BERKELEY

scienc e FROM THE EDITOR

r e v i ew Dear Readers,

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF You’d have to spend months attending university lectures and departmental seminars to
Eran Karmon gather all the information in this issue of the BSR. From Heidi Anderson’s look at brain
sexual dimorphism (p. 5), to Rachel Teukolsky’s examination of Big Science politics and
espionage at World War II-era Berkeley Labs (p. 16), to Alan Moses’ bizarre rants about
MANAGING EDITOR evolution (p. 10), this magazine is rivaled only by a thousand-page Russian novel in breadth
Temina Madon of material. Read through it all, you’ll learn a lot.

COPY EDITOR Like almost everything these days, the BSR started with a blip on the Internet. Berkeley
Donna Sy graduate student Kim Miller sent an email to the student community gauging interest in
starting a new popular science journal about Berkeley. From there, our editorial board
formed and a vision for what this magazine would be about emerged. We wanted a
ART DIRECTOR multidisciplinary look at UC Berkeley science, past and present, and that’s what the BSR is.
Tania Haddad 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. They
DESIGNER spent many late nights and gave up scarce free time to create the BSR. If my advisor knew
Anna Ross how much time I’ve spent on this project, he’d boot me out the door. I’d be working at
Andersen Consulting faster than you could say “creative business solutions.”
EDITORS Our contributors too represent all the best of Berkeley. They’re graduate students and
Antoinette Chevalier postdoctoral fellows from many, many campus departments, from biophysics to journalism
Heidi Ledford to literature. The amount of combined higher education represented by our contributors
Jessica Palmer pool is staggering. And it comes through in the thoughtful, original, and interesting articles
Thomas Thomaidis in this issue of the BSR.

Enjoy this first issue of the Berkeley Science Review, brought to you by the campus’s students
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SPECIAL THANKS All the best,

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© 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, the
Associated Students of the University of California, and the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Publication Committee. Berkeley Science Review is not
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views of the University or the ASUC. Cover image © 1998 Susannah Hays.

Staring at the Sun
n March 13, 1989, the entire prov-
O ince of Quebec was left without
power for nine hours when sub-
station transformers burned out after a mag-
netic storm. The storm was caused by a sud-
den increase in brightness on the sun’s sur-
face known as a solar flare, which is associ-
ated with the release of excessively ener-
getic particles and radiation from every part
of the electromagnetic spectrum. Although
the energy of a flare is usually only a small
fraction of the total energy the sun releases
every minute, this can still be more heat and
light than would be released by a billion
megatons of TNT.
During a solar flare, a burst of plasma can
be accelerated out of the solar corona,
where temperatures reach upwards of one
million degrees Celsius. These events are
called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
When the bulk of these particles encoun-
ter the Earth’s magnetic field several days
later, the resulting electromagnetic distur-
bance can strip relay operations and short
power lines in our electrical grids. A cer-
tain fraction of these particles that is more
energized can arrive at the Earth within
minutes of a flare, posing a deadly danger
to astronauts and satellite hardware in space.
The 1989 magnetic storm that blacked out
Quebec was caused by one of the biggest
flares ever to affect Earth, causing 6.5 mil-
lion dollars in equipment damage. It was,
however, only a minor example of the po-
tential disruption solar flares can cause.
Imagine an output more than 1.2 million
times greater than your household’s elec-
trical system suddenly being injected into
your city’s power grid. Few, if any, electri-
cal systems in the world are designed to
handle such a load.
briefs
Some satellites already in orbit, such as NASA’s Space Science division, a team at
SOHO (the Solar and Heliospheric Obser-
vatory), can sometimes give as much as a
few days of warning for the arrival of par-
UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory
has modified their original design for HESSI
in order to bring the project down to Small
ticles from a large flare or CME. However, Explorer (SMEX) specifications. SMEX
bearing in mind the potentially disastrous spacecraft are built for low cost, “highly fo-
effects of CMEs, a more reliable and longer- cused” missions. A SMEX spacecraft may
range prediction method would be ideal. weigh up to around 250 kg, consume about
200 watts of power on average (about as
To predict flares, we must first understand much as two or three light bulbs), and cost
why they occur at all. The process of en- less than $35 million to design and develop.
ergy transfer that causes particles to be
ejected so rapidly is not well understood. In order to fit the bill, the HESSI team has
By watching particle interactions in the simplified the spacecraft down to one inge-
Sun’s magnetosphere and photosphere dur- nious instrument: an imaging spectrometer
ing flares (the Sun’s most turbulent times) utilizing an array of nine germanium crys-
scientists hope to resolve exactly how par- tals cooled to -200 degrees Celsius. The crys-
ticle acceleration is related to the heating tals detect the x-rays and gamma rays. A pair
of plasma, and to improve their understand- of grids above each germanium detector casts
ing of the sudden particle releases exhib- shadows on the detector as the spacecraft
ited by the corona. spins, and the resulting modulation allows sci-
entists to reconstruct a picture of the flare.
UC Berkeley has just built an excellent eye In its final form, complete with four solar
for viewing just these sorts
of events: the High Energy
Solar Spectroscopic Imager
(HESSI). HESSI is capable
of seeing a wide spectrum
of radiation, from 3 kilo-
electron volt (keV) soft x-
rays to 20 mega-electron
volt (MeV) gamma rays,
with an energy resolution
of between about 1 and 5
keV. It is in these ranges
that most of the radiation
energy from solar flares is
emitted, when x-rays and
gamma rays emitted by
flare particles interact with
each other and matter in
the Sun’s photosphere. This image was created by detecting x-rays emitted from the
Rising to a challenge from sun’s solar corona (NASA/EIT).
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panels, the bright blue and gold HESSI
weighs 290 kg and uses only about 220 watts
of power. Due to its high angle of orbital
inclination (38 degrees in low earth orbit),
it will pass over Berkeley several times a day
for data downloads and commands. It can
view the entire sun while imaging areas with
an angular size as small as 2 arcseconds (1
arcsecond being 1/3600 of a degree, or
about 1/1800th of the Sun’s disk). HESSI
can resolve a simple image in the 100 keV
to 1 MeV range in tens of milliseconds.
More complex images require an exposure
that 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 the
promise of returning some extraordinary
data. A successfully tested HESSI is slated
to launch this summer. If all goes well, it
will send back more than just important in-
formation about the temperamental solar
cycle. An x-ray survey of the Crab nebula,
a high-resolution study of cosmic gamma ray
bursts, and a study of terrestrial sources of
gamma rays (e.g. lightning) have also been
Brain Sexual Dimorphism
ontrary to conventional thinking,
C adult brains can undergo significant
structural 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 from
the Department of Psychology at UC Ber-
keley demonstrated that the size of a part of
the rat brain linked to sexual behavior could
be controlled by the application or with-
drawal of sex hormones. The paper, along
with a very interesting discussion by Bruce
S. McEwen, is available online at the website
of the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences (www.pnas.org).
briefs
The High Energy Solar Spectroscopic
Imager (HESSI) is a NASA-funded Small
Explorer Program satellite conceived,
designed, and constructed at UC
Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. It
endeavors to answer long-standing
questions about how the sun transmits high-
energy radiation by conducting a high-
resolution study of the gamma and x-ray
spectrum (UC Berkeley SSL).
Until recently, sex differences in the brains
of mammals were thought to arise in
much the same way as reproductive dif-
ferences: by exposure to hormones dur-
ing fetal development in the womb. For
example, in a highly publicized Nature ar-
ticle, Breedlove presented evidence that
the ring fingers of lesbian women and
straight men tend to be significantly
longer than their index fingers. He and
others postulated that this happens be-
cause straight men and lesbians are ex-
posed to more testosterone as fetuses than
straight women, who tend to have index
fingers longer than their ring fingers.
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integrated into the HESSI mission.
With its rapidly spinning eye, HESSI may
look beyond the placid yellow disk of the
Sun to study its violently variable x-ray face.
But until then, the HESSI engineers, re-
search scientists, and mission controllers on
the ground here in Berkeley are undoubt-
edly holding their breath.
Sheyna Gifford
To learn more about the HESSI satellite,
visit: http://hessi.ssl.berkeley.edu
Read up on solar flares and other
spectacular solar events:
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/
Solar and Stellar Activity Cycles
by Peter R. Wilson
The Heliosphere During the Declining Solar
Cycle edited by M.A. Shea
Theories of sex difference based in fetal de-
velopment, which generally hold that the
adult brain does not change and that sexual
patterns set before birth persist into adult-
hood, have sparked mixed popular reac-
tions. They have been embraced by people
who feel strongly that sexual preference is
determined solely by genetics, and denied
by people who point to a vast cultural ap-
paratus that creates and maintains gender
roles.
Although the Berkeley team’s rat experi-
ment touches upon a topic loaded with com-
plex social implications, their experimen-

