Berkeley Science Review - Spring 2001

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Eran Karmon

MANAGING EDITOR

Temina Madon

COPY EDITOR

Donna Sy

ART DIRECTOR

Tania Haddad

DESIGNER

Anna Ross

EDITORS

Antoinette ChevalierHeidi LedfordJessica Palmer

Thomas Thomaidis

LAYOUT STAFF

Una RenDan Handwerker

C. Ric Mose

PRINTER

Regent Press

SPECIAL THANKS

Timothy FerrisRodes FishburneJonathan Knight

Noah Berger

Dear Readers,

You’d have to spend months attending university lectures and departmental seminars togather all the information in this issue of the BSR. From Heidi Anderson’s look at brainsexual dimorphism (p. 5), to Rachel Teukolsky’s examination of Big Science politics andespionage at World War II-era Berkeley Labs (p. 16), to Alan Moses’ bizarre rants aboutevolution (p. 10), this magazine is rivaled only by a thousand-page Russian novel in breadthof material. Read through it all, you’ll learn a lot.

Like almost everything these days, the BSR started with a blip on the Internet. Berkeleygraduate student Kim Miller sent an email to the student community gauging interest instarting a new popular science journal about Berkeley. From there, our editorial boardformed and a vision for what this magazine would be about emerged. We wanted amultidisciplinary look at UC Berkeley science, past and present, and that’s what the BSR is.Our editorial board is composed of talented graduate students in science, engineering,English, and history, all of whom brought their expertise and voice to this journal. Theyspent many late nights and gave up scarce free time to create the BSR. If my advisor knewhow much time I’ve spent on this project, he’d boot me out the door. I’d be working atAndersen Consulting faster than you could say “creative business solutions.”

Our contributors too represent all the best of Berkeley. They’re graduate students andpostdoctoral fellows from many, many campus departments, from biophysics to journalismto literature. The amount of combined higher education represented by our contributorspool is staggering. And it comes through in the thoughtful, original, and interesting articlesin this issue of the BSR.

Enjoy this first issue of the Berkeley Science Review, brought to you by the campus’s studentsand scholars. Let us know how you like what we’ve done ([email protected]). And to all you Berkeley researchers out there, let theworld know about your work and all the great science that comes out of Berkeley. Write upan article and send it in for our next issue, due out next fall.

By the way—visit us on the web at www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gsj/ for submission guide-lines, advertising info, announcements on upcoming events (like our science-writing work-shops), and more.

All the best,

Eran KarmonEditor-in-Chief

FROM THE EDITOR

© 2001 Berkeley Science Review. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without express permission of the publishers.Published with financial assistance from the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley, the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly, theAssociated Students of the University of California, and the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Publication Committee. Berkeley Science Review is notan official publication of the University of California, Berkeley, or the ASUC. The content in this publication does not necessarily reflect theviews of the University or the ASUC. Cover image © 1998 Susannah Hays.

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NASA’s Space Science division, a team atUC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratoryhas modified their original design for HESSIin order to bring the project down to SmallExplorer (SMEX) specifications. SMEXspacecraft are built for low cost, “highly fo-cused” missions. A SMEX spacecraft mayweigh up to around 250 kg, consume about200 watts of power on average (about asmuch as two or three light bulbs), and costless than $35 million to design and develop.

In order to fit the bill, the HESSI team hassimplified the spacecraft down to one inge-nious instrument: an imaging spectrometerutilizing an array of nine germanium crys-tals cooled to -200 degrees Celsius. The crys-tals detect the x-rays and gamma rays. A pairof grids above each germanium detector castsshadows on the detector as the spacecraftspins, and the resulting modulation allows sci-entists to reconstruct a picture of the flare.In its final form, complete with four solar

n March 13, 1989, the entire prov-ince of Quebec was left withoutpower for nine hours when sub-

tation transformers burned out after a mag-etic storm. The storm was caused by a sud-en increase in brightness on the sun’s sur-ace known as a solar flare, which is associ-ted with the release of excessively ener-etic particles and radiation from every partf the electromagnetic spectrum. Althoughhe energy of a flare is usually only a smallraction of the total energy the sun releasesvery minute, this can still be more heat andight than would be released by a billion

egatons of TNT.

uring a solar flare, a burst of plasma cane accelerated out of the solar corona,here temperatures reach upwards of oneillion degrees Celsius. These events are

alled Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).hen the bulk of these particles encoun-

er the Earth’s magnetic field several daysater, the resulting electromagnetic distur-ance can strip relay operations and shortower lines in our electrical grids. A cer-ain fraction of these particles that is morenergized can arrive at the Earth withininutes of a flare, posing a deadly danger

o astronauts and satellite hardware in space.

he 1989 magnetic storm that blacked outuebec was caused by one of the biggest

lares ever to affect Earth, causing 6.5 mil-ion dollars in equipment damage. It was,owever, only a minor example of the po-ential disruption solar flares can cause.magine an output more than 1.2 millionimes greater than your household’s elec-rical system suddenly being injected intoour city’s power grid. Few, if any, electri-al systems in the world are designed toandle such a load.

Some satellites already in orbit, such asSOHO (the Solar and Heliospheric Obser-vatory), can sometimes give as much as afew days of warning for the arrival of par-ticles from a large flare or CME. However,bearing in mind the potentially disastrouseffects of CMEs, a more reliable and longer-range prediction method would be ideal.

To predict flares, we must first understandwhy they occur at all. The process of en-ergy transfer that causes particles to beejected so rapidly is not well understood.By watching particle interactions in theSun’s magnetosphere and photosphere dur-ing flares (the Sun’s most turbulent times)scientists hope to resolve exactly how par-ticle acceleration is related to the heatingof plasma, and to improve their understand-ing of the sudden particle releases exhib-ited by the corona.

UC Berkeley has just built an excellent eyefor viewing just these sortsof events: the High EnergySolar Spectroscopic Imager(HESSI). HESSI is capableof seeing a wide spectrumof radiation, from 3 kilo-electron volt (keV) soft x-rays to 20 mega-electronvolt (MeV) gamma rays,with an energy resolutionof between about 1 and 5keV. It is in these rangesthat most of the radiationenergy from solar flares isemitted, when x-rays andgamma rays emitted byflare particles interact witheach other and matter inthe Sun’s photosphere.Rising to a challenge from

taring at the Sun

This image was created by detecting x-rays emitted from thesun’s solar corona (NASA/EIT).

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panels, the bright blue and gold HESSIweighs 290 kg and uses only about 220 wattsof power. Due to its high angle of orbitalinclination (38 degrees in low earth orbit),it will pass over Berkeley several times a dayfor data downloads and commands. It canview the entire sun while imaging areas withan angular size as small as 2 arcseconds (1arcsecond being 1/3600 of a degree, orabout 1/1800th of the Sun’s disk). HESSIcan resolve a simple image in the 100 keVto 1 MeV range in tens of milliseconds.More complex images require an exposurethat lasts half the rotation period of the craft:approximately two seconds.

The most advanced hard x-ray imaging mis-sion ever to be launched, HESSI holds thepromise of returning some extraordinarydata. A successfully tested HESSI is slatedto launch this summer. If all goes well, itwill send back more than just important in-formation about the temperamental solarcycle. An x-ray survey of the Crab nebula,a high-resolution study of cosmic gamma raybursts, and a study of terrestrial sources ofgamma rays (e.g. lightning) have also been

To learn more about the HESSI satellite,visit: http://hessi.ssl.berkeley.edu

Read up on solar flares and otherspectacular solar events:

http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/

Solar and Stellar Activity Cyclesby Peter R. Wilson

The Heliosphere During the Declining SolarCycle edited by M.A. Shea

The High Energy Solar SpectroscopicImager (HESSI) is a NASA-funded SmallExplorer Program satellite conceived,designed, and constructed at UCBerkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Itendeavors to answer long-standingquestions about how the sun transmits high-energy radiation by conducting a high-resolution study of the gamma and x-rayspectrum (UC Berkeley SSL).

integrated into the HESSI mission.

With its rapidly spinning eye, HESSI maylook beyond the placid yellow disk of theSun to study its violently variable x-ray face.But until then, the HESSI engineers, re-search scientists, and mission controllers onthe ground here in Berkeley are undoubt-edly holding their breath.

Sheyna Gifford

B

Contrary to conventional thinking,adult brains can undergo significantstructural changes. In their 1996

paper, “A brain sexual dimorphism con-trolled by adult circulating androgens,” sci-entists Bradley M. Cooke, Golnaz Tabibnia(now at UCLA), and S. Marc Breedlove fromthe Department of Psychology at UC Ber-keley demonstrated that the size of a part ofthe rat brain linked to sexual behavior couldbe controlled by the application or with-drawal of sex hormones. The paper, alongwith a very interesting discussion by BruceS. McEwen, is available online at the websiteof the Proceedings of the National Academyof Sciences (www.pnas.org).

Until recently, sex differences in the brainsof mammals were thought to arise inmuch the same way as reproductive dif-ferences: by exposure to hormones dur-ing fetal development in the womb. Forexample, in a highly publicized Nature ar-ticle, Breedlove presented evidence thatthe ring fingers of lesbian women andstraight men tend to be significantlylonger than their index fingers. He andothers postulated that this happens be-cause straight men and lesbians are ex-posed to more testosterone as fetuses thanstraight women, who tend to have indexfingers longer than their ring fingers.

Theories of sex difference based in fetal de-velopment, which generally hold that theadult brain does not change and that sexualpatterns set before birth persist into adult-hood, have sparked mixed popular reac-tions. They have been embraced by peoplewho feel strongly that sexual preference isdetermined solely by genetics, and deniedby people who point to a vast cultural ap-paratus that creates and maintains genderroles.

Although the Berkeley team’s rat experi-ment touches upon a topic loaded with com-plex social implications, their experimen-

rain Sexual Dimorphism


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tal method was fairly straightforward. Theposterodorsal nucleus of the medialamygdala (MePD) of the rat brain is impli-cated in sexual behaviors, including sexualarousal. As revealed by Nissl stains, theMePD of adult male rat brains is about 65%larger in volume than that of female rats.When the research team treated female ratswith testosterone, however, they found thattheir MePDs would grow to the size of themale rats’ MePDs in about 30 days. Con-versely, the MePD of a castrated male wouldshrink to the size of a female’s MePD in thesame amount of time. Exposing castratedmales to testosterone preserved the size oftheir MePDs indefinitely. Not only was thevolume of the MePD altered by androgentreatment, but individual cell soma areaswere enlarged as well. The group concludedthat these physical sex characteristics in thebrains of rats were entirely hormone-con-trolled, and could be altered in adult rats.

As further evidence that the sex-differenti-ated areas of adult brains could be changedby exposure to hormones, the group citedfindings that adult female canaries treatedwith testosterone experience an enlargingof their brain’s vocal center and begin to

produce male-like songs. In regard to hu-mans, they remarked, “Transsexuals treatedwith cross-sex hormones display sex rever-sals in their cognitive abilities, emotionaltendencies and libido, and sex offenders aresometimes treated with antiandrogens to re-duce their sex drive. The sociosexualchanges observed in these groups most

likely reflect structural and physiologicalplasticity in steroid-sensitive areas withinthe brain.” And finally they stated “MePDsexual dimorphism in rats is quite compa-rable to reported sexual dimorphisms in thehuman brain and therefore supports the pos-sibility that sexual dimorphisms of the hu-man brain are caused solely by circulatingsteroids in adulthood.”

As McEwan also wrote, however, “this is un-doubtedly an overstatement of a valuablepoint.” The morphological sexual differ-ences among human brains must be the re-sult of complex interactions among expe-riences, hormone actions, and developmen-tal influences. However, the research of theBerkeley team implies that the physicalstructures of adult brains, and the behav-iors that are controlled by them, are sur-prisingly flexible. Hormones may play animportant role in many other examples ofadult brain plasticity as well: currently theteam is investigating the central nervous sys-tems of Siberian hamsters, which undergodramatic physiological changes from sum-mer to winter.

Heidi Anderson

The medial amygdala (MePD) area of thebrain is implicated in sexual behavior andis substantially larger in male rat brains.MePD neuronal soma size in male controlrats (SHAMS) is reduced tocharacteristically female size bycastrating male rats (Castrates+B), butaddition of testosterone (T) restores sizein castrated male rats. MePD neuronalsoma size in females can be increasedto male size by treatment withtestosterone.


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Could you easily recognize your sis-ter if she changed her hairstyle?Would you easily recognize a friend

if you ran into him on the street? Individu-als suffering from prosopagnosia, or “faceblindness,” would not. They find the task ofrecognizing people solely by looking at theirfaces extremely difficult. In order to rec-ognize familiar people, they rely on such fea-tures as voice, hairstyle, clothing, or othercontextual information. When this infor-mation is not available, they may even failto recognize their own spouses.

