Too long overlooked and underappreciated, meet some amazing women
Did you know that it’s International Women’s Month? It is! Because of that, I wanted to take a look at a few women in Science that you should know. (If you don’t already.)
Carolyn Porco — “Madam Saturn”
With a nickname like “Madam Saturn,” you might guess that Carolyn Porco is involved with one or more of the probes we’ve sent to Saturn, and you’d be right! Dr. Porco’s involvement with NASA’s unmanned probes actually begins back with the Voyager program in the early 1980’s.
Since then, she’s been involved in pretty much every mission to the outer Solar System. Honestly, trying to simply list all of her achievements and research would result in an article long enough to fill this entire issue of The Pulse.
But, she’s best known to the public as the co-coordinator (along with Carl Sagan) of the “Family Portrait” photo of the Solar System that Voyager took and just happened to include the “Pale Blue Dot” image of the Earth. She’s also the leading expert on planetary ring systems, having figured out (among other things) how a planet’s moons can act as “shepherds” for its rings.
She’s an active advisor to NASA and spends a great deal of time traveling around the world speaking to groups about Science in general and Astronomy in particular. She’s also a frequent guest on CNN, “Star Talk” with Neal deGrasse Tyson and other science programs.
Margaret Hamilton—Got Us To The Moon
It’s a common joke these days that the phone in your pocket is more powerful (by a lot) than the computer that took the Apollo Astronauts to the moon. Even though those computers were primitive compared to today’s models, they were still computers and they still had to be programmed to do all the tasks that were needed to get to the Moon. A young Margaret Hamilton was the leader of the team that created those programs.
In those days, creating software was a tedious and time-consuming affair. (To be fair, it still is, but they did it on punch cards!) Such a huge project had never been undertaken before, but Hamilton’s team did it; creating in-flight software for both the command module (which orbited the moon) and the lunar lander itself. This software, which was, conceptually, years ahead of its time even had the ability to recognize and correct errors without requiring action by the astronauts.
This amazing design has been credited for making the first Apollo landing possible and in 2016 President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As if that weren’t impressive enough, in 2017, she was turned into a Lego, as part of their “Women of NASA” set!
Jill Tartar—Asking the Big Question
As a long time researcher with various incarnations of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program, the majority of Astronomer Jill Tarter’s career has been spent asking the question, “Are we alone?” While her research hasn’t yet given us a definitive answer, she’s had quite an impact on the field and on popular culture.
The “Ellie Arroway” character in Carl Sagan’s book (and later, feature film), Contact was based largely on Tartar’s SETI work. She’s often called upon to speak on not just her research, but the ramifications of her work, should she ever get a positive result (i.e. if we ever actually hear a signal from an intelligent alien species) .
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Tartar isn’t afraid of making contact with an extra-terrestrial species. She’s of the opinion that, if they are advanced enough to communicate, and perhaps even travel here, then they’ve evolved (both as a species and as a civilization), beyond the need for things like conquest and colonization. (I for one, agree with her there.)
So, there you go. Three women scientists who, each in their own way, have helped take humanity into space. If you’ve got a daughter that’s interested in Science (or Space), I encourage you to share their stories with them and let them know that they too could end up helping humanity venture just a little bit further out into the Cosmos.
Steven W. Disbrow is a programmer who specializes in e-commerce and mobile systems development, an entrepreneur, comic-book nerd, writer, improviser, actor, sometime television personality and parent of two human children.