tal method was fairly straightforward. The
posterodorsal nucleus of the medial
amygdala (MePD) of the rat brain is impli-
cated in sexual behaviors, including sexual
arousal. As revealed by Nissl stains, the
MePD of adult male rat brains is about 65%
larger in volume than that of female rats.
When the research team treated female rats
with testosterone, however, they found that
their MePDs would grow to the size of the
male rats’ MePDs in about 30 days. Con-
versely, the MePD of a castrated male would
shrink to the size of a female’s MePD in the
same amount of time. Exposing castrated
males to testosterone preserved the size of
their MePDs indefinitely. Not only was the
volume of the MePD altered by androgen
treatment, but individual cell soma areas
were enlarged as well. The group concluded
that these physical sex characteristics in the
brains 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 changed
by exposure to hormones, the group cited
findings that adult female canaries treated
with testosterone experience an enlarging
of their brain’s vocal center and begin to
Understanding Face Blindness
ould you easily recognize your sis-
C 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 “face
blindness,” would not. They find the task of
recognizing people solely by looking at their
faces extremely difficult. In order to rec-
ognize familiar people, they rely on such fea-
tures as voice, hairstyle, clothing, or other
contextual information. When this infor-
mation is not available, they may even fail
to recognize their own spouses.
briefs
The medial amygdala (MePD) area of the
brain is implicated in sexual behavior and
is substantially larger in male rat brains.
MePD neuronal soma size in male control
rats (SHAMS) is reduced to
characteristically female size by
castrating male rats (Castrates+B), but
addition of testosterone (T) restores size
in castrated male rats. MePD neuronal
soma size in females can be increased
to male size by treatment with
testosterone.
produce male-like songs. In regard to hu-
mans, they remarked, “Transsexuals treated
with cross-sex hormones display sex rever-
sals in their cognitive abilities, emotional
tendencies and libido, and sex offenders are
sometimes treated with antiandrogens to re-
duce their sex drive. The sociosexual
changes observed in these groups most
Prosopagnosia is a relatively rare condition
and may occur after a stroke or other brain
injury. Sometimes, however, it occurs with
no apparent neural damage—a condition
referred to as congenital or developmental
prosopagnosia. While the causes of face
blindness are not known, some studies sug-
gest that they are partly genetic.
As prosopagnosia affects only a patient’s
ability to recognize faces, its diagnosis has
led to arguments that face recognition is
achieved by dedicated mechanisms in the
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likely reflect structural and physiological
plasticity in steroid-sensitive areas within
the brain.” And finally they stated “MePD
sexual dimorphism in rats is quite compa-
rable to reported sexual dimorphisms in the
human brain and therefore supports the pos-
sibility that sexual dimorphisms of the hu-
man brain are caused solely by circulating
steroids in adulthood.”
As McEwan also wrote, however, “this is un-
doubtedly an overstatement of a valuable
point.” 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 the
Berkeley team implies that the physical
structures of adult brains, and the behav-
iors that are controlled by them, are sur-
prisingly flexible. Hormones may play an
important role in many other examples of
adult brain plasticity as well: currently the
team is investigating the central nervous sys-
tems of Siberian hamsters, which undergo
dramatic physiological changes from sum-
mer to winter.
Heidi Anderson
brain. Strangely, the “opposite” condition
has been reported as well (though it is even
more rare than prosopagnosia). Patients
suffering from this condition are extensively
impaired in visual object recognition but
can easily recognize faces. This double disso-
ciation between faces and objects strongly
supports the hypothesis that special neural
mechanisms process visual information per-
taining to faces.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) studies reveal increased neural ac-

tivity in the right posterior temporal lobe
of the brain when normal subjects view hu-
man faces. The activated area is often la-
beled the “face area” and probably plays a
key role in a network of mechanisms that
process different kinds of information con-
veyed by faces, such as gaze direction and
facial expression analysis.
While fMRI has good spatial resolution, it
conveys only poor information regarding
the timing of neural events. Other meth-
ods, such as event-related potentials (ERPs),
can provide finer temporal resolution.
ERPs are calculated by averaging electrical
brain activity. A typical ERP signal consists
of a series of positive and negative compo-
nents. One of the negative components,
peaking at about 170 milliseconds after the
presentation of object images (and thus la-
beled N170), is of particular interest to
prosopagnosia researchers. While this com-
ponent is evoked by other visual stimuli as
well, it responds preferentially to human
faces, detailed sketches of faces and even
schematic 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.
Berkeley Seismologists Tackle
Volcanic Seismology
ost residents of the Bay Area are
M aware that California is a hotbed
of seismic activity. It is perhaps
less well known that California also under-
goes a substantial amount of volcanic activ-
ity. Berkeley seismologists Dr. Douglas
Dreger and Hrvoje Tkalcic have recently
studied a collapsed volcano located near
Mammoth Lakes, known as the Long Valley
Caldera. Their study, which appeared in
briefs
The N170 event-related potential
(ERP) fires off 170 milliseconds after
a subject is shown an image. This
plot shows a normal subject’s wildly
different N170 ERPs when shown
a face versus an object. In
prosopagnosics, this difference is
not observed. They have a similar
neural response to both faces and
objects.
Recently, my colleagues and I have begun
to study a group of individuals with con-
genital prosopagnosia. In a study reported
at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society
for Neuroscience we found that, unlike nor-
mal subjects, two individuals with congeni-
tal prosopagnosia produced equivalent
N170 ERPs in response to both faces and
other stimuli. This loss of face-specificity
Science, has led to a new understanding of
the origins of seismic activity associated
with the center of the volcano.
The Long Valley Caldera was formed by a
massive eruption approximately 730,000
years ago. In that explosion, over 600 cu-
bic kilometers of rock were expelled. If
assembled into a cube, this amount of rock
would measure more than eight thousand
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in early visual processing may underlie the
decreased ability to recognize faces even
when no structural brain damage is present.
We are currently using fMRI to directly test
whether the “face area” in congenital
prosopagnosics does not respond preferen-
tially to faces.
Although much is known about normal face
recognition, we are only beginning to un-
derstand the bases for face blindness. While
only a small number of cases of congenital
prosopagnosia have been reported in the
medical and scientific literature, there are
reasons to believe that it is more common
than assumed. Some congenital
prosopagnosics may not even realize how
severely impaired they are in recognizing
faces, as contextual information is often
available to aid in identification. We hope
that increasing public awareness of
prosopagnosia and furthering research will
help 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
meters on a side, roughly the height of Mt.
Everest. The area surrounding the Caldera
is seismically quite active and even during
periods of minimal activity may have ten or
more earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or
smaller per day. Occasionally the amount
of seismic activity increases dramatically
beyond this impressive background level.
In 1997, the Caldera displayed just such a
surge in seismic activity. Dreger, Tkalcic,

and their colleague Malcolm Johnston of the
U.S. Geological Survey examined data from
the set of earthquakes that occurred in the
region around the Caldera in that year. Uti-
lizing a technique known as waveform
analysis, they were able to discern that an
anomalous type of vibration was present in
these earthquakes.
Waveform analysis begins with an exami-
nation of the wave shapes seen on seismo-
grams following an earthquake. After the
waveforms are identified, the next step in
the process is to understand how the seis-
mic waves recorded on seismograms have
propagated through the earth. Armed with
this understanding, scientists can then trace
the waves back to their origin. In fact, us-
ing this technique, it is possible not only to
pinpoint the origin of an earthquake, but
also to glean information about the prop-
erties of the source itself. In this case,
Dreger and his colleagues were able to trace
the waveforms from the 1997 regional
earthquakes back to the Long Valley
Caldera, and then propose a mechanism for
the earthquake.
The Berkeley team’s examination of the
Long 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 the
waveforms had anomalous shapes. Normal
seismic activity, of the sort seen along the
Hayward or San Andreas faults, takes the
form 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, the
earthquakes at the Caldera contained a sta-
Submit to us. Submission guidelines for the BSR are at: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gsj/
briefs
tistically significant presence of seismic ra-
diation that was not of the double-couple
form. Instead, the researchers found a sub-
stantial amount of isotropic radiation, a type
of shaking associated with a change in vol-
ume at the source. Isotropic radiation would
be seen if the shaking were caused, for ex-
ample, by an explosion, in which case it
Lava flows of the Mono-Inyo Craters vol-
canic chain in California’s Long Valley
Caldera. The most recent eruptions from
along this chain occurred between
about 250 and 600 years ago. Berke-
ley seismologists Douglas Dreger and
Hrvoje Tkalcic are studying the unique
signature of this volcano’s seismic waves
(USGS Long Valley Observatory).
would propagate outward in a purely radial
fashion. In fact, searching for isotropic ra-
diation is one means by which it is possible
to verify adherence to nuclear test ban trea-
ties.
From their discovery of the isotropic com-
ponent in the seismograms, Tkalcic and his
colleagues were able to conclude that the
seismic activity associated with the Caldera
is not limited to the usual strike-slip events
that are prevalent along the San Andreas
Fault.The team of seismologists suspect that
the earthquakes associated with the Caldera
may instead be caused by high-pressure fluid
rushing through small crevices, thereby
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opening cracks in the rock. For example, a
dike of magma might rapidly heat water,
thus bringing it to supercritical state; this
heated water could be subsequently injected
through 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 mechanism
might be at work, but this study was the
first to conclusively show that a statistically
significant component of isotropic radiation
was indeed present in the waveforms.
Tkalcic is careful to emphasize that all of
this work relies crucially on prior knowl-
edge of how seismic waves propagate within
the earth. According to Tkalcic, our under-
standing of the mechanics of terrestrial wave
motion has been laboriously pieced together
from thousands of seismic events over the
course of many years, resulting in detailed
computer models of wave propagation. It
is these models that allow seismologists to
trace the waveforms seen on a seismograph
back to an earthquake’s source.
Tkalcic also notes that seismology has now
developed to the point that scientists are
able to use seismographs “much in the same
way 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 and
propagated inside the Earth to learn about
the Earth itself.
Aaron Pierce

Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections,
and Imaginations in a Postmodern World
Michael Burawoy, Joseph A. Blum, Sheba
George, Zsuzsa Gille, Teresa Gowan,
Lynne Haney, Maren Klawiter, Steven H.
Lopez, Sean O. Riain, and Millie Thayer.
University of California Press, 2000. 410
pages. $48.00 (hardback), $17.95
(paperback).
he prose in Michael Burawoy’s in
T troduction to Global Ethnography:
Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in
a Postmodern World is so smooth that it slid
right past my comprehension, not to mention
my interest. Fortunately, the book has nine
authors besides Burawoy.
An “ethnography,” for the uninitiated, is an an-
thropological study in which the ethnographer
lives and works with a small group of people
in order to study their culture from the inside
out. Ethnographers have a complex identity
as biographers, foreign exchange students, and
political activists. They also remain in close
contact with their fellow anthropologists via
e-mail—the book is dedicated to “Eudora.”
book review
Overall, the book is organized as a set of
nine ethnographies, three in each of three
categories. The ethnographies present
thought-provoking snapshots of life at the
end of the millennium, concentrating on the
effect 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, labor
unions, cultural safeguards—crumble in
response to global pressures, people are
forced to adapt their lives to a new order.
Those dependent on the old infrastructure
are left stranded, while the rest must learn
to 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 cover
shows a Seattle World Trade Organization
protester in the rain, facing down an army
of faceless policemen. The book devotes a
lot of its energy to wailing about the
“neoliberalism” which has replaced the New
Deal, “tax and spend,” and unionist move-
ments of the past. Unfortunately, politics
obscure the real meat of the book. Never-
theless, two stories in particular caught my
attention.
The first, written by Teresa Gowan, is a col-
lection of biographies of homeless men who
push recycling carts through San Francisco
and Berkeley. Lost relics of better times,
they testify that hard work is not all that it
takes. Gowan brings them to life, showing
that these men were once blue-collar work-
ers with jobs, homes, even families—but
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not the resources to rebound after several
strokes of disaster. Meanwhile, the chang-
ing economy has transformed the world
around them. As the military reduces its
role as a mass employer for unskilled work-
ers, a rising prison industry rushes in to fill
the vacuum. This, coupled with the impos-
sible rents and information economy of the
Bay Area in the 90’s, leaves these fallen
workers with nowhere to turn. They are
left with only a work ethic to march them
from can to bottle to recycling center in
search of professional dignity.
My favorite ethnography is Sheba George’s
portrait of female Christian nurses from
Kerala, India who are now living with their
families in the United States. Nursing in
Kerala is seen as a “dirty” occupation for
women, partly because it involves touching
unknown men. It is a well-paid occupation,
however, and a current worldwide short-
age of nurses makes it relatively easy for
them to emigrate, bringing their families
with them. Their husbands are caught in a
difficult dilemma. On the one hand, a work-
ing wife brings certain economic benefits.
On the other, she breaks all conventions of
the man being the breadwinner and unques-
tioned head of the household. Many of these
men once held respected professional jobs
in India, but are now relegated to laboring
in blue-collar jobs, looking after the kids,
and cleaning the house. To bolster their self-
esteem, they take on leadership positions
in church–going as far as to set up a new
congregation if necessary. But in this way
(continued on next page)
 opinion