Prosopagnosia is a relatively rare conditionand may occur after a stroke or other braininjury. Sometimes, however, it occurs withno apparent neural damage—a conditionreferred to as congenital or developmentalprosopagnosia. While the causes of faceblindness are not known, some studies sug-gest that they are partly genetic.

As prosopagnosia affects only a patient’sability to recognize faces, its diagnosis hasled to arguments that face recognition isachieved by dedicated mechanisms in the

brain. Strangely, the “opposite” conditionhas been reported as well (though it is evenmore rare than prosopagnosia). Patientssuffering from this condition are extensivelyimpaired in visual object recognition butcan easily recognize faces. This double disso-ciation between faces and objects stronglysupports the hypothesis that special neuralmechanisms process visual information per-taining to faces.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) studies reveal increased neural ac-

Understanding Face Blindness


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tivity in the right posterior temporal lobeof the brain when normal subjects view hu-man faces. The activated area is often la-beled the “face area” and probably plays akey role in a network of mechanisms thatprocess different kinds of information con-veyed by faces, such as gaze direction andfacial expression analysis.

While fMRI has good spatial resolution, itconveys only poor information regardingthe timing of neural events. Other meth-ods, such as event-related potentials (ERPs),can provide finer temporal resolution.ERPs are calculated by averaging electricalbrain activity. A typical ERP signal consistsof a series of positive and negative compo-nents. One of the negative components,peaking at about 170 milliseconds after thepresentation of object images (and thus la-beled N170), is of particular interest toprosopagnosia researchers. While this com-ponent is evoked by other visual stimuli aswell, it responds preferentially to humanfaces, detailed sketches of faces and evenschematic face drawings (see figure). Fur-thermore, similar responses can be re-corded even when the viewer has no con-scious awareness of the face stimulus.

Recently, my colleagues and I have begunto study a group of individuals with con-genital prosopagnosia. In a study reportedat the 30th Annual Meeting of the Societyfor Neuroscience we found that, unlike nor-mal subjects, two individuals with congeni-tal prosopagnosia produced equivalentN170 ERPs in response to both faces andother stimuli. This loss of face-specificity

in early visual processing may underlie thedecreased ability to recognize faces evenwhen no structural brain damage is present.We are currently using fMRI to directly testwhether the “face area” in congenitalprosopagnosics does not respond preferen-tially to faces.

Although much is known about normal facerecognition, we are only beginning to un-derstand the bases for face blindness. Whileonly a small number of cases of congenitalprosopagnosia have been reported in themedical and scientific literature, there arereasons to believe that it is more commonthan assumed. Some congenitalprosopagnosics may not even realize howseverely impaired they are in recognizingfaces, as contextual information is oftenavailable to aid in identification. We hopethat increasing public awareness ofprosopagnosia and furthering research willhelp us better understand the causes of con-genital prosopagnosia, will create better di-agnostic tools, and will lead to new treat-ment protocols.

Noam Sagiv

Berkeley Seismologists TackleVolcanic Seismology

Most residents of the Bay Area areaware that California is a hotbedof seismic activity. It is perhaps

less well known that California also under-goes a substantial amount of volcanic activ-ity. Berkeley seismologists Dr. DouglasDreger and Hrvoje Tkalcic have recentlystudied a collapsed volcano located nearMammoth Lakes, known as the Long ValleyCaldera. Their study, which appeared in

Science, has led to a new understanding ofthe origins of seismic activity associatedwith the center of the volcano.

The Long Valley Caldera was formed by amassive eruption approximately 730,000years ago. In that explosion, over 600 cu-bic kilometers of rock were expelled. Ifassembled into a cube, this amount of rockwould measure more than eight thousand

meters on a side, roughly the height of Mt.Everest. The area surrounding the Calderais seismically quite active and even duringperiods of minimal activity may have ten ormore earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 orsmaller per day. Occasionally the amountof seismic activity increases dramaticallybeyond this impressive background level.In 1997, the Caldera displayed just such asurge in seismic activity. Dreger, Tkalcic,

The N170 event-related potential(ERP) fires off 170 milliseconds aftera subject is shown an image. Thisplot shows a normal subject’s wildlydifferent N170 ERPs when showna face versus an object. Inprosopagnosics, this difference isnot observed. They have a similarneural response to both faces andobjects.


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and their colleague Malcolm Johnston of theU.S. Geological Survey examined data fromthe set of earthquakes that occurred in theregion around the Caldera in that year. Uti-lizing a technique known as waveformanalysis, they were able to discern that ananomalous type of vibration was present inthese earthquakes.

Waveform analysis begins with an exami-nation of the wave shapes seen on seismo-grams following an earthquake. After thewaveforms are identified, the next step inthe process is to understand how the seis-mic waves recorded on seismograms havepropagated through the earth. Armed withthis understanding, scientists can then tracethe waves back to their origin. In fact, us-ing this technique, it is possible not only topinpoint the origin of an earthquake, butalso to glean information about the prop-erties of the source itself. In this case,Dreger and his colleagues were able to tracethe waveforms from the 1997 regionalearthquakes back to the Long ValleyCaldera, and then propose a mechanism forthe earthquake.

The Berkeley team’s examination of theLong Valley Caldera netted some fascinat-ing results. The group analyzed the wave-forms seen in six 1997 earthquakes of mag-nitude 4 or greater, and noticed that thewaveforms had anomalous shapes. Normalseismic activity, of the sort seen along theHayward or San Andreas faults, takes theform of tension-releasing “strike-slip”events, which result in what is known as“double-couple” radiation, a pattern of ra-diation that results from the release of ten-sion along a fault plane. Interestingly, theearthquakes at the Caldera contained a sta-

tistically significant presence of seismic ra-diation that was not of the double-coupleform. Instead, the researchers found a sub-stantial amount of isotropic radiation, a typeof shaking associated with a change in vol-ume at the source. Isotropic radiation wouldbe seen if the shaking were caused, for ex-ample, by an explosion, in which case it

would propagate outward in a purely radialfashion. In fact, searching for isotropic ra-diation is one means by which it is possibleto verify adherence to nuclear test ban trea-ties.

From their discovery of the isotropic com-ponent in the seismograms, Tkalcic and hiscolleagues were able to conclude that theseismic activity associated with the Calderais not limited to the usual strike-slip eventsthat are prevalent along the San AndreasFault. The team of seismologists suspect thatthe earthquakes associated with the Calderamay instead be caused by high-pressure fluidrushing through small crevices, thereby

opening cracks in the rock. For example, adike of magma might rapidly heat water,thus bringing it to supercritical state; thisheated water could be subsequently injectedthrough a small opening, forcing the open-ing to expand, thus causing a change in vol-ume, which would register as isotropic ra-diation. According to Tkalcic, previous au-thors had suggested that such a mechanismmight be at work, but this study was thefirst to conclusively show that a statisticallysignificant component of isotropic radiationwas indeed present in the waveforms.

Tkalcic is careful to emphasize that all ofthis work relies crucially on prior knowl-edge of how seismic waves propagate withinthe earth. According to Tkalcic, our under-standing of the mechanics of terrestrial wavemotion has been laboriously pieced togetherfrom thousands of seismic events over thecourse of many years, resulting in detailedcomputer models of wave propagation. Itis these models that allow seismologists totrace the waveforms seen on a seismographback to an earthquake’s source.

Tkalcic also notes that seismology has nowdeveloped to the point that scientists areable to use seismographs “much in the sameway that doctors can use a CAT scan” in-stead of a surgical biopsy. In this non-inva-sive fashion, seismologists are able to uti-lize the elastic waves that are generated andpropagated inside the Earth to learn aboutthe Earth itself.

Aaron Pierce

Lava flows of the Mono-Inyo Craters vol-canic chain in California’s Long ValleyCaldera. The most recent eruptions fromalong this chain occurred betweenabout 250 and 600 years ago. Berke-ley seismologists Douglas Dreger andHrvoje Tkalcic are studying the uniquesignature of this volcano’s seismic waves(USGS Long Valley Observatory).

www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gsj/Submit to us. Submission guidelines for the BSR are at:


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book review

Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections,and Imaginations in a Postmodern World

The prose in Michael Burawoy’s introduction to Global Ethnography:Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in

a Postmodern World is so smooth that it slidright past my comprehension, not to mentionmy interest. Fortunately, the book has nineauthors besides Burawoy.

An “ethnography,” for the uninitiated, is an an-thropological study in which the ethnographerlives and works with a small group of peoplein order to study their culture from the insideout. Ethnographers have a complex identityas biographers, foreign exchange students, andpolitical activists. They also remain in closecontact with their fellow anthropologists viae-mail—the book is dedicated to “Eudora.”

Overall, the book is organized as a set ofnine ethnographies, three in each of threecategories. The ethnographies presentthought-provoking snapshots of life at theend of the millennium, concentrating on theeffect of globalization on local communi-ties. The quickening pace of communica-tion and accelerating flow of ideas is restruc-turing capital around the world. As insulat-ing institutions—welfare states, laborunions, cultural safeguards—crumble inresponse to global pressures, people areforced to adapt their lives to a new order.Those dependent on the old infrastructureare left stranded, while the rest must learnto play out their ancient struggles and age-old conflicts against a modern global back-drop.

Global Ethnography makes no secret of its so-cialist slant. The picture on its front covershows a Seattle World Trade Organizationprotester in the rain, facing down an armyof faceless policemen. The book devotes alot of its energy to wailing about the“neoliberalism” which has replaced the NewDeal, “tax and spend,” and unionist move-ments of the past. Unfortunately, politicsobscure the real meat of the book. Never-theless, two stories in particular caught myattention.

The first, written by Teresa Gowan, is a col-lection of biographies of homeless men whopush recycling carts through San Franciscoand Berkeley. Lost relics of better times,they testify that hard work is not all that ittakes. Gowan brings them to life, showingthat these men were once blue-collar work-ers with jobs, homes, even families—but

not the resources to rebound after severalstrokes of disaster. Meanwhile, the chang-ing economy has transformed the worldaround them. As the military reduces itsrole as a mass employer for unskilled work-ers, a rising prison industry rushes in to fillthe vacuum. This, coupled with the impos-sible rents and information economy of theBay Area in the 90’s, leaves these fallenworkers with nowhere to turn. They areleft with only a work ethic to march themfrom can to bottle to recycling center insearch of professional dignity.

My favorite ethnography is Sheba George’sportrait of female Christian nurses fromKerala, India who are now living with theirfamilies in the United States. Nursing inKerala is seen as a “dirty” occupation forwomen, partly because it involves touchingunknown men. It is a well-paid occupation,however, and a current worldwide short-age of nurses makes it relatively easy forthem to emigrate, bringing their familieswith them. Their husbands are caught in adifficult dilemma. On the one hand, a work-ing wife brings certain economic benefits.On the other, she breaks all conventions ofthe man being the breadwinner and unques-tioned head of the household. Many of thesemen once held respected professional jobsin India, but are now relegated to laboringin blue-collar jobs, looking after the kids,and cleaning the house. To bolster their self-esteem, they take on leadership positionsin church–going as far as to set up a newcongregation if necessary. But in this way

Michael Burawoy, Joseph A. Blum, ShebaGeorge, Zsuzsa Gille, Teresa Gowan,Lynne Haney, Maren Klawiter, Steven H.Lopez, Sean O. Riain, and Millie Thayer.University of California Press, 2000. 410pages. $48.00 (hardback), $17.95(paperback).

(continued on next page)


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opinion

Evolution Is Not a TautologyStrong words from the last angry man

Alan Moses

Co n s i d e r t h e f o l l ow i n g d e s c r i p t i o n o ft h e p r o c e s s e s o f e v o l u t i o n f r o m afirst-year philosophy course: “Fitness is defined as the abil-

ity of an organism to interact with its environment in order to sur-vive and produce as many offspring as possible.Natural selection is defined as the process by whichthe less fit are weeded out in time because of theirinability to reproduce. Populations become moreand more fit because they are composed of indi-viduals that have managed to out-compete the lessfit.” But wait a minute—of course the fitter crea-tures have out-competed the others; that’s how wedefined fitness. Doesn’t that make Darwin’s theoryof evolution by natural selection circular, equiva-lent to explaining that my uncle is a bachelor be-cause he’s an unmarried man? You can’t explainwhy some animals survive by saying they were morefit, since fitness is defined as the ability to survive.

