Marie Curie, From the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands, Photographer unknown, No known copyright restrictions

The other day I started thinking about heroes and it occurred to me that we rarely speak about science heroes so I decided to write a blog post about it and asked those on twitter to supply their #scienceheroes.  Due to the large number of #scienceheroes I decided to give each hero or heroine their own post.

As a very young girl, about 7, I read a book about another little girl who was quiet and studious, she would get so focused she would shut out the outside world and despite all the odds against her she became a scientist, received her PhD, and two Noble Prizes, fell in love, got married, and had two children.  She did not set out to change the world, she merely wanted to be herself, but Marie Curie changed the world and has inspired generations of women in science.

Madam Curie, was born Marie Skłodowska on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland (at that time it was controlled by the Russian Czar).  She graduated from high school at 15 and, after a year off for her health, attended underground classes with her sister to further her education.  Working and taking illegal classes (Russia did not allow laboratory studies by Polish citizens, and women were not allowed to go to university) at age 24 she had saved enough money to go to Paris.

Marie registered as Maria Sklodowska and through hard work made up for her lack of formal higher education, taking only three years to complete her master’s degree in physics and math.  Winning a scholarship she began examining magnetic forces which led to her meeting Pierre Curie, her future husband.  In 1887 Marie gave birth to their first of two children and began looking for a doctoral research project.  This led to her ground breaking work with uranium and other radio-active compounds.  Like most scientists the Curies never grew rich for their research, as @gimpyblog said in today’s science discussions on twitter, “Worth noting scientists rarely call for increased pay, unlike bankers and CEOs, but for funds enabling them to do a better job”.

In 1903 Marie became the first woman in France to receive a PhD in Science and shared the Noble prize in Physics with her husband and research partner Pierre Curie.  When both Pierre and Marie started working at the Sorbonne, Pierre as a professor, Marie as a laboratory chief things were looking up until 1906 when Pierre was accidentally killed by a horsedrawn carriage.  Marie was devastated but returned to work the day after the funeral, a month later she was promoted to Pierre’s position as full professor.  Through heavy lobbying she founded the Radium Institute in Pierre’s memory.

In 1911 Marie won a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of radium and polonium.  Durring World War I Marie was designed and raised funds and supplies for the first mobile x-ray stations in an effort to save lives, and later devised the beginnings of chemo-therapy.  A clever and thoughtful woman Marie used her fame to raise funds after the war to fund further research and expansion of the Radium Institute.

On July 4, 1934 Madame Marie Curie died, most likely as a result of complications from long term radiation poisoning.  She was buried next to Pierre, and they were both later moved to the Pantheon in Rome.

For more information about Marie’s life check out the American Institute of Physics online exhibit:

http://www.aip.org/history/curie/contents.htm

Marie Curie was my first Science Heroine, who are some of your Science Heroes?

Kiyomi in Philadelphia

As some of you may know I had a rather whirlwind summer which led to me starting a new job August 2nd as an Assistant Professor with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.

For those of you who read my previous post, Sunday June 27th at ALA Annual was the day I attended my committee meeting for the Residency Interest Group, this was great fun and I think the group is starting to move in a very positive and useful direction.

Sunday was also the day I decided to accept the offer of employment I received from Dean Joan Giesecke of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.  This great piece of news really capped the whole ALA Annual experience for me and since August 2nd I have had the great pleasure (and occasional moments of terror at being an Assistant Professor with the Research and Instructional Section as a Subject Librarian for the areas of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, and the Cedar Point Biological Research Station.

I highly recommend that anyone else considering a cross-country move try and take more time than I did as it was the definition of chaos to find a place to live, pack, and move in about 3 weeks from the paperwork getting on file with administration.  I have to give a lot of credit to the staff in the Dean of Libraries office, and to Bekins/Thornton Moving & Storage for moving both my furniture and my car way faster than the originally estimated.  I received everything within 5 days of pickup instead of the 7-15 days I was told to expect.  I have to give credit to the university for contracting with such a great moving company (but if you try them and have a problem please don’t blame me

So now I’ve been here just over a month and this is my first post, why is that?  Well there are really two reasons. 1) Unpacking an entire 2 person household mainly by yourself takes forever and the boxes stare at you mockingly, thankfully my husband arrived a couple weeks ago and things are shaping up well, we even bought furniture this weekend at the famous Nebraska Furniture Mart (Yay, I’ll have something to sit on other than a folding chair at home!).  2) The University of Nebraska Lincoln, and its library resources, are huge!  Even though I’ve had multiple orientation activities a week (plus 8 thirty minute subject specific one-shots) I expect I won’t complete all of them until November or December which sounds and occasionally feels a bit overwhelming, but overall it’s really great to work somewhere that people want to teach you how they do things so that you can succeed.  Between work and home I’ve been running around like a whirling dervish but that is mostly out of my system and I can start moving again with more deliberation as I find my place in the faculty of UNL, as a Librarian, and in Nebraska.