Evolution Is Not a Tautology

Strong words from the last angry man

Alan Moses

o 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 f

C the processes of evolution from a

first-year philosophy course: “Fitness is defined as the abil-
ity of an organism to interact with its environment in order to sur-
because they were defined as fit after the fact. Said another way, my
uncle is a bachelor because he has certain qualities that prevent him
from getting married: he has big ears, he burps in public and he eats
incredible amounts of canned sardines. Fitter animals survive and
vive and produce as many offspring as possible. reproduce because they run faster, jump
Natural selection is defined as the process by which higher or sing more beautifully than their
the less fit are weeded out in time because of their peers—not because we called them more
inability to reproduce. Populations become more fit. Notice how difficult it can be to de-
and more fit because they are composed of indi- fine fitness. My bachelor uncle’s fitness
viduals that have managed to out-compete the less depends greatly on whether sardines are
fit.” But wait a minute—of course the fitter crea- in style or big ears are desirable. Some-
tures have out-competed the others; that’s how we times, particularly in the case of extinct
defined fitness. Doesn’t that make Darwin’s theory species known only through fossil remains,
of evolution by natural selection circular, equiva- we may never be able to say what led them
lent to explaining that my uncle is a bachelor be- to evolve a particular combination of fea-
cause he’s an unmarried man? You can’t explain tures. These unknowable details of bio-
why some animals survive by saying they were more logical history are called “just so stories”
fit, since fitness is defined as the ability to survive. by evolutionists.

Admittedly, this kind of argument is tempting— The second premise of Darwin’s theory
imagine breaking the cornerstone of modern biol- of evolution is something we all take for
ogy by simply pointing out a logical flaw. Strangely No wonder he always looks so dour. granted, but which turns out to be cru-
enough, when you ask philosophy professors how Darwin’s theories haven’t been properly cial empirical evidence for the mechanism
scientists can believe the theory of evolution (and explained. of natural selection. Simply put, children
still get grant money) even though it’s so obviously are like their parents. The apple doesn’t
a circular argument, you’ll never get a straight answer. A classic far fall from the tree; kids are chips off the old block. A more rigor-
bad response might be: “Well, actually, all scientific theories are ous way to phrase this might be that traits (good and bad) are trans-
tautologies; look at ‘F = ma’. Force (F) is defined in terms of mass mitted from one generation to the next. Until fifty years ago, this
(m) and acceleration (a), while mass is defined as force divided by was only an empirical rule; today, the genetic mechanism by which
acceleration. It’s totally circular.” My purpose here is not (as it traits are transmitted is understood in molecular detail. Without
might seem) to slander my college education or my philosophy pro- this crucial step, evolution through natural selection makes no sense
fessor. It is to give a better answer about the question of evolution, at all. It’s important to note that a corollary is also true: apples
a subject plagued not only by bad arguments, but also by bad re- don’t fall far from the tree, but they don’t fall too closely either—
sponses to those arguments. if children were exactly like their parents, evolution would be im-
possible.
It turns out that the philosophy-class description of evolution given
above leaves out two crucial aspects of the theory. The first is obvi- So, evolution by natural selection has two hidden assumptions. First,
ous: fitter organisms survive because they actually are more fit, not it is assumed that there is a “just so story” about why and how a

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particular feature was useful to a particular creature at a particular
time. Second, it is assumed that these features can be passed from
generation to generation. Both of these assumptions were simply
taken for granted before Darwin—it was obvious to everyone that
each 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 one
look at their uncles to know that family members resembled each
other.
What is striking about Darwin’s theory is that once you accept those
two 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 set
will grow to be composed of members who have inherited the char-
acteristics that allowed them to be produced. This statement is not
true by definition. It is an abstract truth of logic, given a few bio-
logical assumptions. Nevertheless, we should realize that, as is the
case with any empirical rule, there are exceptions where these as-
sumptions fail—and as soon as they do, so will Darwin’s venerated
mechanism.
REGENT AD
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Global Ethnography
(continued from page 9)
they further stigmatize themselves, because it is only the husbands
of 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 to
skeptics without context, radicals without history, and
perspectivalists without theory,” the conclusion will probably have
lost its relevance fifty years from now. Historians of the future may
very well skim the academic comments to get at the ethnographies
themselves. Which is, incidentally, my advice for the contempo-
rary reader.
Heidi Anderson
www.ingenuity.com
In Genuity Systems, a dynamic, fast-growing pre-IPO
company, is currently offering consulting contracts to
Ph.D. level biologists (senior Ph.D. students will also
be considered) interested in developing a state of the
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journals. You will then enter these findings into our
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Apply online at www.ingenuity.com for the Consulting
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(details on our website)!!!
11

Déjà Vu: How One Scientist Experiments
Through Art
Shirley Dang
t first glance, the setup looks like a typical scientist’s lab
A bench. Voltmeters riddled with knobs and dials bump up
against flasks and beakers of buffers. Tiny vials and half-
filled syringes lie among dishes of solution. The only thing out of place is
a musty clot of ivy roots, spawning a tangle of tendrils and leaves, which
sits 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 an
art gallery in San Francisco. And unlike most scientists, Tania Vu, who
earned 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 the
leaves of ivy plants. Reacting in distress, the plants emit a “wound re-
sponse.” This response begins with the movement of charged atoms, or
ions, from the cells at the site of damage. The ions quickly disperse from
the 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 pen
across a continuous sheet of moving graph paper, marking the peaks and
nadirs of the changing electrical potential.
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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 an
electrical amplifier (background) and onto an oscilloscope and
chart recorder.
Toward the end of Vu’s two-month exhibit, ivy vines creep up the
gallery walls and spill over the edge of the bench with perverse
cheer. Vu scribbles observations in a standard blue lab notebook.
Every once in a while, a swell of graph paper from the recorder
builds up and cascades off one edge of the bench, while a sea of
leaves pools on the floor opposite.
Vu’s piece was picked as one of nine for a juried Bay Area showcase
this spring at the San Francisco Art Institute, which offered her a
merit scholarship last year to explore the connection between art
and science. Her piece, simply called “Experiment,” is a study with
what 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 and
making legitimate scientific discoveries. She wanted to set up stud-
ies “so they were true science experiments, but to do it in a setting
that wasn’t in a laboratory.”
At 30, Vu has already published ten scientific papers and abstracts
and has received two grants from the National Institutes of Health.
But in January of 2000 she halted her science research to fully de-
12
 profile

vote herself to art for a year. What drives an accomplished scientist

to carry out experiments in an art gallery? “In the research, things
were going very profitably in terms of the papers and grants,” says
Vu, who completed her doctoral thesis on how light is processed in
the 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 the
time and really explore this other thing that I’m very curious about.”

Yet there was no meltdown, no

singular career crisis, no renun-
ciation of science. Rather, the
arts surreptitiously crept up on
her, much like the ivy vines on
the walls of the exhibit. Vu be-
gan by playing violin and piano
in private study for eight years.
She then played the violin in
Carnegie Mellon University’s
symphony, 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 her
doctoral studies at Berkeley. Finishing her degree two years later,
she performed with the Berkeley Summer Symphony. Finally, when
The artist at work. Individual leaves are tacked to the wall
along with the wound response Vu recorded from each.
she began postdoctoral work at the University of California, San
Francisco 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 science
through art. “There was so much I saw that I didn’t see before, and
it was a really different way of approaching the visual world,” she
says. Even as an artist,Vu still operates on many levels as a scientist:
she systematically uses tools, whether paintbrush or voltmeter, to
analyze her old thesis topic, vision. Rather than abandoning her

Defense Responses in Plants

In response to crushing, burning, and attack by insects, many plants issue systemic hydraulic, electrical, and
chemical “wound“ responses.(1) For example, mechanical wounding of a plant results in the efflux of charged
atoms (possibly sodium and potassium ions)(2) from damaged cells at the site of injury. This efflux induces slow
changes in neighboring cell membrane potentials*, resulting in a hydraulic signal accompanied by a variation
potential. 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 cell
membranes, called action potentials. These signals are caused by electrical stimulation of a plant leaf or
stem; they can travel as quickly as 0.4 to 8 cm/sec.(3) The action potential, like the variation potential, can elicit
chemical changes in neighboring cells. For example, when a plant cell is depolarized by a fast electrical
signal, its membrane potential is made more positive. This results in an accumulation of calmodulin mRNA
in the cell body.(4) Likewise, an accumulation of proteinase inhibitor mRNA has been observed in plant cells
near 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- two disciplines. “I feel schizo-
plores how people see—only now she does it through artistic means. phrenic sometimes. I feel like
When she speaks of her experiments, she makes compelling argu- I’m in a science mode, then I’m
ments for the study of vision through the visual arts. “That’s the in an art mode,” she explains,
other thing that I like about making artwork,” she says. “It answers turning side to side. “I was
questions just like in science, but it answers questions in a different thinking about how in science
way—in a personal way on some levels, and in a way that also [isn’t we try to look for general and
as] exact as science, but at the same time is very satisfying. replicable kinds of responses,
the idea of repeatability…and
“I was thinking about how in science we I was thinking of how in the
try to look for general and replicable kinds arts there is an emphasis on in-
dividuality and the personal,
of responses, the idea of repeatability…and and the unique.”
how in the arts there is an emphasis on
individuality and the personal, and the u eventually incorporated Waves of paper. Vu uses a
unique.” V the idea of uniqueness chart recorder, antiquated but
into her science experiments. charming, to register plant
wound responses.
She began measuring the
But painting and drawing while conducting demanding scientific wound responses of individual leaves, and found that each leaf had a
research is very different from fusing the two together to form a unique response, perhaps related to leaf geometry. By the end of
new career. “I think at first the two were very separate, the science the exhibit, she had attached several tiny ivy leaves to one wall,
and the art, for me. It wasn’t until halfway through last year that I each with their own measurements. Changing her experiment
could feel that they were coming together, and it came from inter- quickly, on a philosophical whim, has been a learning experience
nally—the feeling of art as a part of life, living as part of the project for the methodical scientist in her. In art, she says, “your mind is in
that you are doing.” a different mode, where you embrace the unexpected, and you have
to embrace the unexpected in order to make work that’s good.” Of
Still, she finds herself unable to peacefully meld every aspect of the course, the same might often be said of good science.