Admittedly, this kind of argument is tempting—imagine breaking the cornerstone of modern biol-ogy by simply pointing out a logical flaw. Strangelyenough, when you ask philosophy professors howscientists can believe the theory of evolution (andstill get grant money) even though it’s so obviouslya circular argument, you’ll never get a straight answer. A classicbad response might be: “Well, actually, all scientific theories aretautologies; look at ‘F = ma’. Force (F) is defined in terms of mass(m) and acceleration (a), while mass is defined as force divided byacceleration. It’s totally circular.” My purpose here is not (as itmight seem) to slander my college education or my philosophy pro-fessor. It is to give a better answer about the question of evolution,a subject plagued not only by bad arguments, but also by bad re-sponses to those arguments.

It turns out that the philosophy-class description of evolution givenabove leaves out two crucial aspects of the theory. The first is obvi-ous: fitter organisms survive because they actually are more fit, not

because they were defined as fit after the fact. Said another way, myuncle is a bachelor because he has certain qualities that prevent himfrom getting married: he has big ears, he burps in public and he eatsincredible amounts of canned sardines. Fitter animals survive and

reproduce because they run faster, jumphigher or sing more beautifully than theirpeers—not because we called them morefit. Notice how difficult it can be to de-fine fitness. My bachelor uncle’s fitnessdepends greatly on whether sardines arein style or big ears are desirable. Some-times, particularly in the case of extinctspecies known only through fossil remains,we may never be able to say what led themto evolve a particular combination of fea-tures. These unknowable details of bio-logical history are called “just so stories”by evolutionists.

The second premise of Darwin’s theoryof evolution is something we all take forgranted, but which turns out to be cru-cial empirical evidence for the mechanismof natural selection. Simply put, childrenare like their parents. The apple doesn’t

far fall from the tree; kids are chips off the old block. A more rigor-ous way to phrase this might be that traits (good and bad) are trans-mitted from one generation to the next. Until fifty years ago, thiswas only an empirical rule; today, the genetic mechanism by whichtraits are transmitted is understood in molecular detail. Withoutthis crucial step, evolution through natural selection makes no senseat all. It’s important to note that a corollary is also true: applesdon’t fall far from the tree, but they don’t fall too closely either—if children were exactly like their parents, evolution would be im-possible.

So, evolution by natural selection has two hidden assumptions. First,it is assumed that there is a “just so story” about why and how a

No wonder he always looks so dour.Darwin’s theories haven’t been properlyexplained.


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book review opinion

Global Ethnography(continued from page 9)

they further stigmatize themselves, because it is only the husbandsof nurses who join church committees, and they are accused of “play-ing” while their wives work.

There is no clear, satisfying outcome to any of the ethnographies,and so it is not surprising that the concluding section of the book,while wordy, is not particularly convincing. Despite sweeping dec-larations such as “our grounded globalizations are the antidote toskeptics without context, radicals without history, andperspectivalists without theory,” the conclusion will probably havelost its relevance fifty years from now. Historians of the future mayvery well skim the academic comments to get at the ethnographiesthemselves. Which is, incidentally, my advice for the contempo-rary reader.

Heidi Anderson

particular feature was useful to a particular creature at a particulartime. Second, it is assumed that these features can be passed fromgeneration to generation. Both of these assumptions were simplytaken for granted before Darwin—it was obvious to everyone thateach animal had the features it needed to do what it was doing, i.e.the features that made it fit. And everyone just needed to take onelook at their uncles to know that family members resembled eachother.

What is striking about Darwin’s theory is that once you accept thosetwo assumptions (which, in Darwin’s time, everyone already did)natural selection must logically follow. If members of a set pro-duce members that are similar to themselves, then, in time, the setwill grow to be composed of members who have inherited the char-acteristics that allowed them to be produced. This statement is nottrue by definition. It is an abstract truth of logic, given a few bio-logical assumptions. Nevertheless, we should realize that, as is thecase with any empirical rule, there are exceptions where these as-sumptions fail—and as soon as they do, so will Darwin’s veneratedmechanism.

REGENT AD

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Déjà Vu: How One Scientist ExperimentsThrough ArtShirley Dang

At first glance, the setup looks like a typical scientist’s labbench. Voltmeters riddled with knobs and dials bump upagainst flasks and beakers of buffers. Tiny vials and half-

filled syringes lie among dishes of solution. The only thing out of place isa musty clot of ivy roots, spawning a tangle of tendrils and leaves, whichsits in a tray perched on the bench. Near a wet scalpel, a tiny black plac-ard rests askew: “EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS DO NOT DISTURB.”

Unlike most experiments, this one is being carried out in the middle of anart gallery in San Francisco. And unlike most scientists, Tania Vu, whoearned her PhD in Vision Science at the University of California, Berke-ley, is conducting research while performing in her own dynamic art in-stallation.

Vu is studying the electrophysiological responses of wounded plants.Wielding a cigarette lighter and a scalpel, she singes, cuts, or burns theleaves of ivy plants. Reacting in distress, the plants emit a “wound re-sponse.” This response begins with the movement of charged atoms, orions, from the cells at the site of damage. The ions quickly disperse fromthe scene of trauma, creating an electrical signal that is picked up by elec-trodes and sent to a chart recorder. This antiquated machine drags its penacross a continuous sheet of moving graph paper, marking the peaks andnadirs of the changing electrical potential.

Toward the end of Vu’s two-month exhibit, ivy vines creep up thegallery walls and spill over the edge of the bench with perversecheer. Vu scribbles observations in a standard blue lab notebook.Every once in a while, a swell of graph paper from the recorderbuilds up and cascades off one edge of the bench, while a sea ofleaves pools on the floor opposite.

Vu’s piece was picked as one of nine for a juried Bay Area showcasethis spring at the San Francisco Art Institute, which offered her amerit scholarship last year to explore the connection between artand science. Her piece, simply called “Experiment,” is a study withwhat she says will be scientifically valid data, potentially publish-able. The ultimate goal, however, was to explore the commonali-ties and contradictions between creating conceptually sound art andmaking legitimate scientific discoveries. She wanted to set up stud-ies “so they were true science experiments, but to do it in a settingthat wasn’t in a laboratory.”

At 30, Vu has already published ten scientific papers and abstractsand has received two grants from the National Institutes of Health.But in January of 2000 she halted her science research to fully de-

Experiment in Progress. The cigarette lighter and razor blade(foreground) are used to wound common English ivy. The plants’responses are measured by electrodes. The signal is sent to anelectrical amplifier (background) and onto an oscilloscope andchart recorder.


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vote herself to art for a year. What drives an accomplished scientistto carry out experiments in an art gallery? “In the research, thingswere going very profitably in terms of the papers and grants,” saysVu, who completed her doctoral thesis on how light is processed inthe retina of the tiger salamander. “It was very on track, very focused,studying something very specific. But I felt that rather than waiting—you know, in some sense life is short—it would be better to take thetime and really explore this other thing that I’m very curious about.”

Yet there was no meltdown, nosingular career crisis, no renun-ciation of science. Rather, thearts surreptitiously crept up onher, much like the ivy vines onthe walls of the exhibit. Vu be-gan by playing violin and pianoin private study for eight years.She then played the violin inCarnegie Mellon University’ssymphony, simultaneously earn-ing her bachelor’s in electrical en-gineering with a minor in medi-cal engineering. In the fall of

1995, the “drawing bug” struck while she was in the midst of herdoctoral studies at Berkeley. Finishing her degree two years later,she performed with the Berkeley Summer Symphony. Finally, when

she began postdoctoral work at the University of California, SanFrancisco in 1998, she enrolled in a painting class at the San Fran-cisco Art Institute.

From her first drawing class emerged the idea to approach sciencethrough art. “There was so much I saw that I didn’t see before, andit was a really different way of approaching the visual world,” shesays. Even as an artist, Vu still operates on many levels as a scientist:she systematically uses tools, whether paintbrush or voltmeter, toanalyze her old thesis topic, vision. Rather than abandoning her

The artist at work. Individual leaves are tacked to the wallalong with the wound response Vu recorded from each.

Defense Responses in Plants

In response to crushing, burning, and attack by insects, many plants issue systemic hydraulic, electrical, andchemical “wound“ responses.(1) For example, mechanical wounding of a plant results in the efflux of chargedatoms (possibly sodium and potassium ions)(2) from damaged cells at the site of injury. This efflux induces slowchanges in neighboring cell membrane potentials*, resulting in a hydraulic signal accompanied by a variationpotential. The slow variation potential can travel to distant, unaffected plant tissues, evoking chemical re-sponses in uninjured cells.

Unlike hydraulic signals, electrical wound responses are carried by rapidly changing potentials across cellmembranes, called action potentials. These signals are caused by electrical stimulation of a plant leaf orstem; they can travel as quickly as 0.4 to 8 cm/sec.(3) The action potential, like the variation potential, can elicitchemical changes in neighboring cells. For example, when a plant cell is depolarized by a fast electricalsignal, its membrane potential is made more positive. This results in an accumulation of calmodulin mRNAin the cell body.(4) Likewise, an accumulation of proteinase inhibitor mRNA has been observed in plant cellsnear damaged tissues; this behavior has been strongly correlated with the occurrence of action potentials.

(continued...)


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academic life for the bohemian trappings of an artist, Vu still ex-plores how people see—only now she does it through artistic means.When she speaks of her experiments, she makes compelling argu-ments for the study of vision through the visual arts. “That’s theother thing that I like about making artwork,” she says. “It answersquestions just like in science, but it answers questions in a differentway—in a personal way on some levels, and in a way that also [isn’tas] exact as science, but at the same time is very satisfying.

But painting and drawing while conducting demanding scientificresearch is very different from fusing the two together to form anew career. “I think at first the two were very separate, the scienceand the art, for me. It wasn’t until halfway through last year that Icould feel that they were coming together, and it came from inter-nally—the feeling of art as a part of life, living as part of the projectthat you are doing.”

Still, she finds herself unable to peacefully meld every aspect of the

two disciplines. “I feel schizo-phrenic sometimes. I feel likeI’m in a science mode, then I’min an art mode,” she explains,turning side to side. “I wasthinking about how in sciencewe try to look for general andreplicable kinds of responses,the idea of repeatability…andI was thinking of how in thearts there is an emphasis on in-dividuality and the personal,and the unique.”

Vu eventually incorporatedthe idea of uniqueness

into her science experiments.She began measuring thewound responses of individual leaves, and found that each leaf had aunique response, perhaps related to leaf geometry. By the end ofthe exhibit, she had attached several tiny ivy leaves to one wall,each with their own measurements. Changing her experimentquickly, on a philosophical whim, has been a learning experiencefor the methodical scientist in her. In art, she says, “your mind is ina different mode, where you embrace the unexpected, and you haveto embrace the unexpected in order to make work that’s good.” Ofcourse, the same might often be said of good science.

Waves of paper. Vu uses achart recorder, antiquated butcharming, to register plantwound responses.

“I was thinking about how in science wetry to look for general and replicable kindsof responses, the idea of repeatability…andhow in the arts there is an emphasis onindividuality and the personal, and theunique.”

Defense Responses in Plants (cont.)

Accumulation of mRNA as the result of plant wound response may prepare a cell for impending damage.Defensive signaling mechanisms have evolved over long timescales, and they serve to warn undamagedleaves and stems of looming danger. Research in the field of plant responses to wounding is complemented bystudies of plant hormones, which also have distinct roles in plant cell signaling.

* A change in potential is a change in the ion concentration difference across a cell membrane. Cell membranes are permeableonly to certain ions, allowing a cell to separate its own charged contents—like charged proteins, ions, and nutrients—from theextracellular environment.

1. Stankovic B, and E Davies. 1996. FEBS Letters 29:390(3): 275-9.2. Vian A, C Henry-Vian, R Schantz, M Schantz, E Davies, G Ledoigt, and M Desbiez. 1997. Plant Cell Physiology 38(6): 751-3.3. Vian A, C Henry-Vian, and E Davies. 1999. Plant Physiol. 121(2): 517-24.4. Amano M, K Toyoda, Y Ichinose, T Yamada, and T Shiraishi. 1997. Plant Cell Physiology. 38(6): 698-706.


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The push and pull of art and science in her artwork provides thetension that makes her installation so effectively discomfiting. Vusays she has been watching to see “whether I would bring art intoscience, or science into art. I’m feeling that it’s much easier tobring science into art than the other way around.” There does seemto be a trend to incorporate science into art. For example, this pastyear, the artist Eduardo Kac worked with a biotechnology lab tocreate a conceptual art piece: the genetically-modified fluorescentbunny. However, Vu is a forerunner among scientists moving intothe realm of art, making her work not only novel but also particu-larly noteworthy to those in the arts.

