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Joan Feynman

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Scientist

The Resume

    (March 31, 1927-July 21, 2020)
    Born in Queens, New York
    Astrophysicist
    Known for her studies of auroras and the solar wind
    Determined that auroras are caused by the interaction of the Earth's magnetosphere and the magnetic field of the solar wind
    Found that coronal mass ejections from the Sun could be detected by increased amounts of helium in the solar wind
    Sister of physicist Richard Feynman

Why she might be annoying:

    Her mother and grandmother discouraged her from studying science, claiming women's brains were not physically capable of understanding complex scientific concepts: 'I've doubted my abilities ever since.'
    While in graduate school, a professor suggested she write her dissertation on cobwebs, since she would encounter plenty of them while cleaning house. (Instead, she went for 'Infrared lattice absorption in crystals of diamond structure.')
    She suffered severe depression when she spent two years as a full-time homemaker. (During a brief period of unemployment during a mid-70s recession, she told her son, 'I can either be a part-time mama or a full-time madwoman.')
    To avoid competing with her brother, she offered him a deal early in her career: she would study auroras and he could study the rest of the universe.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Her interest in auroras was triggered by her brother waking her one night to watch the northern lights flickering over a golf course near their home.
    When he was in college, Richard gave her a textbook on astronomy; reading it, she came across a graph of stellar intensities based on the research of Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin, which convinced her that a woman could have a career in science.
    She took a year off from her graduate studies to live in Guatemala with her husband, anthropologist Richard Hirshberg, resulting in her co-authoring an anthropology paper on the Mayans.
    She developed a model to predict the number of high-energy particles likely to impact a spacecraft over its lifetime, which led to new developments in spacecraft design.
    She was the woman elected an officer of the American Geophysical Union (1974).
    She was awarded NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2000).

Credit: C. Fishel


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Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 8 Votes: 0% Annoying