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 undamaged
leaves and stems of looming danger. Research in the field of plant responses to wounding is complemented by
studies 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 permeable
only to certain ions, allowing a cell to separate its own charged contents—like charged proteins, ions, and nutrients—from the
extracellular 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 the though plants do not actually feel pain, Owen notes that people
tension that makes her installation so effectively discomfiting. Vu looking at the exhibit can, in a way, feel it for them. “Like all good
says she has been watching to see “whether I would bring art into art, you connect with it because you identify some aspect that you
science, or science into art. I’m feeling that it’s much easier to relate to.
bring science into art than the other way around.” There does seem
to be a trend to incorporate science into art. For example, this past Indeed,Vu has found audience interaction integral to learning about
year, the artist Eduardo Kac worked with a biotechnology lab to how society views science. Most people have been intrigued, al-
create a conceptual art piece: the genetically-modified fluorescent though many have opted to stay back from the bench. “Some people
bunny. However, Vu is a forerunner among scientists moving into
the realm of art, making her work not only novel but also particu- “A lot of artists just use science or the
larly noteworthy to those in the arts.
language of science symbolically…there
“In art, it’s definitely special,” said professor Werner Klotz, who are not many scientists that go into art.”
taught Vu at the San Francisco Art Institute. “She creates a system
that functions. Most artists who use the instruments of science even grimaced when I told them what I was doing,” she says. But
don’t know how it works. A lot not all responses have been negative—one observer suggested us-
of artists just use science or the ing microcomputers to more discretely measure and record elec-
language of science trical signals. Someone else brought pink daisies to decorate the
symbolically…there are not bench. One day, a resident artist in the gallery stopped by to chat
many scientists that go into art. during the exhibit. Vu recalls, “her friend was visiting and brought
Financially, it might be strange to her some hibiscus flowers from Africa. She was drinking the tea
do that. Actually, it would be ab- from that.” Vu smiles, then adds, “I really enjoy that kind of thing—
solutely absurd to do it. You only the unexpected.” Next on the docket: burning, singeing, and clip-
do it when you have a very strong ping flowers.
passion for art. It is very rare.” In
coming years, Klotz expects to
see even more exciting work
from his former student. “I and
others think she’s someone that
you really will hear about in the
future.”

u’s parents have been supportive of her career change, if a bit

V puzzled. “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 to
school, 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 these Got a great story?
people who think if you’re trained as a scientist that you have to Write for the BSR.
only do science.” Instead he sees Tania’s artwork as parallel to her
science. “By looking at electrophysical responses with different kinds
Read our submission guidelines at:
of stimuli in plants, that makes people think about a plant in a dif- http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~gsj
ferent way, the meaning of these responses in a different way.” Al-

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Regarding Scientist X
Big Science, the war effort, and communist activity at
Berkeley Radiation Lab (1929-1949)
Rachel Teukolsky
ixty years ago, with Pearl Harbor bombs resounding faintly in
S their ears, physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab were asked
to give up their research in order to assist the American war
effort. Their mission was to produce fissionable uranium for the
super-secret atomic bomb project at Los Alamos. It was during this
time that the left-wing backgrounds of some Berkeley physicists
became a problem of national security. After the war, the careers
of many of these physicists were ruined by accusations of Commu-
nist sympathies.
Why were these left-leaning physicists hounded and fired? Perhaps
their persecution was a part of a larger post-war trend, in which all
areas of American culture—from Hollywood to academia—were
swept by a wave of “Communist hysteria” that chased people with
leftist tendencies out of their jobs. But physics—and especially phys-
ics research at Berkeley—was particularly polemical, fraught with
political overtones even before the war started.
Histories of science usually portray the war as the real beginning of
the politicization of physics research, with unprecedented coopera-
tion between the American military and university scientists, and
the 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 their
seeds in the early development of the Berkeley Radiation Lab, as it
was 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 clash
between the two types of intellectuals had tragic consequences for
the post-war physics community. There were martyrs and spies on
both 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 a
much humbler incarnation: as a very large magnet in a rather small
shed. The magnet and shed were the brainchild of Ernest O.
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Lawrence, a young, brash Berkeley physicist who had arrived from
Yale in 1928. Only in his late twenties, Lawrence already exhibited
the 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 into
giving him money for his research projects.
“Communist hysteria” forced many
promising Berkeley physicists—along
with academics all over the country—
out of their careers.
Lawrence’s magnet was the driving force behind his 27-inch cyclo-
tron, a contraption he and his star graduate student M. Stanley
Livingston had initially devised in smaller forms in the physics labs
of LeConte Hall. They had been working to solve one of the knotty
problems in physics research at the time: the penetration of the
atom’s nucleus. In the wake of Rutherford’s experiments in En-
gland, physicists around the world were using linear accelerators to
bombard the nucleus with ion beams, attempting to break through
the Coulomb barrier which held the nucleus intact. The problem
demanded 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 furiously
devising and building machines in the “race to a million volts.”
Lawrence’s breakthrough came in 1929, as he idly leafed through
an obscure German science journal and came upon an article by a
Norwegian engineer named Rolf Wideroe. Lawrence couldn’t read
German very well, but one picture caught his eye: the figure showed
a device in which ions at relatively low voltage were accelerated by
cylindrical electrodes of alternating charges. Theoretically, the ions
could be accelerated faster and faster with every cylindrical elec-
trode added to the linear path, until the beam became too diffuse
and scattered into the cylinder walls. Lawrence realized that, rather
16

A big man with big ideas. Even as a young man Ernest
Orlando Lawrence displayed the qualities that made him a
scientific giant: driving enthusiasm, erratic brilliance, the
showmanship of a circus ringleader, and an almost magical ability
to excite wealthy non-scientists into giving him money for his
research projects (LBNL Image Library).
than shooting ions in a linear accelerator, he could use a magnetic
field to make the ions travel in a spiral between the two electrode
poles, gaining kinetic energy with every pass. Thus the idea for the
cyclotron was born.
The Berkeley Radiation Lab (as LBL was known until 1970, when
the word “radiation” became unfashionable), thus began as a tem-
peramental machine in a small building near LeConte Hall. Lawrence
and his team of dedicated graduate students began a series of experi-
ments in consultation with eminent Berkeley theorist J. Robert
Oppenheimer, perfecting successively larger and more powerful cy-
clotrons in order to make discoveries about the atom’s nucleus. The
then-unusual cooperation between theorist and experimentalist was
crucial to the cyclotron’s development, and helped to bring about
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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 took
with 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 radioactive
isotope of carbon by bombarding it with deuterium ions. During the
rest of the decade, the lab became famous for the string of artificial
Many of the physicists on the Berkeley
faculty had leftist sympathies, and some
were literally “card-carrying members”
of the Communist Party.
elements it created with the cyclotron (See this issue, pp. 32-37), in
a series of discoveries which would eventually garner Nobel Prizes
for many of the physicists working there. So even before the war a
new kind of physics had already begun to take shape, in which ex-
perimentalists worked hand-in-hand with theorists, and discoveries
made on “big machines” changed the way theorists imagined the atom.
he exciting events surrounding Lawrence’s cyclotron took place
T against the background of a turbulent time in UC Berkeley’s
political history. The campus’s radical history really began in the
1930’s, with an explosion of student activism. The reason was not
hard to find: the economic trauma of the Great Depression won many
students and faculty over to leftist causes. The phenomenal number
of radical student groups at Berkeley in the 1930’s was a sign of the
times: the National Student League, the Young Communist League,
the Social Problems Club, the Young Trotskyists, the Student League
for Industrial Democracy, theYoung People’s Socialist Club, the Stu-
dent Workers’ Association, the Congress for Student Opinion, the
Progressive Student Forum, the American Federation of Teachers,
and so on.
The turbulent politics of the decade, both on and off the Berkeley
campus, 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” of
the Communist Party. The most famous and influential of the leftist
Berkeley physicists was J. Robert Oppenheimer. As Oppenheimer
was to write on a 1942 security questionnaire with characteristic
flippancy: “I am not a Communist, but I have been a member of just
about every Communist Front organization on theWest Coast.” With
his cultured urbanity and sharp theoretical mind, Oppenheimer was
17