“In art, it’s definitely special,” said professor Werner Klotz, whotaught Vu at the San Francisco Art Institute. “She creates a systemthat functions. Most artists who use the instruments of sciencedon’t know how it works. A lotof artists just use science or thelanguage of sciencesymbolically…there are notmany scientists that go into art.Financially, it might be strange todo that. Actually, it would be ab-solutely absurd to do it. You onlydo it when you have a very strongpassion for art. It is very rare.” Incoming years, Klotz expects tosee even more exciting workfrom his former student. “I andothers think she’s someone thatyou really will hear about in thefuture.”

Vu’s parents have been supportive of her career change, if a bitpuzzled. “When I first told them about this, I’d say they were

curious, and they didn’t quite understand, and they wanted to un-derstand,” says Vu, sighing. “Because I spent so much time going toschool, it was perplexing. But they’re happy that I’m feeling satis-fied.”

Her thesis advisor at Berkeley, Molecular and Cellular Biology de-partment chair W. Geoffrey Owen, comments, “I’m not one of thesepeople who think if you’re trained as a scientist that you have toonly do science.” Instead he sees Tania’s artwork as parallel to herscience. “By looking at electrophysical responses with different kindsof stimuli in plants, that makes people think about a plant in a dif-ferent way, the meaning of these responses in a different way.” Al-

though plants do not actually feel pain, Owen notes that peoplelooking at the exhibit can, in a way, feel it for them. “Like all goodart, you connect with it because you identify some aspect that yourelate to.

Indeed, Vu has found audience interaction integral to learning abouthow society views science. Most people have been intrigued, al-though many have opted to stay back from the bench. “Some people

even grimaced when I told them what I was doing,” she says. Butnot all responses have been negative—one observer suggested us-ing microcomputers to more discretely measure and record elec-trical signals. Someone else brought pink daisies to decorate thebench. One day, a resident artist in the gallery stopped by to chatduring the exhibit. Vu recalls, “her friend was visiting and broughther some hibiscus flowers from Africa. She was drinking the teafrom that.” Vu smiles, then adds, “I really enjoy that kind of thing—the unexpected.” Next on the docket: burning, singeing, and clip-ping flowers.

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“A lot of artists just use science or thelanguage of science symbolically…thereare not many scientists that go into art.”


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Regarding Scientist XBig Science, the war effort, and communist activity at

Berkeley Radiation Lab (1929-1949)

Sixty years ago, with Pearl Harbor bombs resounding faintly intheir ears, physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab were askedto give up their research in order to assist the American war

effort. Their mission was to produce fissionable uranium for thesuper-secret atomic bomb project at Los Alamos. It was during thistime that the left-wing backgrounds of some Berkeley physicistsbecame a problem of national security. After the war, the careersof many of these physicists were ruined by accusations of Commu-nist sympathies.

Why were these left-leaning physicists hounded and fired? Perhapstheir persecution was a part of a larger post-war trend, in which allareas of American culture—from Hollywood to academia—wereswept by a wave of “Communist hysteria” that chased people withleftist tendencies out of their jobs. But physics—and especially phys-ics research at Berkeley—was particularly polemical, fraught withpolitical overtones even before the war started.

Histories of science usually portray the war as the real beginning ofthe politicization of physics research, with unprecedented coopera-tion between the American military and university scientists, andthe inauguration of “big-machine physics” under government spon-sorship. But historical trends do not usually emerge spontaneously.In fact, many of the political-scientific events which played out dur-ing and after the war in the Berkeley physics community had theirseeds in the early development of the Berkeley Radiation Lab, as itwas then known, and in the general political climate of the Univer-sity of California in the 1930’s. Some physics professors were Com-munist sympathizers, and some were staunchly right-wing; the clashbetween the two types of intellectuals had tragic consequences forthe post-war physics community. There were martyrs and spies onboth sides of the political spectrum—all shadowed over by the mush-room cloud of the atomic bomb. No one was innocent.

The grand institution on the hill known today as the Ernest Or-lando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) began in amuch humbler incarnation: as a very large magnet in a rather smallshed. The magnet and shed were the brainchild of Ernest O.

Lawrence, a young, brash Berkeley physicist who had arrived fromYale in 1928. Only in his late twenties, Lawrence already exhibitedthe qualities which were to make him world-famous: driving en-thusiasm, erratic brilliance, the showmanship of a circus ringleader,and an almost magical ability to excite wealthy non-scientists intogiving him money for his research projects.

Lawrence’s magnet was the driving force behind his 27-inch cyclo-tron, a contraption he and his star graduate student M. StanleyLivingston had initially devised in smaller forms in the physics labsof LeConte Hall. They had been working to solve one of the knottyproblems in physics research at the time: the penetration of theatom’s nucleus. In the wake of Rutherford’s experiments in En-gland, physicists around the world were using linear accelerators tobombard the nucleus with ion beams, attempting to break throughthe Coulomb barrier which held the nucleus intact. The problemdemanded a new feat of engineering: how could you build a ma-chine that would accelerate ion beams fast enough to attain the tre-mendously high voltage necessary to break the Coulomb barrier—without melting down the laboratory? Physicists were furiouslydevising and building machines in the “race to a million volts.”

Lawrence’s breakthrough came in 1929, as he idly leafed throughan obscure German science journal and came upon an article by aNorwegian engineer named Rolf Wideroe. Lawrence couldn’t readGerman very well, but one picture caught his eye: the figure showeda device in which ions at relatively low voltage were accelerated bycylindrical electrodes of alternating charges. Theoretically, the ionscould be accelerated faster and faster with every cylindrical elec-trode added to the linear path, until the beam became too diffuseand scattered into the cylinder walls. Lawrence realized that, rather

“Communist hysteria” forced manypromising Berkeley physicists—alongwith academics all over the country—out of their careers.

Rachel Teukolsky


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the tremendous advances Lawrence made in the field of nuclear phys-ics. (The fertile creativity of experimentalists in unrestrained dia-logue with theorists was obviously a lesson which Oppenheimer tookwith him into the war—when he hit upon the idea for a bomb re-search complex at Los Alamos.)

In 1934, the cyclotron team succeeded in creating a radioactiveisotope of carbon by bombarding it with deuterium ions. During therest of the decade, the lab became famous for the string of artificial

elements it created with the cyclotron (See this issue, pp. 32-37), ina series of discoveries which would eventually garner Nobel Prizesfor many of the physicists working there. So even before the war anew kind of physics had already begun to take shape, in which ex-perimentalists worked hand-in-hand with theorists, and discoveriesmade on “big machines” changed the way theorists imagined the atom.

The exciting events surrounding Lawrence’s cyclotron took placeagainst the background of a turbulent time in UC Berkeley’s

political history. The campus’s radical history really began in the1930’s, with an explosion of student activism. The reason was nothard to find: the economic trauma of the Great Depression won manystudents and faculty over to leftist causes. The phenomenal numberof radical student groups at Berkeley in the 1930’s was a sign of thetimes: the National Student League, the Young Communist League,the Social Problems Club, the Young Trotskyists, the Student Leaguefor Industrial Democracy, the Young People’s Socialist Club, the Stu-dent Workers’ Association, the Congress for Student Opinion, theProgressive Student Forum, the American Federation of Teachers,and so on.

The turbulent politics of the decade, both on and off the Berkeleycampus, inevitably influenced the development of Lawrence’s Ra-diation Lab. Many of the physicists on the Berkeley faculty had left-ist sympathies, and some were literally “card-carrying members” ofthe Communist Party. The most famous and influential of the leftistBerkeley physicists was J. Robert Oppenheimer. As Oppenheimerwas to write on a 1942 security questionnaire with characteristicflippancy: “I am not a Communist, but I have been a member of justabout every Communist Front organization on the West Coast.” Withhis cultured urbanity and sharp theoretical mind, Oppenheimer was

than shooting ions in a linear accelerator, he could use a magneticfield to make the ions travel in a spiral between the two electrodepoles, gaining kinetic energy with every pass. Thus the idea for thecyclotron was born.

The Berkeley Radiation Lab (as LBL was known until 1970, whenthe word “radiation” became unfashionable), thus began as a tem-peramental machine in a small building near LeConte Hall. Lawrenceand his team of dedicated graduate students began a series of experi-ments in consultation with eminent Berkeley theorist J. RobertOppenheimer, perfecting successively larger and more powerful cy-clotrons in order to make discoveries about the atom’s nucleus. Thethen-unusual cooperation between theorist and experimentalist wascrucial to the cyclotron’s development, and helped to bring about

A big man with big ideas. Even as a young man ErnestOrlando Lawrence displayed the qualities that made him ascientific giant: driving enthusiasm, erratic brilliance, theshowmanship of a circus ringleader, and an almost magical abilityto excite wealthy non-scientists into giving him money for hisresearch projects (LBNL Image Library).

Many of the physicists on the Berkeleyfaculty had leftist sympathies, and somewere literally “card-carrying members”of the Communist Party.


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something of a cult figure to his graduate students, who mimickedhis tastes and mannerisms, including his penchant for left-wing poli-tics. Many of Oppenheimer’s students joined leftist and Commu-nist groups because of his influence—a fact which would come backto haunt him in his later political trials.

Oppenheimer might not have belonged to the Communist partyofficially, but he was surrounded by close friends and family withstrong Communist ties. His wife Kitty had previously been mar-ried to an American Communist, Joe Dallet, who died in Spainfighting against Franco. Dallet’s wartime friend, Steve Nelson, of-ten visited Kitty in Berkeley after her first husband’s death, and wasone of the top organizers of the Communist Popular Front in Cali-fornia. (Nelson’s connections to the physics community would laterrise to implicate him in the “Communist Cell” accused of spying onBerkeley bomb research.) Physicists, graduate students, and other

intellectuals often gathered at professors’ houses in the Berkeleyhills for parties where radical political issues were hotly debated.

If we look back to the state of physics research in the 1930’s, it isunderstandable why so many of the young Berkeley physicists hadleftist or Communist sympathies. Eminent foreign scientists, flee-ing Fascism in Germany and Italy, were turning up at Lawrence’sRadiation Lab bearing tales of persecution and academic suppres-sion. Closer to home, the Depression meant that there was littlemoney around for graduate students, many of whom worked fornothing just to be in the vicinity of Lawrence’s wonderful machines.The cyclotrons were finicky, tricky devices, often improved moreby experimental, brute-force methods than by elegant calculation,and the work was a grueling, twenty-four-hour-a-day affair. Therewas a dearth of money in physics departments across the country tohire new professors, so many graduate students simply lingered onat Berkeley as researchers, hoping something would turn up.Oppenheimer helped to organize a branch of the Alameda CountyTeacher’s Union at Berkeley, and encouraged his students to join.

Although Oppenheimer exerted a strong leftist influence in Berkeley physics, Lawrence, in contrast, could be found on the

other side of the political spectrum. Lawrence did make a point ofdeclaring that politics would have no place in his lab; but his chief ofpersonnel, George Everson, whom he hired in the late 1930’s, wasavowedly anti-Communist and anti-New Deal. Everson had whatwas sometimes referred to as an “anti-Bohemian” bias in his labhirings, which often meant the exclusion of students with East-CoastJewish backgrounds.

There is a more explicit link to be made between Lawrence andright-wing politics. In 1932, Lawrence’s friend and university presi-dent Robert G. Sproul sponsored Lawrence for membership in theprestigious San Francisco Bohemian Club. “Bohemian” was a ratherironic term, given that the group was what Gray Brechin describesin his book Imperial San Francisco as an “exclusive brotherhood com-posed of some of the nation’s most powerful and conservative in-dustrialists, bankers, and weapons makers.” It was in this club thatLawrence befriended two powerful UC Regents: the banker Will-iam H. Crocker and the Republican lawyer and power-broker, JohnFrancis Neylan. Both men proved valuable in helping Lawrenceraise money for his cyclotrons. Before his death Crocker gaveLawrence $75,000 out of his own pocket to build a new RadiationLab on the hill, and Neylan became the lab’s representative andmajor promoter on the board of UC Regents. (Neylan would gainnotoriety in 1949 as the driving force behind the firing of 31 Berke-ley professors who refused to sign an anti-Communist loyalty oath).

First Successful Cyclotron. Lawrence wowed the scientificworld with this machine, which accelerated a few hydrogenmolecule ions to an energy of 80,000 volts. Lawrence’ssubsequent cyclotrons were the beginning of the era of “bigmachine” physics (LBNL Image Library).


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Science, Academia, and the Military. Manhattan Projectdirector General Leslie R. Groves (left), and legendary U.C.President Robert Sproul admire Lawrence’s Medal of Merit forwartime achievement, in 1946 (LBNL Image Library).

