Category Archives: Physics

Alma Zook

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thank you to high school student Julie Innabi for this post.  Julie interviewed Professor Zook as an assignment in her Physics class. Alma Zook is a professor at Pomona College in the subjects of Astronomy and Physics.  She got interested in … Continue reading →

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Judy Franz

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Rachel Levy

I am another “Grandma Got Stem.” I received my PhD in physics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign back in 1965.  When I arrived, the department had 300 graduate students, and I was the only female.  Things have improved for … Continue reading →

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Maria Goeppert-Mayer

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thank you to Jill S. Tietjen, President and CEO of Technically Speaking, Inc. and regular contributor to Grandma got STEM for this remembrance of Maria Goeppert-Mayer. The San Diego, California newspaper headline announcing Maria Goeppert-Mayer as the first American woman to receive the … Continue reading →

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Lise Meitner

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thanks to the blogger at Synthetic Environment for a post about impressive female chemists, including Lise Meitner (1878-1968). Here is a biographical sketch from the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s Women in Science Site. In 1945, the Royal Swedish Academy of … Continue reading →

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Chien-Shiung Wu

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thank you to Jill Tietjen, co-author of the bestseller Her Story:  A Timeline of the Women who Changed America, for this post.  The photo is from the Library of Congress. The “First Lady of Physics” Chien-Shiung Wu spent much of her … Continue reading →

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Selma Karaali and Artemis Karaali

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thanks to Mathematics Prof. Gizem Karaali, who submitted this post about her two Turkish STEM-mas! I have two grandmothers with STEM for you. The first one is my paternal grandmother, Selma Karaali, who was born in 1918 in Istanbul, at the end of … Continue reading →

Posted in Engineering, Physics | 2 Comments

Elizabeth Rona

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thanks to Stanka Jovanovic, who sent a photo from the Marie Curie Museum in Paris.  Jovanovic’s father-in-law Dragoljub Jovanovic (Yovanovitch) is sitting to Rona’s right. They were two of many living Marie Curie collaborators attending the 1967 celebration of her 100th … Continue reading →

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Carol Jo Crannell

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thanks to Iolanthe Good, daughter of Annalisa Crannell and granddaughter of Carol Jo Crannell, all featured above! My grandmother (Carol Jo Crannell, known to me as ‘Nana’) was a Phi Beta Kappa physics major at Miami University in the late 1950’s. … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Physics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Margaret Paul

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Rachel Levy

Thanks to Rachel Rifkin, who encouraged Margaret Paul to share this story: I was born in 1939 and my father went off to fight in WWII within a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  I lived out in the country in upstate … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemistry, Mathematics, Military, Physics | 3 Comments

Helen Quinn

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Rachel Levy

I am a particle physicist, PhD from Stanford in 1967, and grandmother of three young girls. My seven year old granddaughter got very excited when she saw my picture in the magazine “Science News”. She loves that magazine because her … Continue reading →

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