First Successful Cyclotron. Lawrence wowed the scientific
world with this machine, which accelerated a few hydrogen
molecule ions to an energy of 80,000 volts. Lawrence’s
subsequent cyclotrons were the beginning of the era of “big
machine” physics (LBNL Image Library).
something of a cult figure to his graduate students, who mimicked
his 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 back
to haunt him in his later political trials.
Oppenheimer might not have belonged to the Communist party
officially, but he was surrounded by close friends and family with
strong Communist ties. His wife Kitty had previously been mar-
ried to an American Communist, Joe Dallet, who died in Spain
fighting against Franco. Dallet’s wartime friend, Steve Nelson, of-
ten visited Kitty in Berkeley after her first husband’s death, and was
one of the top organizers of the Communist Popular Front in Cali-
fornia. (Nelson’s connections to the physics community would later
rise to implicate him in the “Communist Cell” accused of spying on
Berkeley bomb research.) Physicists, graduate students, and other
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intellectuals often gathered at professors’ houses in the Berkeley
hills for parties where radical political issues were hotly debated.
If we look back to the state of physics research in the 1930’s, it is
understandable why so many of the young Berkeley physicists had
leftist or Communist sympathies. Eminent foreign scientists, flee-
ing Fascism in Germany and Italy, were turning up at Lawrence’s
Radiation Lab bearing tales of persecution and academic suppres-
sion. Closer to home, the Depression meant that there was little
money around for graduate students, many of whom worked for
nothing just to be in the vicinity of Lawrence’s wonderful machines.
The cyclotrons were finicky, tricky devices, often improved more
by experimental, brute-force methods than by elegant calculation,
and the work was a grueling, twenty-four-hour-a-day affair. There
was a dearth of money in physics departments across the country to
hire new professors, so many graduate students simply lingered on
at Berkeley as researchers, hoping something would turn up.
Oppenheimer helped to organize a branch of the Alameda County
Teacher’s Union at Berkeley, and encouraged his students to join.
lthough Oppenheimer exerted a strong leftist influence in Ber
A keley physics, Lawrence, in contrast, could be found on the
other side of the political spectrum. Lawrence did make a point of
declaring that politics would have no place in his lab; but his chief of
personnel, George Everson, whom he hired in the late 1930’s, was
avowedly anti-Communist and anti-New Deal. Everson had what
was sometimes referred to as an “anti-Bohemian” bias in his lab
hirings, which often meant the exclusion of students with East-Coast
Jewish backgrounds.
There is a more explicit link to be made between Lawrence and
right-wing politics. In 1932, Lawrence’s friend and university presi-
dent Robert G. Sproul sponsored Lawrence for membership in the
prestigious San Francisco Bohemian Club. “Bohemian” was a rather
ironic term, given that the group was what Gray Brechin describes
in 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 that
Lawrence befriended two powerful UC Regents: the banker Will-
iam H. Crocker and the Republican lawyer and power-broker, John
Francis Neylan. Both men proved valuable in helping Lawrence
raise money for his cyclotrons. Before his death Crocker gave
Lawrence $75,000 out of his own pocket to build a new Radiation
Lab on the hill, and Neylan became the lab’s representative and
major promoter on the board of UC Regents. (Neylan would gain
notoriety in 1949 as the driving force behind the firing of 31 Berke-
ley professors who refused to sign an anti-Communist loyalty oath).
18

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 accentuated
by Lawrence’s theatrical methods of presenting his results to the
public and to possible investors—as when, in 1930, he unveiled his
4.5-inch cyclotron prototype to the Academy of Sciences, dramati-
Once Communist Russia became an en-
emy of the country, the expression of a
political opinion—even if it was to sup-
port something as seemingly innocuous
as a teachers’ labor union—became a
security risk.
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 radioactive
tracers in the human bloodstream. He would call up volunteers
from the audience and feed them “hot” radiosodium, freshly air-
mailed from the cyclotron; then he would trace the progress of the
chemical in their blood with a clicking Geiger counter.
Lawrence’s showmanship was a necessary part of his science: the
important new thing about his cyclotron physics was that it needed
huge 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 university
alone could provide. This required the involvement of sources of
funding like wealthy philanthropists, who, more often than not, were
successful businessmen with conservative political interests. So—
again, before the war started—big-machine physics was already
aligned with a conservative political element which would not look
favorably on leftist professors.
Lawrence reached the height of his profession with a Nobel Prize
in 1939, gaining with it a million-dollar grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation 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 the
1930’s, the future was powered by miraculous machines, and
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Lawrence’s Jules Verne-like cyclotrons, with their intrepid explo-
rations of the atom’s terra incognita, played the role perfectly. But
the connection between scientist and entrepreneur took on a more
ominous 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 closed
doors.
n 1939, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote a letter to Presi
I dent Roosevelt warning him that the Germans might be research-
ing the use of fission to create an atomic bomb. Roosevelt responded
with the creation of a secret “Uranium Committee,” but the re-
search didn’t really become an urgent need until the attack at Pearl
Harbor in December 1941. In the meantime, work continued at
the 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 a
new element which, calculation suggested, would sustain an atomic
chain reaction in much smaller amounts than uranium. They named
the element after the next planet in the series of astronomically-
named elements: plutonium.
These two elements were to become the explosive centers of the
two bombs produced at Los Alamos, nicknamed “Fat Man” and “Little
Boy.” Lawrence agreed to allow his beloved new cyclotron, then in
construction on a hilltop overlooking campus, to be diverted into
the war effort. The machine was retooled for one primary pur-
pose: the separation of the rare, fissionable isotope U-235 out of
Science, Academia, and the Military. Manhattan Project
director General Leslie R. Groves (left), and legendary U.C.
President Robert Sproul admire Lawrence’s Medal of Merit for
wartime achievement, in 1946 (LBNL Image Library).
19

the more plentiful U-238. Lawrence dubbed his converted cyclo-
tron a “calutron,” in honor of the University of California. The
calutron’s method of uranium separation was known as “electro-
magnetic separation.” Uranium-hexafluoride gas was ionized in an
electric field, producing a beam of gas-ions. The ions were pro-
jected into a vacuum tank, where a 37-inch magnet bent their course
in a loose semi-circle, and the U-235 ions, with their lesser mass
and momentum, separated out in a tight arc. Two containers on the
other end of the field caught the heavy and light streams of ions. In
1943 Lawrence also helped oversee the construction of an enor-
mous U-235 production plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, using the
calutron technology.
Security at the Radiation Lab was tight. Many of the technicians
working on the calutron did not know the reason for their work,
and were mystified by the obsession with collecting the minute
amounts of slimy green “gunk” the machine produced. The army
monitored all of the scientists working at the lab, especially those
with the dangerous knowledge that the lab was working to produce
a 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 who
mistakenly thought they were the target of its surveillance.
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 for
use in atomic bombs (LBNL Image Gallery).
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Collecting Uranium. Schematic diagram of uranium isotope
separation in the calutron. Naturally-occurring uranium is
accelerated through a magnetic field. The lighter, and much
more rare, isotope, U-235 completes a tighter spiral than the
heavier U-238. Lawrence’s team used this method to collect U-
235 for use in the first atomic bombs (LBNL Image Library).
Perhaps the most restrictive element of army security, bemoaned
by every scientist working on the bomb project, was General Leslie
Groves’s notorious idea of “compartmentalization.” Under this
policy, scientists were only allowed to know about the specific
projects they worked on, in order to minimize security leaks. Only
a few very highly-placed officials and scientists had a view of the
whole picture. Oppenheimer—surely influenced by his experi-
ence at the Berkeley cyclotron—finally convinced Groves that com-
partmentalized research was an obstacle to scientific productivity
and creativity. Groves responded with an order to consolidate the
bomb research at Los Alamos, where scientists could freely com-
municate with each other, in virtual quarantine from the outside
world.
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 were
fighting a war against Germany and Japan. But the American Army
took a different view. As General Groves later recalled, “There was
never from about two weeks from the time I took charge of the
Project any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and
the Project was conducted on that basis.” So any scientist with a
history of leftist or Communist sympathies was now under suspi-
cion for espionage connected with Communist Russia. The fact
that Groves selected Oppenheimer to direct Los Alamos was obvi-
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ously a wise choice from a military perspective, given the result of

the appointment—but Groves was later forced to defend his choice
when post-war anti-Communist sentiment turned on
Oppenheimer.

Other Berkeley scientists with leftist leanings fell victim to the war-
time security net. A group of Oppenheimer’s former students, led
by Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, had successfully introduced a union
into the Radiation Lab, as a branch of the Federation of Architects,
Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians. Lieutenant Colonel John
Lansdale, army intelligence chief for all fission work and hardened
anti-Communist, convinced Lawrence that the union members were
a security risk, and Lawrence quietly began firing them. It quickly
became known in the Lab that union membership was a surefire
ticket to expulsion. Once Communist Russia became an enemy of
the country, the expression of a political opinion—even if it was to
support something as seemingly innocuous as a teachers’ labor
union—became a security risk.

The “C” shaped alpha calutron tank, together with its emitters
and collectors on the lower-edge door, was removed in a special
“drydock” from the magnet for recovery of uranium-235 (LBNL
Image Library).
The end of the war did not ease the need felt for security in nuclear
physics research. Russian aggression resulted in the blockading of
Berlin, and Churchill spoke of an ominous “iron curtain” descend-
ing over Eastern Europe. When the shocking news came in 1949
that Russia had successfully detonated an atomic bomb, America
began public trials in search of the scapegoats who had leaked the
secret to the Communists. With its “red” reputation, Berkeley be-
came a target of espionage investigations. In 1949 the California
House Un-American Activities Committee convened a panel to
investigate the “Communist Cell” which had supposedly operated
as a spy ring in Berkeley during the war. (The chairman of the
committee was none other than Richard M. Nixon, who got his
start in politics pursuing California Communists.)

U-235 Receiver. Tiny amounts of “slimy green gunk”-–uranium

235-–accumulated in this collector placed at the U-235 beam’s
end in the calutron (LBNL Image Library).