The connection between Lawrence and the California industrial-ists underlines the extent to which so-called “big-machine physics”was itself a kind of big business. The connection was accentuatedby Lawrence’s theatrical methods of presenting his results to thepublic and to possible investors—as when, in 1930, he unveiled his4.5-inch cyclotron prototype to the Academy of Sciences, dramati-

cally flipping the switch onstage and provoking a ripple of exclama-tions in the audience when the machine, using only 1,000 volts,produced an 80,000 electron-volt beam. In the later thirties,Lawrence delighted in demonstrating the cyclotron’s use in bio-medical research with a live, on-stage demonstration of radioactivetracers in the human bloodstream. He would call up volunteersfrom the audience and feed them “hot” radiosodium, freshly air-mailed from the cyclotron; then he would trace the progress of thechemical in their blood with a clicking Geiger counter.

Lawrence’s showmanship was a necessary part of his science: theimportant new thing about his cyclotron physics was that it neededhuge sums of money to build bigger machines. Unlike more theo-retical work, which had only to support the salaries of the profes-sors, big-machine physics needed more money than a universityalone could provide. This required the involvement of sources offunding like wealthy philanthropists, who, more often than not, weresuccessful businessmen with conservative political interests. So—again, before the war started—big-machine physics was alreadyaligned with a conservative political element which would not lookfavorably on leftist professors.

Lawrence reached the height of his profession with a Nobel Prizein 1939, gaining with it a million-dollar grant from the RockefellerFoundation to build a newer, bigger, fifth-generation 184-inch cy-clotron. Much of Lawrence’s success derived from his canny abil-ity to “spin” his physics research for the eyes of the public, the press,and non-scientist philanthropists. In the public imagination of the1930’s, the future was powered by miraculous machines, and

Lawrence’s Jules Verne-like cyclotrons, with their intrepid explo-rations of the atom’s terra incognita, played the role perfectly. Butthe connection between scientist and entrepreneur took on a moreominous cast when the machines were used to produce weapons.With the onset of war, the magical onstage performances disap-peared, and the miracle of nuclear research retreated behind closeddoors.

In 1939, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Germans might be research-

ing the use of fission to create an atomic bomb. Roosevelt respondedwith the creation of a secret “Uranium Committee,” but the re-search didn’t really become an urgent need until the attack at PearlHarbor in December 1941. In the meantime, work continued atthe Berkeley cyclotron in the creation and identification of the mys-terious radioactive heavy elements. On February 23, 1941, chem-ist Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues produced a tiny amount of anew element which, calculation suggested, would sustain an atomicchain reaction in much smaller amounts than uranium. They namedthe element after the next planet in the series of astronomically-named elements: plutonium.

These two elements were to become the explosive centers of thetwo bombs produced at Los Alamos, nicknamed “Fat Man” and “LittleBoy.” Lawrence agreed to allow his beloved new cyclotron, then inconstruction on a hilltop overlooking campus, to be diverted intothe war effort. The machine was retooled for one primary pur-pose: the separation of the rare, fissionable isotope U-235 out of

Once Communist Russia became an en-emy of the country, the expression of apolitical opinion—even if it was to sup-port something as seemingly innocuousas a teachers’ labor union—became asecurity risk.


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the more plentiful U-238. Lawrence dubbed his converted cyclo-tron a “calutron,” in honor of the University of California. Thecalutron’s method of uranium separation was known as “electro-magnetic separation.” Uranium-hexafluoride gas was ionized in anelectric field, producing a beam of gas-ions. The ions were pro-jected into a vacuum tank, where a 37-inch magnet bent their coursein a loose semi-circle, and the U-235 ions, with their lesser massand momentum, separated out in a tight arc. Two containers on theother end of the field caught the heavy and light streams of ions. In1943 Lawrence also helped oversee the construction of an enor-mous U-235 production plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, using thecalutron technology.

Security at the Radiation Lab was tight. Many of the techniciansworking on the calutron did not know the reason for their work,and were mystified by the obsession with collecting the minuteamounts of slimy green “gunk” the machine produced. The armymonitored all of the scientists working at the lab, especially thosewith the dangerous knowledge that the lab was working to producea bomb. Martin Kamen, famous for the discovery of carbon-14,recalls in his memoir Radiant Science, Dark Politics, that an Army se-curity van regularly stationed itself on his street—threaten-ing local housewives and other guilt-ridden neighbors whomistakenly thought they were the target of its surveillance.

Perhaps the most restrictive element of army security, bemoanedby every scientist working on the bomb project, was General LeslieGroves’s notorious idea of “compartmentalization.” Under thispolicy, scientists were only allowed to know about the specificprojects they worked on, in order to minimize security leaks. Onlya few very highly-placed officials and scientists had a view of thewhole picture. Oppenheimer—surely influenced by his experi-ence at the Berkeley cyclotron—finally convinced Groves that com-partmentalized research was an obstacle to scientific productivityand creativity. Groves responded with an order to consolidate thebomb research at Los Alamos, where scientists could freely com-municate with each other, in virtual quarantine from the outsideworld.

When Oppenheimer was selected by General Groves to direct re-search at Los Alamos, most scientists had little concern for his radi-cal past. The general consensus among scientists was that they werefighting a war against Germany and Japan. But the American Armytook a different view. As General Groves later recalled, “There wasnever from about two weeks from the time I took charge of theProject any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, andthe Project was conducted on that basis.” So any scientist with ahistory of leftist or Communist sympathies was now under suspi-cion for espionage connected with Communist Russia. The factthat Groves selected Oppenheimer to direct Los Alamos was obvi-

We can do it! Wartime workers operate calutrons(of Lawrence’s design) at the Oak Ridge Facility in Tennessee.The machines ran 24 hours a day to produce pure U-235 foruse in atomic bombs (LBNL Image Gallery).

Collecting Uranium. Schematic diagram of uranium isotopeseparation in the calutron. Naturally-occurring uranium isaccelerated through a magnetic field. The lighter, and muchmore rare, isotope, U-235 completes a tighter spiral than theheavier U-238. Lawrence’s team used this method to collect U-235 for use in the first atomic bombs (LBNL Image Library).


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ously a wise choice from a military perspective, given the result ofthe appointment—but Groves was later forced to defend his choicewhen post-war anti-Communist sentiment turned onOppenheimer.

Other Berkeley scientists with leftist leanings fell victim to the war-time security net. A group of Oppenheimer’s former students, ledby Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, had successfully introduced a unioninto the Radiation Lab, as a branch of the Federation of Architects,Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians. Lieutenant Colonel JohnLansdale, army intelligence chief for all fission work and hardenedanti-Communist, convinced Lawrence that the union members werea security risk, and Lawrence quietly began firing them. It quicklybecame known in the Lab that union membership was a surefireticket to expulsion. Once Communist Russia became an enemy ofthe country, the expression of a political opinion—even if it was tosupport something as seemingly innocuous as a teachers’ laborunion—became a security risk.

The “C” shaped alpha calutron tank, together with its emittersand collectors on the lower-edge door, was removed in a special“drydock” from the magnet for recovery of uranium-235 (LBNLImage Library).

U-235 Receiver. Tiny amounts of “slimy green gunk”-–uranium235-–accumulated in this collector placed at the U-235 beam’send in the calutron (LBNL Image Library).

The end of the war did not ease the need felt for security in nuclearphysics research. Russian aggression resulted in the blockading ofBerlin, and Churchill spoke of an ominous “iron curtain” descend-ing over Eastern Europe. When the shocking news came in 1949that Russia had successfully detonated an atomic bomb, Americabegan public trials in search of the scapegoats who had leaked thesecret to the Communists. With its “red” reputation, Berkeley be-came a target of espionage investigations. In 1949 the CaliforniaHouse Un-American Activities Committee convened a panel toinvestigate the “Communist Cell” which had supposedly operatedas a spy ring in Berkeley during the war. (The chairman of thecommittee was none other than Richard M. Nixon, who got hisstart in politics pursuing California Communists.)


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along with academics all overthe country--out of their ca-reers. A typical example wasLomanitz. Called before theHUAC committee, Lomanitzwas eventually cleared of the es-pionage charges, but the Com-munist taint stuck with him, andhe was asked to resign from thepost-war position he held at FiskUniversity in Tennessee.Lomanitz’s subsequent occupa-tions included roof tarring, treetrimming, loading barley bags,and bottling hair oil. Whileholding these jobs the ex-physi-cist was constantly hounded bythe FBI, who questioned all ofhis coworkers and made it hardfor him to stay employed.

Yet the HUAC investigationwas not completely fruit-

less. There was, it turned out, areal spy working in the Berke-ley cyclotron during the war. The committee referred to him bythe dramatic name, “Scientist X.” According to the published re-ports of the HUAC hearings, in March 1943 Scientist X contactedSteve Nelson, a local organizer of the Communist Popular Frontorganization, and late one night went to Nelson’s home bearing acomplicated formula. FBI men lurking in the bushes watched asNelson copied the formula so that it could be returned to the Ra-diation Lab in the morning. Days later, Nelson contacted the SovietVice Consul in San Francisco, and arranged to meet with him in apark on the grounds of St. Francis Hospital. There Nelson trans-ferred a package to the Vice Consul, and within a few days Nelsonhad a visit from a Russian diplomat at the Washington Embassy, whopaid him “ten bills of unknown denomination.” The identity of Sci-entist X was later revealed to be another of Oppenheimer’s formerstudents, Joseph Weinberg.

If all of Weinberg’s activities were carried out in full view of FBIbinoculars, one wonders why he was never arrested, nor his activi-ties halted during the war. Scientific historian Nuel Pharr Davisspeculates that army security was using Weinberg to manipulate theflow of information to the Russians. The fact of the matter was, theelectromagnetic separation method was only one of several com-

peting methods of U-235production used in the earlywar years, and its effective-ness compared to other meth-ods was highly questionable.The calutron produced onlyvery tiny amounts of U-235,and its beams were difficult tofocus. Most historians agreethat it was only Lawrence’sbullish enthusiasm that con-vinced the army to go with hismethod. In 1954, GeneralGroves testified that the pro-cess of electromagnetic sepa-ration was relatively unim-portant in the American pro-duction of uranium. This warsecret, it seems, was moreuseful to the military in mis-directing the Russians than inactually creating the bomb.

A final twist on the subject ofatomic espionage at Berkeley

comes out of very recent revelations. In their 1999 book Venona:Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, John Earl Hynes and HarveyKlehr describe their findings in the shadowy CIA files known as the“Venona Project.” Only declassified in 1995, these files consist ofmore than 3,000 coded cables sent from KGB operatives in Americato Communist headquarters in Moscow. The Venona project de-coded the cables between 1943 and 1946, and much of the top-secret material was subsequently used to pursue American Com-munist spies. Hynes and Klehr make a surprising assertion: that theCommunist party in America was not merely ideological, but alsoactive in espionage for the Soviet Union. Among other groups, theFederation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians(FAECT) was a cover for Soviet agents—spearheaded by SteveNelson—hoping to gain access to bomb secrets. So the firing ofmembers of the union at the Berkeley lab was actually more thanjust anti-left prejudice. According to Hynes and Klehr, because ofthe Venona information, a White House directive ordered the na-tional president of the FAECT to cease organizing in the BerkeleyRadiation Lab for the duration of the war.

The work of Hynes and Klehr is useful in tempering the story ofleftist persecution that is usually told about the post-war years. But

History’s Loser. Oppenheimer (left), with physicist Enrico Fermi (center),and Ernest O. Lawrence. Post-war red purges essentially erasedOppenheimer’s scientific legacy. His leftist leanings and connections toworkers unions and other organizations were easy fodder for anti-communists’ accusations (LBNL Image Library).


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the obsession with espionage and secrecy surrounding the bombproject—both in the 1940’s and today—is somewhat mislead-ing. It obscures the larger fact that nomatter what political intrigues were go-ing on at the time, the Soviet Unionwould have developed the bomb re-gardless, because the technology wasbased on fundamentals of nuclear sci-ence which no amount of U.S. secrecycould have hidden. Historians have designated this fact“complementarity,” and its basic premise is that “if we could figureit out, so could they.” In other words, Soviet atomic espionage inAmerica didn’t create their bomb; it only helped them get thebomb faster. Even without results gained from spying, Sovietscould have used machines like Lawrence’s cyclotron to eventuallydiscover the nuclear physics necessary to create a bomb. Wartimephysicists like Leo Szilard and Hans Bethe realized this crucial fact,and supported the establishment of an international communityof scientists that would safely oversee the sharing of bomb tech-nology in an open, transparent, and honest fashion. But such ideaswere quickly tabled in the atmosphere of suspicion and hysteriathat took hold of the country after the war. The U.S. wanted tojealously hold onto its secret, and when Russia got the bomb, itwas assumed that leaky scientists were to blame.

