Grasping Mysteries Read online

  Allan, his sister, and his mother go to the backyard.

  Televisions in neighbors’ houses glow faintly blue.

  Allan looks up. I wish the moon was round and yellow tonight.

  They chose to land when the moon was a crescent,

  so the sun will rise over them, Vera says. The long morning

  shadows will help the astronauts find their way around.

  I bet they wish it were brighter, Allan says.

  What if they get lost in dark matter?

  Dark matter is much farther away, Judy says.

  No one can see it.

  Then how do you know it’s there? he asks.

  Nobody knows for sure. For now it’s a theory,

  an idea with “maybe” in it, Vera says.

  A lot of science starts out that way, until someone finds proof.

  Our best telescopes can’t spot dark matter,

  but we might see how it changes what’s around it.

  I hate dark matter. I like rocks.

  Allan sprints back into the house.

  I’m afraid there are many who’d agree with him, Vera says.

  A lot of people don’t like what can’t be seen.

  But you always root for underdogs.

  Judy steps closer to her mother, says,

  Maybe I’ll study astronomy in college.

  There’s a lot of math in those classes, Vera says.

  I remember when you complained about math every night.

  It can be hard. But it’s cool when everything

  becomes clear, Judy says. And I have people to help.

  I still need help, but I have different questions.

  None of us work alone. Vera touches her shoulder.

  I hope you find support in college.

  You have more choices of where to go than I did.

  Do you think I could get into Princeton? Judy asks.

  This year they’re admitting women for the first time.

  I believe in you. I’ll be proud wherever you go.

  Vera is still a little angry

  that the university rejected her application,

  though everything turned out all right. Now let’s go inside

  and see what’s happening on the moon.

  Portraits

  After Judy collects a few college acceptances,

  Vera goes with her to tour Princeton University,

  which just opened to women. The young tour guide

  can’t meet female eyes as he leads a group down

  corridors decorated with portraits of men.

  Their lips look pinched with disapproval,

  like those of a man who must be an alumnus

  visiting with his son.

  He wears a button that says BRING BACK THE OLD PRINCETON.

  Apparently enough share the sentiment

  for someone to make such buttons. Heading back

  to the car, Judy asks,

  Mom, will you be disappointed if I don’t go here?

  No. It’s one thing to admit young women,

  another to make them feel welcome.

  I don’t advise anyone to join a department

  where there aren’t any women professors. Vera pauses.

  I’m glad you want to study astronomy. But it can be hard.

  Not many people will understand your work.

  I feel kind of sorry for them. Don’t you? Judy tilts her head.

  Discovery

  Week after week, month after month, year after year,

  Vera looks beyond Andromeda to other spiral galaxies,

  measures red shifts and blue shifts, wondering

  if the stars in them also move at the same speed.

  She looks at twenty more spiral galaxies, forty, then sixty,

  star field by star field, including bright and dim galaxies,

  and ones with loose or tight spirals.

  She determines the speed of star after star after star

  as each orbits its galaxy’s bright core,

  works out the distances, sets numbers on graphs.

  The results come out the same,

  enough so that she can generalize from her examples.

  Why don’t the more distant stars slow down?

  What keeps them from spinning off into the vast beyond?

  Vera believes that’s due

  to the gravitational pull of dark matter.

  Scientists have speculated that dark matter,

  which can’t be seen, may be shaping the universe,

  but no one has found proof it exists. Until now.

  Evidence shines from her math.

  Two A.M.

  Vera wanders past a closet where old sandbox toys

  mix with sneakers, rubber boots that probably fit nobody,

  hammers, split rocks, a jump rope with silver bells

  on the handles, butterfly nets

  made from bent coat hangers, sticks, and netting.

  In the dining room her collection of old globes

  show changes in what’s known of earth and sky.

  It’s two o’clock in the morning, but she goes upstairs

  and wakes up Bob. He’s more handsome than ever

  with silver streaking his black hair. She says,

  I found evidence of dark matter.

  Enough to publish and persuade skeptics.

  I always believed. Bob throws back the covers.

  What has it been, fifteen years of work?

  What kind of celebration can measure up to that?

  None. That’s why one had better love her work.

  Bob gets out of bed, heads to the kitchen,

  takes a tub of ice cream from the freezer and two spoons

  from a cluttered drawer. Vera turns off all the lights.

  They sit on the porch steps,

  eating while looking up at the sky.

  After all those years of long late nights,

  she understands that most of the universe

  is made of dark matter. Most of the universe is unknown.

  Like the necessary pulse between notes of music,

  the darkness between stars is as important as the stars.

  Mother and Daughter

  AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS, 1986

  Vera visits Judy, who just won an award

  for teaching in the astronomy department

  at the University of Massachusetts.

  After Judy puts her young daughter to bed,

  she asks Vera about the response to her discovery.

  Flat lines show up in galaxy after galaxy, so not many argue

  with the evidence, Vera says. But some find it hard to believe

  that darkness between stars has a force.

  Now tell me about your work.

  Judy describes her research on how stars form

  in spiral galaxies. She reminisces about college,

  when she studied with the three other women

  in her physics class. One night we talked about growing up

  and realized that all of us had fathers who were physicists.

  I was the only one whose mother also loved math and science.

  But the point is, girls shouldn’t have to have relatives

  in the field to be encouraged. Too many girls still drop out.