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along with academics all over peting methods of U-235

the country--out of their ca- production used in the early
reers. A typical example was war years, and its effective-
Lomanitz. Called before the ness compared to other meth-
HUAC committee, Lomanitz ods was highly questionable.
was eventually cleared of the es- The calutron produced only
pionage charges, but the Com- very tiny amounts of U-235,
munist taint stuck with him, and and its beams were difficult to
he was asked to resign from the focus. Most historians agree
post-war position he held at Fisk that it was only Lawrence’s
University in Tennessee. bullish enthusiasm that con-
Lomanitz’s subsequent occupa- vinced the army to go with his
tions included roof tarring, tree method. In 1954, General
trimming, loading barley bags, Groves testified that the pro-
and bottling hair oil. While cess of electromagnetic sepa-
holding these jobs the ex-physi- ration was relatively unim-
cist was constantly hounded by portant in the American pro-
the FBI, who questioned all of duction of uranium. This war
his coworkers and made it hard secret, it seems, was more
for him to stay employed. useful to the military in mis-
History’s Loser. Oppenheimer (left), with physicist Enrico Fermi (center), directing the Russians than in
et the HUAC investigation and Ernest O. Lawrence. Post-war red purges essentially erased actually creating the bomb.
Y Oppenheimer’s scientific legacy. His leftist leanings and connections to
was not completely fruit- workers unions and other organizations were easy fodder for anti-
less. There was, it turned out, a communists’ accusations (LBNL Image Library). A final twist on the subject of
real spy working in the Berke- atomic espionage at Berkeley
ley cyclotron during the war. The committee referred to him by comes out of very recent revelations. In their 1999 book Venona:
the dramatic name, “Scientist X.” According to the published re- Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, John Earl Hynes and Harvey
ports of the HUAC hearings, in March 1943 Scientist X contacted Klehr describe their findings in the shadowy CIA files known as the
Steve Nelson, a local organizer of the Communist Popular Front “Venona Project.” Only declassified in 1995, these files consist of
organization, and late one night went to Nelson’s home bearing a more than 3,000 coded cables sent from KGB operatives in America
complicated formula. FBI men lurking in the bushes watched as to Communist headquarters in Moscow. The Venona project de-
Nelson copied the formula so that it could be returned to the Ra- coded the cables between 1943 and 1946, and much of the top-
diation Lab in the morning. Days later, Nelson contacted the Soviet secret material was subsequently used to pursue American Com-
Vice Consul in San Francisco, and arranged to meet with him in a munist spies. Hynes and Klehr make a surprising assertion: that the
park on the grounds of St. Francis Hospital. There Nelson trans- Communist party in America was not merely ideological, but also
ferred a package to the Vice Consul, and within a few days Nelson active in espionage for the Soviet Union. Among other groups, the
had a visit from a Russian diplomat at the Washington Embassy, who Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians
paid him “ten bills of unknown denomination.” The identity of Sci- (FAECT) was a cover for Soviet agents—spearheaded by Steve
entist X was later revealed to be another of Oppenheimer’s former Nelson—hoping to gain access to bomb secrets. So the firing of
students, Joseph Weinberg. members of the union at the Berkeley lab was actually more than
just anti-left prejudice. According to Hynes and Klehr, because of
If all of Weinberg’s activities were carried out in full view of FBI the Venona information, a White House directive ordered the na-
binoculars, one wonders why he was never arrested, nor his activi- tional president of the FAECT to cease organizing in the Berkeley
ties halted during the war. Scientific historian Nuel Pharr Davis Radiation Lab for the duration of the war.
speculates that army security was using Weinberg to manipulate the
flow of information to the Russians. The fact of the matter was, the The work of Hynes and Klehr is useful in tempering the story of
electromagnetic separation method was only one of several com- leftist persecution that is usually told about the post-war years. But
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the obsession with espionage and secrecy surrounding the bomb
project—both in the 1940’s and today—is somewhat mislead-
ing. It obscures the larger fact that no
matter what political intrigues were go- The U.S. wanted to jealously hold onto chines translated into a post-war
ing on at the time, the Soviet Union
would have developed the bomb re-
its secret, and when Russia got the fanaticism for bigger and bigger
gardless, because the technology was bomb, it was assumed that leaky sci- campaigner for research into the
based on fundamentals of nuclear sci- entists were to blame.
ence which no amount of U.S. secrecy
could have hidden. Historians have designated this fact
“complementarity,” and its basic premise is that “if we could figure
it out, so could they.” In other words, Soviet atomic espionage in
America didn’t create their bomb; it only helped them get the
bomb faster. Even without results gained from spying, Soviets
could have used machines like Lawrence’s cyclotron to eventually
discover the nuclear physics necessary to create a bomb. Wartime
physicists like Leo Szilard and Hans Bethe realized this crucial fact,
and supported the establishment of an international community
of scientists that would safely oversee the sharing of bomb tech-
nology in an open, transparent, and honest fashion. But such ideas
were quickly tabled in the atmosphere of suspicion and hysteria
that took hold of the country after the war. The U.S. wanted to
jealously hold onto its secret, and when Russia got the bomb, it
was assumed that leaky scientists were to blame.
The cloud of suspicion hung most heavily around Oppenheimer
himself. 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 clearance
was revoked after a hearing in 1954. The story comes full circle
when we learn that Lawrence, once Oppenheimer’s friend, was
then prepared to testify against him, and was only prevented
from attending the hearing by a serious stomach ailment. What
had caused the cyclotroneer’s new animosity? At stake was the
future direction of physics research: Lawrence’s pre-war enthusi-
asm for bigger and bigger ma-
bombs. He was an energetic
“Super,” a thermonuclear device
which promised to be many
thousands of times more powerful than the existing bomb.
Oppenheimer, on the other hand, was tentative about the need for
Super research, stung by doubts about the ethics of bomb devel-
opment.
Lawrence was ready to interpret Oppenheimer’s opposition as a
possible sign of disloyalty—though, conveniently enough, once
Oppenheimer was removed from his important position with
the Atomic Energy Commission, there was nothing stopping
Lawrence’s ambitions for the new bomb research. Lawrence
easily raised the money for a new weapons research laboratory
near Berkeley, the Livermore Lab, which began work after 1952
under the directorship of Edward Teller—the man whose testi-
mony most damningly declared Oppenheimer to be a security
risk at the 1954 trial. It’s not really surprising that, as Brechin
Gray points out, Oppenheimer’s legacy was virtually effaced at
Berkeley, his portrait conspicuously absent from the “Gallery of
Greats” in the Lawrence Hall of Science. After all, the victors
get to write history. As it was before the war, once again the
interests of money and political power convened to influence
the development of scientific research. The result of twenty years
of accumulated developments in politicized physics was that
Oppenheimer came out on the losing end.

Learn how to write science for a general audience.

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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

Eisner Prize-winning artist Susannah Hays creates photograms (light drawings) by passing light through antique
bottles. 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 for
Hays, Assistant Professor John Corzine, O.D. of the School of Optometry, and Vision Science graduate student Scott
Fitz, O.D., to meet and discuss the scientific how and whys of Hays’ work. Excerpts from their discussions follow.

usannah Hays: Just so you know how I made this image:

S 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 what
we usually use to enlarge negatives in, so it almost looks like a
microscope. . . . In photography, this image is called a photogram,
because there’s no camera involved. It’s a light drawing. The
image 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 little
lenses.

JC: But I wonder about the space between the circles. Is it acting
to create the hexagonal pattern? Because really, the honeycomb
could be refracted light from the space between the circles. The
spaces between the circles do form hexagonal patterns.

The focus of the discussion is the photogram shown above (and
on our cover). The bottle, which dates back to the Depression
era, is made of clear glass embossed with a simple pattern of
closely-packed circles. During the course of the discussion, the
participants carried out a simple experiment: They passed a beam
of light through the bottle used to make the photogram, creating
a projection on a tabletop.
SH: So you’re saying that it’s recording the shape around the
circles?
JC: Yes. And the centers of the hexagons...these little splotchy,
dark spots, are the light coming through the center part of each
circle. Then these dark lines [forming the honeycomb pattern]
are coming from the spaces in between the circles. Somehow
those spaces are focusing the light into hexagonal patterns.

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SH: So that’s the honeycomb form, but are we seeing salts and
silica 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 is
lots of fine detail in there—all the little radial striations.
SH: All of this dotting suggests there’s something in there that
we can’t see, something that is actually opaque, something that
blocks 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.
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 raffia
around the bottom, that people use to hold candles. The glass
is 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 looking
at 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 and
therefore transmits little light.

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 a
water strider—those little insects that glide on water? They leave
a shadow on the water because their foot is causing an indentation
on the surface of the water, so that light gets bent away. They’re
changing the shape of the water right there, so light is getting
bent. These light shadows don’t necessarily mean there’s some-
thing opaque that’s blocking the light from getting through. It
could 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 is
getting through it—rather than picking up some molecular or
atomic qualities of the material itself.

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

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

BSR: In the photogram, you do see some of the circles from the
bottom surface of the bottle.
SH: Right, and that would be because the bottle is in direct
contact with the paper; some circles are directly recorded,
whereas others are diffuse. They come out like a kiwi or sort of
like a fruit with lines.
(continued page 31)
Above:
SH: These are Ball Atlas jars used for canning. The letters are
on the top surface of the bottle, so they appear diffuse.
And all of this dotting suggests that there’s something in there
that we can’t see that is actually opaque, something that blocks
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.

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SF: You think these are all clear bottles, but they’ve got these amazing differential patterns. I’d be interested in
what 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 or
lines. In this image, the dark edges inside the letters are the focal lines of the cylindrical lenses, where intense light was
focused onto the photo paper.
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SF: Now I see that when you have the light directly over one of
the circle lenses and you’re focusing its image on the table, you
get a nice spherical image. And the neighboring circles are just
wiped out.
BSR: So that splotchy pattern inside the honeycomb is just the
distortion of those little circle lenses?
JC: Yes, the light is getting bent away. If you have these rays that
are all coming through this complex surface, they’re all going in
different skewed directions. And depending on where you put
your 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 causing
these refractive patterns. We should try and say something about
this. The idea that an artist would never have a scientific explana-
tion, largely for what’s occurring, interests me. I like the poetry
of all that, and how we can begin to explain phenomena. It is
almost enough that it’s beautiful. . . but so many people wonder,
and have questions about it.
JC: Understanding the process by which the images are generated
could help, in terms of thinking of new things to try. But you’re
right, you don’t have to understand it to appreciate it.
SH: It sort of shows a character, like if a bottle could speak. I
haven’t done any thing to manipulate it. I want to see how much
the bottle can say about itself.
JC: It’s the way light plays through it…it’s like light is the voice
for it.
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 was
completely 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 get
these 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 beneath
the dirty bottle is more uniformly exposed.
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In the Artist’s Words:
The process of my engagement is investigative and
involves looking for the essential qualities of specific
“things,” seeing the immediacy of their potential, and
the relationships between essence and form.
Without use of a camera, the photogram process al-
lows the object to be recorded in and of itself, through
the introduction of light. This way of working often
volunteers a deeper point of reference to my question
concerning the primordial nature of things. In the
Empty Bottle Series, the photograms revealed details
of visible and invisible, formed and formless matter,
challenging my initial, superficial understanding of
these objects as a whole.
One of the intriguing aspects of working with glass is
that it appears to have a direct affinity with what we
call Photography or Light Drawing. When the bottles
are brought into direct contact with the photographic
paper, a short light exposure makes visible how light
refracts around the inherent qualities of salt, water
and 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 to
one another. Through the capture of chemical and
physical processes, the basis of the poetic is revealed.
The bottle’s “soul” and body appear simultaneously.
Susannah Hays received her MFA in photography
from the San Francisco Art Institute and is currently
represented by Scott Nichols Gallery. She is an artist-
in-residence at Landmark, a site in the Sunnyside
district of San Francisco, and is completing her thesis,
“Between Cedar & Vine,” in Visual Studies at the
College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley.
All images appear courtesy of:
Scott Nichols Gallery
49 Geary, 4th floor
San Francisco CA 94108
© Susannah Hays 1998
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An Elementary Problem: Artificial Atoms,