The cloud of suspicion hung most heavily around Oppenheimerhimself. A tragic point in the entanglement of physics with poli-tics was the ruination of Oppenheimer’s career, as all of his Com-munist ghosts returned to haunt him, and his security clearancewas revoked after a hearing in 1954. The story comes full circlewhen we learn that Lawrence, once Oppenheimer’s friend, wasthen prepared to testify against him, and was only preventedfrom attending the hearing by a serious stomach ailment. What

The U.S. wanted to jealously hold ontoits secret, and when Russia got thebomb, it was assumed that leaky sci-entists were to blame.

had caused the cyclotroneer’s new animosity? At stake was thefuture direction of physics research: Lawrence’s pre-war enthusi-

asm for bigger and bigger ma-chines translated into a post-warfanaticism for bigger and biggerbombs. He was an energeticcampaigner for research into the“Super,” a thermonuclear devicewhich promised to be many

thousands of times more powerful than the existing bomb.Oppenheimer, on the other hand, was tentative about the need forSuper research, stung by doubts about the ethics of bomb devel-opment.

Lawrence was ready to interpret Oppenheimer’s opposition as apossible sign of disloyalty—though, conveniently enough, onceOppenheimer was removed from his important position withthe Atomic Energy Commission, there was nothing stoppingLawrence’s ambitions for the new bomb research. Lawrenceeasily raised the money for a new weapons research laboratorynear Berkeley, the Livermore Lab, which began work after 1952under the directorship of Edward Teller—the man whose testi-mony most damningly declared Oppenheimer to be a securityrisk at the 1954 trial. It’s not really surprising that, as BrechinGray points out, Oppenheimer’s legacy was virtually effaced atBerkeley, his portrait conspicuously absent from the “Gallery ofGreats” in the Lawrence Hall of Science. After all, the victorsget to write history. As it was before the war, once again theinterests of money and political power convened to influencethe development of scientific research. The result of twenty yearsof accumulated developments in politicized physics was thatOppenheimer came out on the losing end.

Learn how to write science for a general audience.The BSR holds seminars about science writing as a craft and career.

Sign up for our mailing list and receive announcements about upcoming seminars.

Go to www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gsj/ to find out how.


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Through the Looking Glass

The focus of the discussion is the photogram shown above (andon our cover). The bottle, which dates back to the Depressionera, is made of clear glass embossed with a simple pattern ofclosely-packed circles. During the course of the discussion, theparticipants carried out a simple experiment: They passed a beamof light through the bottle used to make the photogram, creatinga projection on a tabletop.

Eisner Prize-winning artist Susannah Hays creates photograms (light drawings) by passing light through antiquebottles. The resulting images show fine, complex patterns, patterns that aren’t visible on the bottles’ glass surfaces.Hays wanted to know the physical basis behind the formation of her photograms. What process was at work,bending light through the bottles to produce these complex and beautiful images? Recently, the BSR arranged forHays, Assistant Professor John Corzine, O.D. of the School of Optometry, and Vision Science graduate student ScottFitz, O.D., to meet and discuss the scientific how and whys of Hays’ work. Excerpts from their discussions follow.

Susannah Hays: Just so you know how I made this image:the bottle was put directly into contact with the photo-graphic paper, and then an enlarging light source was

refracted through the glass. An enlarger in photography is whatwe usually use to enlarge negatives in, so it almost looks like amicroscope. . . . In photography, this image is called a photogram,because there’s no camera involved. It’s a light drawing. Theimage was captured on photographic paper with a quick fifteen-second exposure of light through the glass.

John Corzine: And the glass was clean?

SH: Yes, in all these images, everything—totally empty bottles.

BSR: Why do you think the pattern in the image looks hexagonal,given that the bottle itself has a circular pattern?

Scott Fitz: The circles on the bottle are convex on the outside,concave on the inside. If you sliced them out, they’d be like littlelenses.

JC: But I wonder about the space between the circles. Is it actingto create the hexagonal pattern? Because really, the honeycombcould be refracted light from the space between the circles. Thespaces between the circles do form hexagonal patterns.

SH: So you’re saying that it’s recording the shape around thecircles?

JC: Yes. And the centers of the hexagons...these little splotchy,dark spots, are the light coming through the center part of eachcircle. Then these dark lines [forming the honeycomb pattern]are coming from the spaces in between the circles. Somehowthose spaces are focusing the light into hexagonal patterns.


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Above:SH: These are Ball Atlas jars used for canning. The letters areon the top surface of the bottle, so they appear diffuse.And all of this dotting suggests that there’s something in therethat we can’t see that is actually opaque, something that blocksthe light, creating the white spots.

JC: Well, it doesn’t have to be an opacity. It could be refractory.The light is being bent away from some areas of the glass.

Facing page:SF: Does this bottle have any particular pattern on the surface?

SH: No. It’s an old wine bottle, the kind that maybe had raffiaaround the bottom, that people use to hold candles. The glassis totally smooth.

BSR: Could it be some kind of film that’s causing the pattern?

SF: I don’t think any of these patterns is created by the bottles’not being clean enough. I think, no matter what, we’re lookingat some kind of structural explanation.

Notice the vertical bar running along the length of the bottle;this results from the seam of the bottle, which is thick andtherefore transmits little light.

SH: So that’s the honeycomb form, but are we seeing salts andsilica and other things that the glass is made of in the fine pattern-ing itself?

JC: I think that refraction creates the gross pattern, but there islots of fine detail in there—all the little radial striations.

SH: All of this dotting suggests there’s something in there thatwe can’t see, something that is actually opaque, something thatblocks the light, creating the white spots.

JC: Well, it doesn’t have to be an opacity; it could be refractory.The light is being bent away from some areas of the glass.

SH: So there’s some unevenness in the surface of the glass bottle?

JC: Right, and the light gets shifted away. Have you ever seen awater strider—those little insects that glide on water? They leavea shadow on the water because their foot is causing an indentationon the surface of the water, so that light gets bent away. They’rechanging the shape of the water right there, so light is gettingbent. These light shadows don’t necessarily mean there’s some-thing opaque that’s blocking the light from getting through. Itcould just be that the light is getting bent away from those areas.My suspicion is that most of this patterning is, on a gross level,refractive. It has to do with surface shape—and how light isgetting through it—rather than picking up some molecular oratomic qualities of the material itself.

JC begins the experiment, shining a light through the bottle and creatingan image on the table below.

JC: If I hold the light close to the bottle, then we can just see onesurface of the bottle. And now as the light is moved further fromthe bottle, we’re getting the upper level coming in; now we havetwo levels. But let’s just look at one of the surfaces.

BSR: In the photogram, you do see some of the circles from thebottom surface of the bottle.

SH: Right, and that would be because the bottle is in directcontact with the paper; some circles are directly recorded,whereas others are diffuse. They come out like a kiwi or sort oflike a fruit with lines.

(continued page 31)


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SF: You think these are all clear bottles, but they’ve got these amazing differential patterns. I’d be interested inwhat an opthalmic lens––a high quality lens––looks like, as opposed to cheap glass in a coke bottle.


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These photograms are negative images; the dark areas received the most light and the bright areas received the least.Raised patterns on the glass (such as those spelling the word “water”) form cylindrical lenses that focus light into bars orlines. In this image, the dark edges inside the letters are the focal lines of the cylindrical lenses, where intense light wasfocused onto the photo paper.


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In the Artist’s Words:

The process of my engagement is investigative andinvolves looking for the essential qualities of specific“things,” seeing the immediacy of their potential, andthe relationships between essence and form.

Without use of a camera, the photogram process al-lows the object to be recorded in and of itself, throughthe introduction of light. This way of working oftenvolunteers a deeper point of reference to my questionconcerning the primordial nature of things. In theEmpty Bottle Series, the photograms revealed detailsof visible and invisible, formed and formless matter,challenging my initial, superficial understanding ofthese objects as a whole.

One of the intriguing aspects of working with glass isthat it appears to have a direct affinity with what wecall Photography or Light Drawing. When the bottlesare brought into direct contact with the photographicpaper, a short light exposure makes visible how lightrefracts around the inherent qualities of salt, waterand silica—the physical materials glass is made of.These elements give both the vessels and the photo-grams their perfect form, and are poetically mirrors toone another. Through the capture of chemical andphysical processes, the basis of the poetic is revealed.The bottle’s “soul” and body appear simultaneously.

Facing page:

A dirty bottle, left, is accompanied by a clean cousin at right.

SH: Here’s an example where the bottle on the right wascompletely clean and smooth, but it shows all kinds of patterns.

SF: To us, it’s just glass, but when it’s heated and molded you getthese funny things, these patterns that show up in the photograms.

SH: Yes, and the dirtier the bottle, the more clear the image.

SF: That’s because dirt causes light to scatter. So the film beneaththe dirty bottle is more uniformly exposed.

Susannah Hays received her MFA in photographyfrom the San Francisco Art Institute and is currentlyrepresented by Scott Nichols Gallery. She is an artist-in-residence at Landmark, a site in the Sunnysidedistrict of San Francisco, and is completing her thesis,“Between Cedar & Vine,” in Visual Studies at theCollege of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley.

SF: Now I see that when you have the light directly over one ofthe circle lenses and you’re focusing its image on the table, youget a nice spherical image. And the neighboring circles are justwiped out.

BSR: So that splotchy pattern inside the honeycomb is just thedistortion of those little circle lenses?

JC: Yes, the light is getting bent away. If you have these rays thatare all coming through this complex surface, they’re all going indifferent skewed directions. And depending on where you putyour screen or photographic paper, you’re going to catch differ-ent patterns of rays.

SH: I’m always interested in what this material is that’s causingthese refractive patterns. We should try and say something aboutthis. The idea that an artist would never have a scientific explana-tion, largely for what’s occurring, interests me. I like the poetryof all that, and how we can begin to explain phenomena. It isalmost enough that it’s beautiful. . . but so many people wonder,and have questions about it.

JC: Understanding the process by which the images are generatedcould help, in terms of thinking of new things to try. But you’reright, you don’t have to understand it to appreciate it.

SH: It sort of shows a character, like if a bottle could speak. Ihaven’t done any thing to manipulate it. I want to see how muchthe bottle can say about itself.

JC: It’s the way light plays through it…it’s like light is the voicefor it.

All images appear courtesy of:Scott Nichols Gallery49 Geary, 4th floor

San Francisco CA 94108© Susannah Hays 1998


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In 1941, Edwin McMillan and Glenn Seaborg discovered the atomthat led us out of the Industrial Age and into the Atomic Age.Their discovery—a fissionable heavy isotope of plutonium—

unleashed both massively destructive and fantastically profitabletechnologies. It led to the development of the atomic bomb,but also led to the generation of cheap and plentiful electricity.It resulted in cancer-causing nuclear radiation, but also in medicaldiagnostic technologies, and even the humble yet life-savingsmoke detector. This story relates the discovery of one history-making atom, and the many others that followed.

Beginning in the late 1930’s, there was a tremendous growth ofinterest in radiochemistry, spurred by the hope of finding ormaking new elements with unique and useful properties. Many

An Elementary Problem: Artificial Atoms,Nobel Prizes, and Your Smoke-Detector

Delphine Farmer

of the new elements (and earlier ones as well) were named forthe places they were found or mined: gallium was identified inGallia (Latin for France), germanium was found in Germany,yttrium was mined in Ytterby, Sweden. The search for new ele-ments was also driven by patriotism and a healthy dose of com-petition. Not to be outdone, Seaborg, McMillan, and their col-leagues at the University of California at Berkeley created ber-kelium, californium, and americium, pioneering the discoveryof the artificial transuranium elements by the 1940s and win-ning Nobel Prizes for their work. Since then, the synthesis ofnew elements has continued, led by the scientists of UC Berke-ley and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Labo-ratory (LBL) in the USA, of Dubna in Russia, and of Darmstadtin Germany.

Behold the Glory: Unstable Elements and the Periodic Table

When Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev conceived of the Periodic Table in 1872, he was interested in classify-ing the known elements on the basis of chemical properties and weight, but unwittingly managed to arrange theelements on the basis of electron configurations as well. Mendeleev’s table has since been updated; at present,it features 112 elements, including the rare earth and artificial elements.

Each element of the periodic table has its own box, complete with two important quantities: atomic number andmass number. The atomic number is the number of protons in one atom of the element; atomic number deter-mines the arrangements of the atom’s electrons in space, which in turn determines the chemical properties of theatom. Elements in the same column of the table (called groups, or families) have a conserved number ofelectrons, each in a slightly different-shaped outer, or valence, shell. Elements in the same row, or period, of thePeriodic Table have different numbers of electrons in similarly sized valence shells.

