ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Networks of Support, Collaboration, and Mentorship in Physics

• In Event: Recovering the Histories of Women in Quantum Physics 1

English Abstract

In addition to her groundbreaking work in nuclear physics and her pioneering experiments on quantum entanglement, Chien-Shiung Wu played an increasingly important role as a mentor and champion of other women in STEM. Wu’s support for junior colleagues began in earnest as soon as her own position at Columbia was secure. One of the earliest women she supervised in the 1950s was Noemie Benzcer Koller, who would go on to become the first woman to join the Rutgers physics faculty. Wu’s later students included Evelyn Hu, the future Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Harvard who has made major contributions to nanotechnology and nanophotonics; and Georgia Papaefthymiou who made crucial contributions in biophysics. Beginning in the early 1970s, Wu led an affirmative action committee at Columbia University, bringing pressure to bear on the university and beyond, to ensure equal treatment for men and women in academia. In 1972, she personally urged Columbia’s President to add a young legal scholar to that committee, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. One year later, in 1973, Wu ran for and was elected as the first woman in history to lead the American Physical Society. She began as Vice President, and then became the APS President, where she led the society’s efforts to foster a more inclusive and welcoming climate in physics. This session briefly introduces several of Wu’s initiative and her star students, the fields they pursued based on her mentorship, and the collaborative advocacy strategies Wu pursued in support of a more inclusive STEM environment, in partnership with physicists like Vera Kistiakowski, Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, Dina Moché, and others.

Author

• Michelle Franck