Nobel Prizes, and Your Smoke-Detector
Delphine Farmer
n 1941, Edwin McMillan and Glenn Seaborg discovered the atom of the new elements (and earlier ones as well) were named for

I that 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 profitable
technologies. 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 medical
diagnostic technologies, and even the humble yet life-saving
smoke 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 of
interest in radiochemistry, spurred by the hope of finding or
making new elements with unique and useful properties. Many
the places they were found or mined: gallium was identified in
Gallia (Latin for France), germanium was found in Germany,
yttrium was mined inYtterby, 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 discovery
of the artificial transuranium elements by the 1940s and win-
ning Nobel Prizes for their work. Since then, the synthesis of
new 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 Darmstadt
in 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 the
elements 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 and
mass 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 the
atom. Elements in the same column of the table (called groups, or families) have a conserved number of
electrons, each in a slightly different-shaped outer, or valence, shell. Elements in the same row, or period, of the
Periodic 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, called
isotopes. These forms have essentially identical structure, differing only in the number of neutrons contained by
the atom. Certain isotopes are stable, while others--the radioisotopes--are not. Some elements, notably the
artificial 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 several
additions to the Table, including plutonium and neptunium. Seaborg’s name now appears alongside
all the elements he helped discover. Element 106 is named seaborgium (LBNL Image Library).

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Glenn Seaborg adjusts a Geiger counter during a search for
plutonium. He looked a lot more excited when he finally found
the first transuranium element (LBNL Image Library)
H ow did it all begin? In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman
in Berlin developed a technique of fission by means of neu-
trons. By bombarding a nucleus with neutrons, these visionaries
were able to make a nucleus so unstable that it flew apart with great
energy. In 1939, news of this discovery reached UC Berkeley,
prompting Edwin McMillan, a young physicist, to perform what he
later described as “an experiment of a very simple kind.”
McMillan was interested in measuring the range of fission products
as nuclei flew apart. To do this, he layered sheets of aluminium foil
around a thin layer of uranium oxide. McMillan then shot acceler-
ated deuterons (deuterium nuclei each composed of one neutron and
one proton) at the uranium oxide, causing the products of radioactive
fission to fly into the aluminium sheets. By analyzing the aluminium
for radioactivity sheet by sheet, McMillan was able to determine where
the fission products stopped, and thus their distance travelled.
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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 uranium
isotope (U239), and second, the resulting transformation to a new
and heavier element. This new and heavier element—discovered
by 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 a
beta-particle and excess energy from an antinuetrino. This trans-
formed the U239 into what McMillan first called element 93. This
atom behaved in a very unexpected way. Periodic theory dictated
that elements in a column of the periodic table would have similar
properties, due to the similarity of their electron configurations.
Thus McMillan and chemist Emilio Segre thought that element 93
should behave like rhenium, another element in its column.
Instead, Segre found the behavior to be more consistent with that
of 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 a
reduced state, with more electrons, the fission product behaved like
a rare earth element. In an oxidized state, with fewer electrons, it
did not. At this point, McMillan began examining the decay pro-
cesses of the fission products, starting with a chemical isolation of
the newly created element 93.
n 1940, Glenn Seaborg entered the game. Seaborg was a chem
I ist, 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 this
alpha particle accumulation was contamination by uranium, which
produces alpha-decay particles. But an analysis of alpha-decay par-
ticle path lengths and range soon ruled out that possibility. This
suggested that a distinct alpha-producing element was being formed
from element 93.
Then, one night in February 1941, Seaborg and his collaborators re-
alized that something interesting was going on. Upon bombarding
uranium with deuterons, he was getting McMillan’s element with 93
protons. Element 93 then underwent beta-decay to form a new ele-
ment with 94 protons. Element 94 was relatively stable, but could
undergo alpha-decay, producing the alpha particles originally observed:
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 feature

on the subsequent isolation of heavy plutonium. The group of young

scientists, notably including Stanley G. Thompson, developed an
U238 + 1H2 ➔ 93Np238 + 2n
92 isolation procedure for 239Pu.
93
Np238 ➔ 94Pu238 + β− particles.
n the late fall of 1944, Seaborg began bombarding plutonium with
94
Pu238 ➔ α particles.
b
Ineutrons, leading to the formation of the next transuranium ele-
ments, starting with americium:
(The symbol aX indicates an atom of an element with symbol X that has a pro-
tons and an atomic weight of b. 92U238, for example means an atom of uranium,
U, that has 92 protons and an atomic weight of 238, and thus 146 neutrons.)
Pu239 + n ➔ Pu240 + γ
Hence, while McMillan is credited with discovering element 93, Pu240 + n ➔ Pu241 + γ
Seaborg is credited with identifying element 94. By this time, the Pu241 ➔ β- + 95Am241
two new elements had not been completely characterized, but names
were needed. McMillan suggested “neptunium” for element 93, as
the element follows uranium in the same way that the planet Nep- The new element americium (Am) had 95 protons, a 475-year half-
tune follows Uranus. Following suit, Seaborg and his graduate stu- life, and underwent alpha decay. Not only had Seaborg identified
dent, ArthurWahl, suggested “plutonium” for element 94. Of course, the element now used in most household smoke detectors, but he
there is now some debate over whether or not Pluto is a planet, but it
is unlikely that the name for element 94 will ever be changed.

Seaborg’s discovery that plutonium could be created by bombarding

a 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 new
elements 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 the
previously discovered 238Pu. 239Pu, the heavier isotope, released vast
amounts of energy in nuclear fission upon being bombarded with
slow neutrons. Seaborg and his colleagues realized 239Pu could be
used 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 of
U235 in natural uranium. Enrico Fermi and his co-workers had dem-
onstrated this technique in December 1942. Excess neutrons would
be absorbed by U238, which would then decay to form 239Pu:

U235 + n ➔ fission products + energy + neutrons

92
U238 + n ➔ 92U239 ➔ β- + 92Np239 ➔ 94Pu239

At this point, Seaborg and his colleagues moved from UC Berkeley Ed McMillan recreating his search for neptunium for a lab
to the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago to work photographer. He wore a tie to school that day.
(LBNL Image Library)

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had also produced curium following bombardment of americium

by neutrons:
Am241 + n ➔ Am242 + β− + γ

Fritz Strassmann (left), Lise Meitner, and Otto Hahn, 1956, in
Mainz, Germany. Strassman and Hahn invented the technique
of fission by neutron bombardment. The most recently named
element, number 109, is the only one named for a woman. It’s
called meitnerium (LBNL Image Library).
95
Am242 ➔ 96Cm242 + β−
In his 1951 Nobel acceptance speech, Seaborg commented that the
chemical properties of these two new elements, americium and
curium, were so consistent with expectation that they were almost
boring. Based on their location on the periodic table, one would
expect americium and curium to be very similar, both to each other
and to all the rare earth elements. However, this expectation proved
problematic when it was discovered that the two new elements were
nearly impossible to isolate from each other and from the other
rare earths. As actinides, the outermost, or valence, shell electron
configuration was identical for both elements and their initial reac-
tants. Thus the elements had similar chemical properties, such as
solubility and reactivity with other chemicals, making standard sepa-
ration on the basis of these properties difficult.

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 occurring
unstable elements had been discovered as well—uranium, the largest naturally occurring element, in 1789 and
thorium in 1828. Soon afterward, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered another naturally occurring unstable
element, radium, while investigating the process of radioactive decay. The idea of extending the periodic table
by 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 nucleus
with more protons than those of previously discovered elements. However, for heavy elements this becomes
difficult, as the addition of protons requires significantly more neutrons to maintain even slightly stable nuclei. The
very existence of artificial elements has raised fundamental questions about our knowledge of atomic structure
and the system of the periodic table. At the bottom of the periodic table, there are two rows each of fourteen
artificial elements—the lanthanide and actinide series. The elements of these two series are often referred to as
the rare earth elements, and were first discovered in the 1930s in Sweden. Interestingly, all the elements in the
upper 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, as
atomic 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 in
inner shells. Thus the outer shell configuration, which determines the element’s chemical properties, remains the
same, and the members of the lanthanide series retain similar properties and behavior. The discovery of the
lanthanide series marked a turning point in the understanding of the system of the periodic table. The work of
Seaborg and McMillan later showed that the actinide series behaves similarly.