So now that you know basically what I’ve been up to how are you?

ALA 2010

Greetings  and salutations!

I hope that everyone reading this is doing well, and that my fellow attendees all made it home without incident.

So, what have I been up to?

June 12, 2010 I attended graduation at Drexel University and got to meet some of my fellow students, hurrah!

I also spent several days exploring Philladelphia with my husband, guided by my aunt and cousins before visiting Missy Harvey, the Computer Science Librarian for the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries in Pittsburgh.  We moved on to Harrisburg to visit the  National Civil War Museum, which I highly recommend seeing, and Gettysburg.  After that we moved on to New York, NY to visit my step-son and one of my oldest friends, and then turned south to Delaware.  I realized from the signage that I was near the University of Delaware and gave myself an impromptu campus and library tour, they have an awesome audio/video center in their library!  We spent a few days in Maryland relaxing with some friends, and then moved on to D.C. for ALA 2010.

A Few Washington, D.C. Highlights

Revisiting Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum (Twice!)

What can I say, you can’t take the science out of the girl and I always adore seeing the new takes on the NASA display and all the other changes, it really did take two visits to see all the new stuff and I still didn’t have time to see one of their IMAX presentations!

Spectrum Professional Options Fair

This event is part of the Spectrum Leadership Institute, I was there as a representative of ACRL’s Residency Interest Group.  The purpose of the event is for Spectrum Scholars to learn about various career paths and professional groups, and to provide general networking for them as well.  My group passed out flyers, business cards, pointed people toward other groups of interest at the institute and generally had a good time promoting Residencies, scholarship and mentoring opportunities, and librarianship.

ARL’s 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Intitative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce

As an ARL Diversity Scholar I was asked to attend this lunch celebration of the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce.  I showed up early to help setup with my husband and we helped out and generally had a good time.  Not only was the food excellent, but the speakers were as well.  I was particularly proud of my fellow 2009-2011 Diversity Scholar Jeff Cruz’s speech. Jeff also challenged us to see which of us would become the first ARL director.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a multi-way tie in the end, good luck to us all!

Sunday – Best day!  I’ll do a separate post on this next week

Privacy -

Monday as I wandered in tired and without a plan and only 2 hours to spare, I had the good fortune to run into Brian Leaf who suggested I go to a session with him on privacy issues.  I’m not sure what the name of the session was but I really enjoyed one of the speakers analogy for privacy issues, a black box sitting on a rotting net with a flag.

Exhibits Report

As per usual there was the usual assortment of people watching and free books.  I was especially impressed by the determination of the woman who brought her daughter to sit with bags and had 8 bags of books within about 30 minutes of the exhibits opening.  I myself snagged 8 which looked interesting, and even managed to snag a free copy of a book being sold Saturday by staring rather wistfully at a book as they were closing the signing and mentioning that I had the first book at which point the vendor gave it to me for free and I was the last person to have their book signed

I was disappointed in the selection of science related vendors, even the vendors with science products were not nearly as helpful as I had met at midwinter.  To that I say, science people want convention attention too!  If I ask about your science products and you are a representative for your vendor telling me you don’t have any handouts and only know that name of the products makes me wonder if you really want me to buy them.

In contrast I was very pleased to speak with the people from the Oxford University Press they were very helpful, interesting, and I learned about new products which were in my area of interest.  I was also very happy to meet up with Dave, Ryan, and the rest of the Mango Languages crew, if you haven’t tried their product yet see if you have access through your library and check them out!  I really love how they not only have lessons for English speakers to learn foreign languages, but also English as a second language lessons. (No I am not affiliated with them, I just like their product and want it to continue succeeding so I can continue using it!)

Poster Sessions

I really enjoyed the chance to see what people were doing to improve their libraries and their services.  I really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with other librarians and discover people with similar interest and specialties who I hope to collaborate with in the future.  Talks and presentations are useful, but if you don’t drop by the poster sessions when you can you’re missing a fun and highly useful opportunity to connect with your peers/future colleagues/future bosses.  Most interesting poster has to go to the librarians that created a virtual tour using adapted dolls, some model props, and photos to simulate  a library tour for online students in a video clip.  I also loved hearing about successful scavenger hunt strategies and brain storming for overnight mystery events in libraries.

All in all I had a great time, met great people, and learned a lot, if you have a chance to attend a convention I highly encourage you to go.

Attended ALA 2010 in D.C.?  What were your highlights?

In that spirit, here is my personal recipe for guacamole

A Double Batch of Kiyomi's Guacamole

Kiyomi’s Guacamole

2 Lemons – Half and squeeze all juice into bowl.

2 Shallots – Minced

5 Cherry Tomatoes – Minced

2 Avocados – Mix in and mash.

Add Seasoned Salt to taste and enjoy!

To everyone who has already graduated: Congratulations!

To those still attending class:  Good luck as you finish your classes!

See you after the 12th of June!

~Kiyomi