Most elements of the periodic table occur naturally. Each element exists in a number of unique forms, calledisotopes. These forms have essentially identical structure, differing only in the number of neutrons contained bythe atom. Certain isotopes are stable, while others--the radioisotopes--are not. Some elements, notably theartificial ones, have no known stable forms and are called “radioelements.”

(continued...)


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Glenn Seaborg and Ed McMillan standing in front of the Periodic Table. The pair’s work led to severaladditions to the Table, including plutonium and neptunium. Seaborg’s name now appears alongsideall the elements he helped discover. Element 106 is named seaborgium (LBNL Image Library).


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How did it all begin? In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmanin Berlin developed a technique of fission by means of neu-

trons. By bombarding a nucleus with neutrons, these visionarieswere able to make a nucleus so unstable that it flew apart with greatenergy. In 1939, news of this discovery reached UC Berkeley,prompting Edwin McMillan, a young physicist, to perform what helater described as “an experiment of a very simple kind.”

McMillan was interested in measuring the range of fission productsas nuclei flew apart. To do this, he layered sheets of aluminium foilaround a thin layer of uranium oxide. McMillan then shot acceler-ated deuterons (deuterium nuclei each composed of one neutron andone proton) at the uranium oxide, causing the products of radioactivefission to fly into the aluminium sheets. By analyzing the aluminiumfor radioactivity sheet by sheet, McMillan was able to determine wherethe fission products stopped, and thus their distance travelled.

This led to further experiments, in which McMillan obtained evi-dence of two processes following neutron bombardment of ura-nium: first, the absorption of a neutron to form a heavy uraniumisotope (U239), and second, the resulting transformation to a newand heavier element. This new and heavier element—discoveredby McMillan with the help of Berkeley chemist Philip H. Abelson—was, in fact, the first artificial element with more protons than ura-nium: the first transuranium element.

How did this transformation occur? Through the process of beta-decay, a neutron was converted to a proton, with the release of abeta-particle and excess energy from an antinuetrino. This trans-formed the U239 into what McMillan first called element 93. Thisatom behaved in a very unexpected way. Periodic theory dictatedthat elements in a column of the periodic table would have similarproperties, due to the similarity of their electron configurations.Thus McMillan and chemist Emilio Segre thought that element 93should behave like rhenium, another element in its column.

Instead, Segre found the behavior to be more consistent with thatof the rare earth elements. By performing some basic experiments,McMillan found a very simple explanation for the surprising re-sults. The key was the oxidation state of the fission product. In areduced state, with more electrons, the fission product behaved likea rare earth element. In an oxidized state, with fewer electrons, itdid not. At this point, McMillan began examining the decay pro-cesses of the fission products, starting with a chemical isolation ofthe newly created element 93.

In 1940, Glenn Seaborg entered the game. Seaborg was a chemist, having received his doctorate in neutron research from UC

Berkeley. Seaborg first observed alpha decay “growing into” iso-lated quantities of element 93. The simplest explanation for thisalpha particle accumulation was contamination by uranium, whichproduces alpha-decay particles. But an analysis of alpha-decay par-ticle path lengths and range soon ruled out that possibility. Thissuggested that a distinct alpha-producing element was being formedfrom element 93.

Then, one night in February 1941, Seaborg and his collaborators re-alized that something interesting was going on. Upon bombardinguranium with deuterons, he was getting McMillan’s element with 93protons. Element 93 then underwent beta-decay to form a new ele-ment with 94 protons. Element 94 was relatively stable, but couldundergo alpha-decay, producing the alpha particles originally observed:

Glenn Seaborg adjusts a Geiger counter during a search forplutonium. He looked a lot more excited when he finally foundthe first transuranium element (LBNL Image Library)


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(The symbol aXb indicates an atom of an element with symbol X that has a pro-

tons and an atomic weight of b. 92

U238, for example means an atom of uranium,U, that has 92 protons and an atomic weight of 238, and thus 146 neutrons.)

Hence, while McMillan is credited with discovering element 93,Seaborg is credited with identifying element 94. By this time, thetwo new elements had not been completely characterized, but nameswere needed. McMillan suggested “neptunium” for element 93, asthe element follows uranium in the same way that the planet Nep-tune follows Uranus. Following suit, Seaborg and his graduate stu-dent, Arthur Wahl, suggested “plutonium” for element 94. Of course,there is now some debate over whether or not Pluto is a planet, but itis unlikely that the name for element 94 will ever be changed.

Seaborg’s discovery that plutonium could be created by bombardinga sample of uranium with deuterons led directly to the artificial cre-ation of several other transuranium elements, including americium(95), curium (96), berkelium (97), californium (98), einsteinium(99),fermium (100), mendelevium (101), nobelium (102) and seaborgium(106). Indeed, Seaborg and McMillan continued their search for newelements with a further examination of the recently discovered plu-tonium. In 1941, McMillan’s group made a heavier plutonium iso-tope with mass number 239, which had one more neutron than thepreviously discovered 238Pu. 239Pu, the heavier isotope, released vastamounts of energy in nuclear fission upon being bombarded withslow neutrons. Seaborg and his colleagues realized 239Pu could beused to generate energy, and thus immediately began working to manu-facture pure 239Pu in large quantities.

The problem of large-scale production was solved using chain-react-ing units to take advantage of neutron-induced fission reactions ofU235 in natural uranium. Enrico Fermi and his co-workers had dem-onstrated this technique in December 1942. Excess neutrons wouldbe absorbed by U238, which would then decay to form 239Pu:

At this point, Seaborg and his colleagues moved from UC Berkeleyto the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago to work

on the subsequent isolation of heavy plutonium. The group of youngscientists, notably including Stanley G. Thompson, developed anisolation procedure for 239Pu.

In the late fall of 1944, Seaborg began bombarding plutonium withneutrons, leading to the formation of the next transuranium ele-

ments, starting with americium:

The new element americium (Am) had 95 protons, a 475-year half-life, and underwent alpha decay. Not only had Seaborg identifiedthe element now used in most household smoke detectors, but he

92U238 +

1H2 ➔

93Np238 + 2n

93Np238 ➔

94Pu238 + β− particles.

94Pu238 ➔ particles.α

U235 + n ➔ fission products + energy + neutrons

92U238 + n ➔

92U239 ➔ β- +

92Np239 ➔

94Pu239

Pu239 + n ➔ Pu240 +

Pu240 + n ➔ Pu241 +

Pu241 ➔ β- + 95

Am241

γγ

Ed McMillan recreating his search for neptunium for a labphotographer. He wore a tie to school that day.(LBNL Image Library)


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Fritz Strassmann (left), Lise Meitner, and Otto Hahn, 1956, inMainz, Germany. Strassman and Hahn invented the techniqueof fission by neutron bombardment. The most recently namedelement, number 109, is the only one named for a woman. It’scalled meitnerium (LBNL Image Library).

had also produced curium following bombardment of americiumby neutrons:

In his 1951 Nobel acceptance speech, Seaborg commented that thechemical properties of these two new elements, americium andcurium, were so consistent with expectation that they were almostboring. Based on their location on the periodic table, one wouldexpect americium and curium to be very similar, both to each otherand to all the rare earth elements. However, this expectation provedproblematic when it was discovered that the two new elements werenearly impossible to isolate from each other and from the otherrare earths. As actinides, the outermost, or valence, shell electronconfiguration was identical for both elements and their initial reac-tants. Thus the elements had similar chemical properties, such assolubility and reactivity with other chemicals, making standard sepa-ration on the basis of these properties difficult.

Am241 + n ➔ Am242 +

95Am242 ➔

96Cm242 + β−

β− + γ

Behold the Glory: Unstable Elements and the Periodic Table (cont.)

By 1925, all the stable elements of the periodic table had been discovered. Two of the naturally occurringunstable elements had been discovered as well—uranium, the largest naturally occurring element, in 1789 andthorium in 1828. Soon afterward, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered another naturally occurring unstableelement, radium, while investigating the process of radioactive decay. The idea of extending the periodic tableby making new, but unstable, artificial elements led to the discovery of the previously missing elements techne-tium (Tc) and promethium (Pm). The study of artificial elements has also led to new technologies: nuclear energy,medical diagnostics, and even smoke detectors. To make a new element, a radiochemist must create a nucleuswith more protons than those of previously discovered elements. However, for heavy elements this becomesdifficult, as the addition of protons requires significantly more neutrons to maintain even slightly stable nuclei. Thevery existence of artificial elements has raised fundamental questions about our knowledge of atomic structureand the system of the periodic table. At the bottom of the periodic table, there are two rows each of fourteenartificial elements—the lanthanide and actinide series. The elements of these two series are often referred to asthe rare earth elements, and were first discovered in the 1930s in Sweden. Interestingly, all the elements in theupper lanthanide row have similar properties—a pattern normally attributed to columns, not rows, of the peri-odic table. This peculiarity can be explained by Niels Bohr’s theory of the electron arrangement in an atom. In general, asatomic number increases among the elements, the additional electrons required to balance the additional pro-tons are added to the outer shells. However, from lanthanum to lutetium, the additional electrons are placed ininner shells. Thus the outer shell configuration, which determines the element’s chemical properties, remains thesame, and the members of the lanthanide series retain similar properties and behavior. The discovery of thelanthanide series marked a turning point in the understanding of the system of the periodic table. The work ofSeaborg and McMillan later showed that the actinide series behaves similarly.


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The isolation of curium and americium gave the research group somany problems that the names “pandemonium” and “delirium” wereproposed for the two elements.However, success was finally achievedwhen the elements were isolated and characterized. Element 95was named americium after the Americas and by analogy to its ho-mologue europium (63), named after the continent of Europe. El-ement 96 was named curium after pioneering radiochemists Pierreand Marie Curie.

Between 1940 and 1941, McMillan was obliged to give up his re-search in nuclear science to develop wartime radar and sonar equip-ment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His studies atMIT led to the development of the synchrotron and the syncho-cyclotron, two instruments that allow particles to be accelerated toextremely high energies. From 1942 to 1945, McMillan, like manyof the era’s great physicists and chemists, was engaged in nationaldefense research at the Manhattan District of Los Alamos. In 1946,McMillan returned to UC Berkeley as a professor of physics.

After World War II, Seaborg also returned to UC Berkeley, as a pro-fessor of chemistry. Once there, he continued to assist other Berke-ley and LBL chemists in the discovery of berkelium in 1949 (namedfor the city in which the work was done, in the same way that its rareearth homologue, terbium, had been named after the Swedish townof Ytterby). The Berkeley group also discovered californium ( 98) in1950, named in honor of both the university and the state.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Seaborg as the Chair-man of the Atomic Energy Commission—a position Seaborg contin-ued to hold under the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Seaborgstepped down from the post in 1971and returned to his research atLBL and UC Berkeley. He was an active researcher, educator, andcivil servant until his death in February 1999.

Despite McMillan’s protestations that he was not a chemist, he andGlenn Seaborg received the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for theirdiscoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements. UC Ber-keley has since continued at the forefront of radiochemistry, investi-gating the synthesis and use of radionuclides and producing outstand-ing research in conjunction with LBL.

Given the great effort required to create, isolate, and character-ize a new element, it seems only fitting that research

teams should be able to name their discoveries themselves. Whilechoosing a name for a new element is the prerogative of the origi-

nal discovery team, official recognition must await independentconfirmation of the discovery by the scientific community. Thenaming of elements has resulted in numerous arguments betweenthe Germans, Russians, and Americans, as the discovery of ever-bigger elements became a matter of national pride at the height ofthe Cold War.

For example, element 104 was first identified in 1964 by Russianscientists in Dubna, who named it “kurtchatoviu” (Ku), in honorof a Russian physicist. The Berkeley scientists who had been si-multaneously working on the same element named it “rutherfor-dium” (Ru) in honor of Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand-bornphysicist who made his discoveries in England and Canada. Al-though the Dubna group was the the first to announce element104, they had difficulty in distinguishing between different iso-topes––a feat that was successfully accomplished by the Berkeleygroup in 1969. The two groups, of course, laid claims to differentnames, with the result that the International Union of Pure andApplied Physics has chosen a neutral and temporary name,“unnilqadium.”

(continued on next page)

Occupational Hazards ofa World Famous Scientist

Nobel Prize-winningscientist Glenn Seaborgwas enjoying a swim inBerkeley’s UniversityClub pool, when he wassummoned directly fromthe clear chlorinatedwaters to receive atelephone call fromPresident Johnson. Atthis time it was anexclusively male cluband members frequentlyswam nude. “I didn’thave time to even graba towel because I knew

whatever he wanted I’d have to react right away. He cameup with some kind of proposal I knew wouldn’t be feasible,but if I didn’t talk him out of it right then I’d be in trouble...then, of course, I went back and continued my swim.”