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The isolation of curium and americium gave the research group so Occupational Hazards of
many problems that the names “pandemonium” and “delirium” were a World Famous Scientist
proposed for the two elements.However, success was finally achieved
when the elements were isolated and characterized. Element 95 Nobel Prize-winning
was named americium after the Americas and by analogy to its ho- scientist Glenn Seaborg
mologue europium (63), named after the continent of Europe. El- was enjoying a swim in
ement 96 was named curium after pioneering radiochemists Pierre Berkeley’s University
and Marie Curie. Club pool, when he was
summoned directly from
the clear chlorinated
Between 1940 and 1941, McMillan was obliged to give up his re- waters to receive a
search in nuclear science to develop wartime radar and sonar equip- telephone call from
ment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His studies at President Johnson. At
MIT led to the development of the synchrotron and the syncho- this time it was an
cyclotron, two instruments that allow particles to be accelerated to exclusively male club
extremely high energies. From 1942 to 1945, McMillan, like many and members frequently
swam nude. “I didn’t
of the era’s great physicists and chemists, was engaged in national have time to even grab
defense research at the Manhattan District of Los Alamos. In 1946, a towel because I knew
McMillan returned to UC Berkeley as a professor of physics. whatever he wanted I’d have to react right away. He came
up with some kind of proposal I knew wouldn’t be feasible,
After World War II, Seaborg also returned to UC Berkeley, as a pro- but if I didn’t talk him out of it right then I’d be in trouble...
fessor of chemistry. Once there, he continued to assist other Berke- then, of course, I went back and continued my swim.”
ley and LBL chemists in the discovery of berkelium in 1949 (named
Cartoon by Herb Stansbury (LBNL)
for the city in which the work was done, in the same way that its rare
earth homologue, terbium, had been named after the Swedish town
ofYtterby). The Berkeley group also discovered californium ( 98) in nal discovery team, official recognition must await independent
1950, named in honor of both the university and the state. confirmation of the discovery by the scientific community. The
naming of elements has resulted in numerous arguments between
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Seaborg as the Chair- the Germans, Russians, and Americans, as the discovery of ever-
man of the Atomic Energy Commission—a position Seaborg contin- bigger elements became a matter of national pride at the height of
ued to hold under the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Seaborg the Cold War.
stepped down from the post in 1971and returned to his research at
LBL and UC Berkeley. He was an active researcher, educator, and For example, element 104 was first identified in 1964 by Russian
civil servant until his death in February 1999. scientists in Dubna, who named it “kurtchatoviu” (Ku), in honor
of a Russian physicist. The Berkeley scientists who had been si-
Despite McMillan’s protestations that he was not a chemist, he and multaneously working on the same element named it “rutherfor-
Glenn Seaborg received the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their dium” (Ru) in honor of Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand-born
discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements. UC Ber- physicist who made his discoveries in England and Canada. Al-
keley has since continued at the forefront of radiochemistry, investi- though the Dubna group was the the first to announce element
gating the synthesis and use of radionuclides and producing outstand- 104, they had difficulty in distinguishing between different iso-
ing research in conjunction with LBL. topes––a feat that was successfully accomplished by the Berkeley
group in 1969. The two groups, of course, laid claims to different
iven the great effort required to create, isolate, and character-
G ize a new element, it seems only fitting that research
teams should be able to name their discoveries themselves. While
names, with the result that the International Union of Pure and
Applied Physics has chosen a neutral and temporary name,
“unnilqadium.”
choosing a name for a new element is the prerogative of the origi- (continued on next page)

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Let’s Get Physical
Berkeley’s new approach to introductory physics gets students excited
– and it helps them learn
Colin McCormick
T’S 8 o’clock on a Tuesday morning. 51 Evans Hall is filling up.
I 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 of
two-foot long metal rods and iron clamps. “Well, it’s swordfighting
today,” he announces, earning appreciative chuckles from his seven-
teen Physics 7A students.
As Vale hands out eight-page lab worksheets on rotational inertia
and torque, the students divide themselves into groups of twos and
threes to tackle the problems with their rods and clamps. The room
gets noisy as students talk and argue. One student even pulls off a
shoe so that his group can swing rods from the shoelaces to test
their worksheet answers. Vale cruises from group to group, an-
swering questions, checking on progress, and taking note of what
needs further explanation. For a few minutes he interrupts the
students’ work to give a mini-lecture on the moment of inertia, the
rotational analogue of mass, but the quiet is quickly broken by the
chatter of students resuming discussions and experiments. By the
end of the two-hour class, as the students file out and hand Vale
their 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. Anyone
who taught these required introductory courses for science and
engineering majors before 1996, however, might have difficulty
recognizing 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 would
run the lab section, during which students did standard
“cookbook”style experiments, and prepared formal reports of their
methods and procedures. Lab and discussion sections were not
closely coordinated with the week’s lectures.
In the fall of 1994, however, Dr. Bruce Birkett, a lecturer in the
Physics Department, learned an important lesson about student
participation and extended class time when he took over teaching
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the Department’s “Intensive Discussion Sections” (IDSs). These
special sections, created by Cal physics PhD Dr. Andy Elby, pro-
vided motivated Physics 7A students with the option of two extra
discussion 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 the
1994-1995 school year, and says the experience was “a major rev-
elation. Instead of watching me solve physics problems, students
were working through the material for themselves. I was watch-
ing them make the material their own.” Pretty soon, the word was
out that signing up for an IDS was the first step toward doing well
in Physics 7A, and by Spring 1995, the program had over forty
students voluntarily enrolled.
“Instead of watching me solve phys-
ics problems, students were working
through the material for themselves.
I was watching them make the mate-
rial their own.”
Such student enthusiasm led Birkett to think about reforms for the
entire 7A course structure. In addition, he had seen that many of
the 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 GSIs
for 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 lab
experiments several weeks before or after the topic was presented
in lecture.
38

An opportunity for change came in 1996, when a team led by Dean
of Physical Sciences P. Buford Price won a $200,000 grant from the
National Science Foundation to implement cross-campus under-
graduate teaching reforms. In collaboration with the Chemistry
and 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 Miles
Chen designed an innovative set of
worksheets and teaching notes to
accompany the revamped course.
The changes were implemented for
Physics 7A in Fall 1996, and Physics
7B 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 of
lecture per week (as before) and two
2-hour DL sections, led by the same
GSI and with the same group of
about twenty students. One DL sec-
tion in four is used for a lab, and the
topics are closely integrated with the
material in the lecture. Section time Close contact with teachers engages students and helps them plans and insightful worksheets—
is primarily devoted to group work, master complex concepts. (Photograph courtesy of Noah Berger.) just make it so much easier.”
with students collaboratively an-
swering questions on worksheets as the GSI moves between groups
to help with problems and check on progress.
The consolidation of discussion and lab sections and the student
participation that it encourages has had a profound impact on the
teaching of physics at UC Berkeley. “When I was taught this mate-
rial as an undergraduate,” says former Physics 7B GSI Andreas
Birkedal-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 periods
of time.”
Students are also able to pursue specific issues or points raised in
the lab at their very next section meeting with their GSI, without
having to wait two weeks for the following lab. “The hope was that
we’d create a way for students to dig in and explore the material for
themselves,” Birkett explains. “Introductory physics is tough! But
it’s my firm belief that through the right activities, and with good
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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 introduction
of the DL format. Professors teaching Physics 7A and 7B also have
plenty of anecdotal evidence that
students in the DL format classes do
better on in-class exams than stu-
dents from years past who took
comparable tests. So what precisely
is it about the new course structure
that translates into improved student
performance? Some suggest that the
key is the way in which the new
course structure enables instructors
to do more for their students. “Even
if you had an excellent teacher in the
traditional format,” notes former
Physics 7B GSI Loraine Lundquist,
“[he or she] would not be able to do
as much in depth exploration of con-
cepts as the new format allows. The
added time in class and the teacher
support structure—i.e., the lesson
Others point out that the mobility and one-on-one interactions of
the instructor “cruising” the classroom provide critical real-time
feedback for the teaching process, allowing the GSI to interrupt the
group work to deliver a mini-lecture, if it becomes apparent that
many students are having difficulty with the same point. “I get to
know right away if students are ‘getting it’ or not,” says Vale. “In the
traditional format, you might talk for an hour and never know if
anyone 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 with
peers on conceptual questions has also helped teach students how
to 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 right
answers but can’t tell you in English why they’re right.”
39
 the university
Birkett is quick to explain that worksheets and teaching notes aren’t
enough: “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, the
Department’s graduate pedagogy course. The course is required
for first-time GSIs, and it allows GSIs to share observations and
comments. These can be quite specific, since everyone teaches from
the same worksheets and teaching notes. First-time 7A and 7B GSIs
also 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 student
at Cal, learn material that is hard for you?” and “What do you want
your students to do to help them learn physics for themselves?” His
goal is to help students in his courses develop the same habits as
successful graduate students at UC Berkeley. “No teacher can make
a student learn anything. Indeed, I read a quote recently that ‘the
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 that
the format encourages students to do a better job of helping them-
selves learn. “In-class participation is really high,” says Vale. “Some
of the kids are real hams who are ecstatic to finally have a teacher
who actually wants them to talk in class.” Instructors also report
surprisingly high attendance for Physics 7A and 7B. “[My students]
kept coming to 7A discussion section throughout the term, whereas
in the other classes they drifted away as the semester went on,” says
former GSI Robin Blume-Kahout.
Vale sums it all up dramatically: “My 8 a.m. section attendance is
about 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: advertise@uclink.berkeley.edu
to find out how.
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An Elementary Problem (cont. from page 37)
Element 105 has a similarly awkward history. While it was first
announced by the Dubna scientists in 1970, the Berkeley group
claimed to have identified it a year earlier. The Soviet group had
not 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 for
Research in Dubna, Russia. Although the name “hahnium” is still
used by some, the rules for naming new elements prevent it from
ever being officially appropriated into the periodic table. In any
case, as the the Russian and American groups raced to claim new
elements, their analytical and synthetic techniques improved. Many
of the techniques they developed are now widely used in the field
of 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 in
nuclear chemistry is recognized worldwide. Meitner is the only
woman to occupy her own square on the periodic table; curium
was named for the husband-and-wife team of Pierre and Marie
Curie.
Those who have paid close attention to more recent versions of
the periodic table may have noticed that element 106 has acquired
a new name—seaborgium. In 1994, seaborgium was named after
Glenn Seaborg, the first living person to have an element named
in his honor. The element was made by a team of scientists at LBL
and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Ken-
neth Hulet and Albert Ghiorso. Seaborgium has a half-life of less
than 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 bestowed
upon 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 proton
added, 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 satisfied
with 112 identified elements, and 109 of those elements named.
But while the names may endure for generations to come, the
newest elements tend to last only a few moments before decaying
away towards stability.
40
 the back page

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 perks
of graduate student life is getting to hear world-famous scientists say some very bizarre things. Here’s a sample of what some
of our staff heard while attending recent colloquia.

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

Freeman Dyson
Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Author of Infinite in All Directions
(March 7, 2001)

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

Phillip E. Johnson
Professor Emeritus, Boalt College of Law, UC Berkeley
Author of Darwin on Trial
(March 15, 2001)

“Graduate students are the pluripotent stem cells of biology. Faculty are. . . well,
basically terminally differentiated. . . the only options left for them are apoptosis “We have lunatics and idiots in
and necrosis.” Britain too, but they don’t get into
power.”

Roger Tsien Richard Dawkins

Professor of Pharmacology and of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSD Author of The Selfish Gene
(March 20, 2001) and The Blind Watchmaker
(April 4, 2001)

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