Art and physics may not always be the most obvious subject pairing, but within our collections there are many examples of overlap between these two realms. Delving into our photo archives reveals many instances not only of physicists as appreciators of art – taking in exhibits, or with paintings in their offices – but also of these scientists as both subject and artist.

Today, we know that the gender gap in physics is large. This gender gap might lead to the misconception that, with a few famous exceptions like Marie Curie and Lise Meitner, women were rarely involved with physics until very recently. However, women have always been involved with physics, throughout the history of physics. Historian Joanna Behrman notes in her article “Physics … is for girls?” in Physics Today magazine,

At the dawn of the 20th century, more than half of secondary-school physics students were female, but by 1950 only 20–30% were.

Physics has never been a static discipline, but significant change happened in the field during World War II, sometimes known as “The Physicist’s War.” The changes are complex and driven by a wide variety of factors, but one impetus for the changing status of the field was the race to make nuclear weapons for the war and subsequent deployment of nuclear weapons, which threw the discipline of physics into the spotlight and increased its desirability as a career. This, combined with societal trends of the 1950s that emphasized women’s place in the home, may have contributed to the idea of physics being a field for men.[1] For this Photos of the Month, I explored the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives to take a look at images in our collection of women involved with physics before World War II in the United States - some subjects well-known, some less-known, others unknown.

At the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, we see many different types of published resources such as manuscripts, periodicals, textbooks, and rare books. But for Women's History Month, our staff explored two types of materials that are as creative and entertaining as they are educational and informative: graphic novels and children's picture books. Read our staff reviews of these illustrated stories of women in physics below.

This month’s Photos of the Month was inspired by a recent episode of the podcast Unexplainable. (Shout out to the Unexplainable crew, who have used resources from our library & archives in previous episodes and provided some of the references used in this blog post!)

When it comes to historical research, I am a bit of a completionist. There are different styles of doing history, and mine is to be exhaustive. The thing is, with historical research, there are so many sources out there, likely in so many different archives, that for any one project it’s nearly impossible to fully research anything. You just get to a point where you can say “good enough.”

Wikipedia is a beacon of seemingly infinite information in our online lives: a jumping off-point for research, a quick fix to a debate, or a rabbit hole of factoids in which to lose yourself. In March of 2022, I started as Wikipedian-in-Residence here at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, and since then have been finding ways to bring the NBLA to Wikipedia and vice versa. Here's a bit about what I’ve been up to and an overview of what Wikipedian-ing has looked like for me. 

What Exactly is a Wikipedian-in-Residence 

One can hardly do justice to Marie Tharp in a paper of this length, as her life exemplifies so many strands of emerging science and disciplines as well as a sea-change in society as a whole. Her story points to the great value of the study of the history of disciplines, in the broad sense of geology as a whole, the emerging subsciences of geophysics and more sophisticated seismology, and  as the newly coined oceanography. In a relatively short period, knowledge of the ocean floor went from an assumed almost featureless abyssal plain to a worldwide complex of ridges, valleys and transform faults showing regularly reversing strips of magnetism. Accounts of Marie Tharp’s life also show a progression. She was at first nearly invisible, a “computer” as then known as she took numbers and translated them to maps. She was not allowed to go on ships to collect data, was basically ignored in published papers and was rarely referenced in histories, but her career ended with a full and fair assessment of her place in the complex story.

Some people may think librarians have the best job in the world. We get to buy books…professionally. It is pretty great, but we can’t and don’t just buy whatever tickles our fancy. We work hard to make sure the books we’re buying for the collection support the action, whether that’s purchasing what scholars near and far recommend to us, trying to predict the future to acquire what scholars of tomorrow may want, or supporting the work our colleagues do at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives or Center for History of Physics. These are just some of the books we purchased this year and why we purchased them.

“Tea, Earl Grey, Hot,” is a familiar line if you have watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that show, Captain Jean-Luc Piccard orders his favorite beverage from the replicator in the same manner in practically every episode. A nice hot tea is also my beverage of choice during the cold winter months. Looking through the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, it is clear many a physicist has also enjoyed a delicious cup of tea. Enjoy this Photos of the Month post on the theme of tea with a cup of your favorite winter beverage.

Here at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, we are National History Day® enthusiasts! NBLA has sponsored the History of the Physical Sciences & Technology Prize since 2017: one prize for the senior division, and one for the junior division. It is one of several special prizes that highlight a specific subject for the middle and high school participants of this nation-wide history contest. (Read more about the program and find out how to participate as a grade school student or a teacher here.)