemulsion, whereas a heavier proton might curve downward. And what she found was that there was this tiny discrepancy in some of what they were seeing in these tracks, very, very small.

But if you did the calculation, taking into account the discrepancy, the mass of the particles that they calculated was more than what they expected. So it was almost like they found this new, heavy particle that nobody else had actually detected. But Bipa couldn't continue hunting for the pyon. She had to pause her research because she ran out of funding. But the technique that she had developed and the calculations that she had, she had done, they did actually publish the work in the series of four papers in nature, which is, of course, the top science journal. So her work was well known, even back then,

and that's really unheard of. Four papers back to back in nature is kind of amazing. And when the Pyong was formally discovered years later in 1947 using this method, it wasn't Biba who was credited. After the war ended, a British physicist named Cecil Powell, who did know about her work, used her technique, got better. plates had the funding to confirm this new particle, which was called the Pi-Mazon or the Pyon. And for that discovery, Powell won the Nobel Prize. After her Pyon research, she continued working on other projects in particle physics. She moved to the UK and did her graduate work at a British lab. Afterwards, Bebaugh helped discover another fundamental particle, the neutrino.

She worked in a detector deep in India's colder gold mines. That's because neutrinos are hard to catch a glimpse of, and they don't interact with electric fields or magnets. In fact, most neutrinos in the universe could pass right through the Earth without a trace. So the best way to see a neutrino is to place a detector deep underground so that the Earth itself can shield out all other particles. Then wait and hope that one of the trillions of neutrinos passing through this planet can interact with an atom and leave a little trace. In 1965, it finally worked. Atmospheric neutrinos were detected in the mind that Bipa worked in. Biba had a great career, but she was often snubbed for funding and for meaningful research

positions. She never won any major awards. So these kinds of moments, of course, do shape who we do remember and celebrate later on and who we forget. And unfortunately, she was basically forgotten after she died. do you wish you would have known about her when you were a kid? Of course. I mean, it's such an inspiring story.

I mean, on one hand, it's frustrating to hear about all these challenges. But on the other hand, the work she did, in spite of all of these issues, is kind of stunning. She was involved in two fundamental particle discoveries. She worked in the lab of this other physicist named Blackett, who also went on, by the way, to win a Nobel Prize. So some of the works that she did there also perhaps contributed to that. So this is the kind of woman who we have lost to history. That's like saying, well, what if we had never heard of, you know, I don't know, Newton or something? That would be a big loss.

Shohini might not have grown up with Bihaha, but she still feels connected to her now, all these decades later. I hope that they do rewrite those textbooks in India and elsewhere to include her. Anyone who faced the kinds of challenges she did and was able to have an entire career at the level she did must have been absolutely passionate about physics. And to me, that is a real link. That's why I feel this special place for her in my heart. It's the same way for me. I can't imagine doing anything else.

So that's the real link. Finding Bipa and all these other women was pandemic therapy for Shohini. She felt so isolated, but had the same. this rich group of historical friends she could turn to whenever she started writing. These women were in my head. They were talking to me. They were showing me all these wonderful adventures they had. They created entire fields of new research, like research into dark matter, what happened with the evolution of the universe, how did the universe begin? Those kinds of big questions. And so I felt like they were almost like whispering in my head. So I wasn't really alone.

And they were all such strong inspirational characters. who could basically continue what they wanted to do and focus on their passion despite challenges. That really spoke to me during pandemic because, of course, that's what we were all going through. When Chohini thinks about Bipa or the Navajo woman at Shiprock or Chen Chung Wu, she's reminded of their power. They were rule breakers, they were innovators.

They had strength, and that's why they succeeded. And I'm sure women now have strength, women in the future will have strength, we will survive despite whatever life throws at us, no doubt. But imagine these women, without all these challenges, what they could have done. Shohini fits into this history. Between Bipa's time in physics and her own 60 years later, the world has changed. But Chohini has had roadblocks too.

So I hope that the community as a whole will mobilize and ask, why is it that we have this culture where women still have to struggle to survive? How can we change that? by looking at the experiences of these women who are certainly some of the more successful stories, looking at their experiences will tell us, perhaps, what we can do better today. Thank you so much, Shohini, for talking to me. I've learned so much. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really enjoyed talking with you. Before we head out, a quick shout out to our Shortwave Plus listeners.

We appreciate you, and we thank you for being a subscriber. ShoreWave Plus helps support our show, and if you're a regular listener, we'd love for you to join so you can enjoy the show without sponsor interruptions. Find out more at plus.npr.mpr.org slash Shorewave. This episode was produced by Margaret Serrino and edited by Britt Hansen and our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Rebecca Check the Facts. The audio engineer was David Greenberg. I'm Regina Barber. Thanks for listening to Shorewave from NPR.