Cartoon by Herb Stansbury (LBNL)

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Let’s Get PhysicalBerkeley’s new approach to introductory physics gets students excited

– and it helps them learn

Colin McCormick

IT’S 8 o’clock on a Tuesday morning. 51 Evans Hall is filling up.Students shuffle papers, reading over their notes and homework.At precisely ten past eight, Chris Vale, the Graduate Student

Instructor, strides into the room carrying a cardboard box full oftwo-foot long metal rods and iron clamps. “Well, it’s swordfightingtoday,” he announces, earning appreciative chuckles from his seven-teen Physics 7A students.

As Vale hands out eight-page lab worksheets on rotational inertiaand torque, the students divide themselves into groups of twos andthrees to tackle the problems with their rods and clamps. The roomgets noisy as students talk and argue. One student even pulls off ashoe so that his group can swing rods from the shoelaces to testtheir worksheet answers. Vale cruises from group to group, an-swering questions, checking on progress, and taking note of whatneeds further explanation. For a few minutes he interrupts thestudents’ work to give a mini-lecture on the moment of inertia, therotational analogue of mass, but the quiet is quickly broken by thechatter of students resuming discussions and experiments. By theend of the two-hour class, as the students file out and hand Valetheir worksheets, everyone has the day’s concepts under control.

For Vale and his 30 fellow Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) teach-ing Physics 7A and 7B, this is a typical section meeting. Anyonewho taught these required introductory courses for science andengineering majors before 1996, however, might have difficultyrecognizing the courses today. Back then, weekly discussion sec-tions lasted only 50 minutes, and consisted mostly of a GSI answer-ing questions about the week’s homework. A different GSI wouldrun the lab section, during which students did standard“cookbook”style experiments, and prepared formal reports of theirmethods and procedures. Lab and discussion sections were notclosely coordinated with the week’s lectures.

In the fall of 1994, however, Dr. Bruce Birkett, a lecturer in thePhysics Department, learned an important lesson about studentparticipation and extended class time when he took over teaching

the Department’s “Intensive Discussion Sections” (IDSs). Thesespecial sections, created by Cal physics PhD Dr. Andy Elby, pro-vided motivated Physics 7A students with the option of two extradiscussion sections per week, allowing for additional class partici-pation and discussion. The idea was to give the students challeng-ing problems, while providing them with all the resources and sup-port they would need to work their way through to solutions.

Birkett taught four of these two-hour sections every week in the1994-1995 school year, and says the experience was “a major rev-elation. Instead of watching me solve physics problems, studentswere working through the material for themselves. I was watch-ing them make the material their own.” Pretty soon, the word wasout that signing up for an IDS was the first step toward doing wellin Physics 7A, and by Spring 1995, the program had over fortystudents voluntarily enrolled.

Such student enthusiasm led Birkett to think about reforms for theentire 7A course structure. In addition, he had seen that many ofthe better GSIs were frustrated because their interaction with stu-dents was limited by the standard 50-minute discussion sections,and further complicated by the assignment of separate sets of GSIsfor discussion sections and labs. Scheduling mismatches also inter-fered with students’ conceptual continuity between theoretical les-sons and experimental work, as students would often perform labexperiments several weeks before or after the topic was presentedin lecture.

“Instead of watching me solve phys-ics problems, students were workingthrough the material for themselves.I was watching them make the mate-rial their own.”


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An opportunity for change came in 1996, when a team led by Deanof Physical Sciences P. Buford Price won a $200,000 grant from theNational Science Foundation to implement cross-campus under-graduate teaching reforms. In collaboration with the Chemistryand Mathematics Departments, Birkett helped the Physics Depart-ment to design a Physics 7A course based largely on the IDS model.He and GSIs Jason Zimba and MilesChen designed an innovative set ofworksheets and teaching notes toaccompany the revamped course.The changes were implemented forPhysics 7A in Fall 1996, and Physics7B one year later.

Birkett and Professor David Weiss,who taught Physics 7A in Fall 1996,worked together to finalize the cur-rent “discussion/lab” (DL) structure.Students now attend three hours oflecture per week (as before) and two2-hour DL sections, led by the sameGSI and with the same group ofabout twenty students. One DL sec-tion in four is used for a lab, and thetopics are closely integrated with thematerial in the lecture. Section timeis primarily devoted to group work,with students collaboratively an-swering questions on worksheets as the GSI moves between groupsto help with problems and check on progress.

The consolidation of discussion and lab sections and the studentparticipation that it encourages has had a profound impact on theteaching of physics at UC Berkeley. “When I was taught this mate-rial as an undergraduate,” says former Physics 7B GSI AndreasBirkedal-Hansen, “the labs often did not overlap the lectures at all,and were therefore almost useless. However, when they are com-bined in quick succession, it seems students understand the mate-rial much better and also recall the information for longer periodsof time.”

Students are also able to pursue specific issues or points raised inthe lab at their very next section meeting with their GSI, withouthaving to wait two weeks for the following lab. “The hope was thatwe’d create a way for students to dig in and explore the material forthemselves,” Birkett explains. “Introductory physics is tough! Butit’s my firm belief that through the right activities, and with good

support from their GSIs, our students will thrive.”

And thrive they do. In quantitative terms, UC Berkeley students’scores on a national test of basic concepts in physics, the Force Con-cepts Inventory, have increased significantly since the introductionof the DL format. Professors teaching Physics 7A and 7B also have

plenty of anecdotal evidence thatstudents in the DL format classes dobetter on in-class exams than stu-dents from years past who tookcomparable tests. So what preciselyis it about the new course structurethat translates into improved studentperformance? Some suggest that thekey is the way in which the newcourse structure enables instructorsto do more for their students. “Evenif you had an excellent teacher in thetraditional format,” notes formerPhysics 7B GSI Loraine Lundquist,“[he or she] would not be able to doas much in depth exploration of con-cepts as the new format allows. Theadded time in class and the teachersupport structure—i.e., the lessonplans and insightful worksheets—just make it so much easier.”

Others point out that the mobility and one-on-one interactions ofthe instructor “cruising” the classroom provide critical real-timefeedback for the teaching process, allowing the GSI to interrupt thegroup work to deliver a mini-lecture, if it becomes apparent thatmany students are having difficulty with the same point. “I get toknow right away if students are ‘getting it’ or not,” says Vale. “In thetraditional format, you might talk for an hour and never know ifanyone understood a word you said.”

Blume-Kahout notes that the DL format “takes the GSI out of ‘lec-ture’ role and puts the onus of activity on the students themselves... it’s an effective learning technique for the students, who are sup-posed to be asking questions and answering them.” Working withpeers on conceptual questions has also helped teach students howto communicate their physics knowledge better. “Another advan-tage of the DL format,” says Vale, “is that I can teach students how to‘speak Physics.’ It’s amazing how many students can get the rightanswers but can’t tell you in English why they’re right.”

Close contact with teachers engages students and helps themmaster complex concepts. (Photograph courtesy of Noah Berger.)


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Birkett is quick to explain that worksheets and teaching notes aren’tenough: “You can have the best [curriculum] materials in the world,but if the teacher doesn’t know how to use them, it doesn’t matter.Supporting the GSIs is crucial.” To help GSIs in their own profes-sional teaching development, Birkett teaches Physics 300, theDepartment’s graduate pedagogy course. The course is requiredfor first-time GSIs, and it allows GSIs to share observations andcomments. These can be quite specific, since everyone teaches fromthe same worksheets and teaching notes. First-time 7A and 7B GSIsalso receive extra pre-semester training to prepare them for going“into the trenches” (as Birkett likes to put it) with their students.

This is the moment when Birkett gets to ask his two favorite ques-tions of his new GSIs: “How do you, a successful graduate studentat Cal, learn material that is hard for you?” and “What do you wantyour students to do to help them learn physics for themselves?” Hisgoal is to help students in his courses develop the same habits assuccessful graduate students at UC Berkeley. “No teacher can makea student learn anything. Indeed, I read a quote recently that ‘the

An Elementary Problem (cont. from page 37)

Element 105 has a similarly awkward history. While it was firstannounced by the Dubna scientists in 1970, the Berkeley groupclaimed to have identified it a year earlier. The Soviet group hadnot proposed a name, so the Berkeley group named it “hahnium”after Otto Hahn. However, in 1997, panel members of the Inter-national Union of Pure and Applied Physics suggested that ele-ment 105 be called “dubnium,” in honor of the Joint Institute forResearch in Dubna, Russia. Although the name “hahnium” is stillused by some, the rules for naming new elements prevent it fromever being officially appropriated into the periodic table. In anycase, as the the Russian and American groups raced to claim newelements, their analytical and synthetic techniques improved. Manyof the techniques they developed are now widely used in the fieldof radiomedicine.

Even today, many of the elements named in periodic tables pub-lished in the United States are contested in international settings.However, the most recently named element, meitnerium (109),has avoided such controversy, as the crucial role of Lise Meitner innuclear chemistry is recognized worldwide. Meitner is the onlywoman to occupy her own square on the periodic table; curiumwas named for the husband-and-wife team of Pierre and MarieCurie.

Those who have paid close attention to more recent versions ofthe periodic table may have noticed that element 106 has acquireda new name—seaborgium. In 1994, seaborgium was named afterGlenn Seaborg, the first living person to have an element namedin his honor. The element was made by a team of scientists at LBLand the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Ken-neth Hulet and Albert Ghiorso. Seaborgium has a half-life of lessthan half a minute, so it exists only in ephemeral laboratory-con-fined flashes. Yet Seaborg responded to his new namesake by en-thusiastically proclaiming, “this is the greatest honor ever bestowedupon me—even better, I think, than winning the Nobel Prize.”

While the search for ever-heavier artificial elements continues,the difficulty in synthesizing them increases: for every protonadded, many more neutrons are required for stability. There is,however, hope for future artificial elements—theory predicts an“island of stability” for elements with 114 protons and 184 neu-trons. But until that island is reached, chemists must be satisfiedwith 112 identified elements, and 109 of those elements named.But while the names may endure for generations to come, thenewest elements tend to last only a few moments before decayingaway towards stability.

aim of teaching is to make student learning possible.’ I think I agree,”muses Birkett.

So perhaps the secret of the success of the DL format classes is thatthe format encourages students to do a better job of helping them-selves learn. “In-class participation is really high,” says Vale. “Someof the kids are real hams who are ecstatic to finally have a teacherwho actually wants them to talk in class.” Instructors also reportsurprisingly high attendance for Physics 7A and 7B. “[My students]kept coming to 7A discussion section throughout the term, whereasin the other classes they drifted away as the semester went on,” saysformer GSI Robin Blume-Kahout.

Vale sums it all up dramatically: “My 8 a.m. section attendance isabout 95%, compared with about 50% for my afternoon (old-for-mat) 7A section…And within a few weeks, the whole class is mer-rily chatting away about—can you believe it—Physics!”

Advertise in the BSR.Visit: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gsj/

or email: [email protected]

to find out how.


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Quanta: Heard on Campus

All of us at the BSR are graduate students. We toil, we work late into the night, and we complain a lot. But one of the perksof graduate student life is getting to hear world-famous scientists say some very bizarre things. Here’s a sample of what someof our staff heard while attending recent colloquia.

“What is the analogy to the church that persecuted Galileo? It’s not theRoman Catholic church of our time. It’s the National Academy ofSciences. They’re in the position of those Aristotelian professors andcardinals. The college of cardinals is in Washington, DC.”

Phillip E. JohnsonProfessor Emeritus, Boalt College of Law, UC BerkeleyAuthor of Darwin on Trial(March 15, 2001)

“The question is whether information can be transmitted faster than light, for exampleby telepathy. The answer is of course we don’t know. . . I think telepathy very likelydoes exist, but all the evidence for it is anecdotal, and certainly says nothing aboutthe speed of its propagation.”

Freeman DysonProfessor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study, PrincetonAuthor of Infinite in All Directions(March 7, 2001)

“Graduate students are the pluripotent stem cells of biology. Faculty are. . . well,basically terminally differentiated. . . the only options left for them are apoptosisand necrosis.”

Roger TsienProfessor of Pharmacology and of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSD(March 20, 2001)

“We have lunatics and idiots inBritain too, but they don’t get intopower.”

Richard DawkinsAuthor of The Selfish Geneand The Blind Watchmaker(April 4, 2001)

Berkeley Science Review - Spring 2001

Documents

Transcript of Berkeley Science Review - Spring 2001