  I often thought my old friend Jane would have been happier

  if she’d kept on with math. When people ask me

  how I worked past the discouragement, I say they should ask

  women like Jane, who couldn’t. I was lucky, but…

  Mom, you weren’t just lucky. I remember

  you talking about that high school teacher

  who told you to stay away from science

  and that advice to make a career in astronomical painting.

  We have to just laugh off some things, Vera says.

  In my freshman seminar, the professor asked me to make the tea.

  That garbage still goes on, and not everybody can ignore it.


  Mom, you showed the existence of dark matter!

  Where’s your Nobel Prize? I know not everyone

  can win, but it would make a difference

  if more women were on awards committees.

  When are you going to talk about that in public?

  I don’t want to discourage any girl from science.

  I know. But unfair things happen.

  And we need to know we’re not alone.

  The Front Door

  Vera gives talks at universities and at the Cosmos Club

  in Washington, DC, where gentlemen distinguished

  in art, literature, science, or public service gather.

  When told women must enter the private club

  through the side door, Vera catches her breath,

  but walks to her place behind the podium. She explains

  how dark matter makes up much of the universe,

  but no one knows what it is. It could be made of stars

  not big enough to shine or particles smaller than atoms.

  It might hold clues to entirely new dimensions of time

  and space, hint at an expanding universe.

  She looks at the audience entirely of men and speaks

  of Maria Mitchell, who was inspired by Caroline Herschel,

  the first and so far the only woman to win

  a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.

  She praises Maud Makemson, her former professor,

  who did astronomical calculations for the moon launch.

  Some women work without being paid. Imagine

  all the progress that could be made in math and science

  if we were encouraged instead of held back.

  After the crowd leaves, the club president says,

  We hope you’ll talk here again.

  Thank you, she replies. If I come back,

  I’ll use the front door.

  Now and Then

  New telescopes are flown far into space

  so more can be seen without the atmosphere in the way.

  The farther Vera looks, the further she sees back in time.

  Most observatories are now heated.

  Vera doesn’t have to change the signs on restrooms.

  She saves time working on computers

  instead of calculating using slower machines,

  and she no longer must wait

  for photographs to develop in a basin of chemicals.

  She compiles the first catalog of dark nebulae,

  which are the birthplaces of stars and planets,

  and makes a new discovery: stars in a galaxy

  don’t all rotate in the same direction.

  Answers open more questions

  she may explore for the rest of her life.

  Darkness Is a Door

  The universe is not just what we see but what we can’t see.

  In recognition of Vera Rubin’s work

  analyzing spectra of more than two hundred galaxies,

  showing how most matter is invisible and mysterious,

  the Royal Astronomical Society gives her a gold medal.

  She’s thankful but believes another century and a half

  shouldn’t pass before a third woman receives that gold.

  She writes letters and gives talks protesting

  all-male meetings, conferences, or college departments.

  Common conversations matter too.

  Vera continues her work at the Carnegie Institution,

  but when she travels to give speeches,

  she invites graduate students from across the country

  to have a cup of coffee. She asks

  an assistant professor, How is your research going?

  The young woman says, In all the years I’ve worked,

  no one ever asked for my professional opinion.

  Young women confide about men who took credit

  for their research. One says that she was denied a job

  when a man said she was too pretty for him to concentrate

  with her nearby. Some speak about men who touch them

  in ways they don’t like or pursue them with words

  after they’ve told them to stop.

  Women report harassment to authorities who advise them

  to ignore interruptions or make light of creepy invitations.

  Some department heads hint that the men’s work

  is more important than a woman scientist’s sense of safety.

  It shouldn’t be our job to stand up to these men,

  but if we don’t, one day we may find we don’t want

  to go back to work, Vera tells a student.

  There are too many ways to make a woman

  feel as if she doesn’t belong. Vera says,

  Learn about women who made a difference.

  Everyone should know about Caroline Herschel.

  Everyone should know Florence Nightingale, Hertha Ayrton,

  Marie Tharp, Katherine Johnson, Edna Lee Paisano,

  and more. Like the important darkness

  between stars, every name matters.

  Winter Solstice

  JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING, 1996

  Vera steps outside a cabin far from city lights

  that scrub out darkness. The valley is lovely

  in summer, with the scent of sagebrush

  and the ripple and rush of an unfrozen river.

  Vera prefers to be here now, when December nights,

  filled with questions and answers, last long.

  She stands under the bright-speckled spill of nebulae,

  where new stars come to be. Looking across snow

  to a canyon, she can faintly hear her grandchildren

  playing board games by firelight with her grown children:

  two geologists, one mathematician, and an astronomer.

  A granddaughter bursts from the cabin,

  looking unsteady in her snow gear. Wait for me!

  Her last word echoes from the canyon.

  As she gets close, she asks, Where were you?

  Daddy said you’re counting stars. I can help.

  I even know double digits.

  Vera picks up the little girl. Her hair smells like woodsmoke.

  The child asks, How many stars are there?

  In our galaxy? Vera replies. Billions.

  And there are billions of galaxies in the universe.

  Have you seen them all?

  Not even close. Above, underfoot, and all around

  them, wonders wait to be discovered.

  BEHIND THE VERSE A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Grasping Mysteries honors women who used math to frame and solve problems, fix things, or understand the size of the universe. Women have done groundbreaking work in pure mathematics, but here I chose to show ways math shapes other fields. Too many girls who want to make changes in medicine or the environment, for instance, are stopped by their lack of confidence in math. Not all science depends on measurements and equations, but much does, and a command of math will make anyone more independent. From the time girls first stack wooden blocks, toss a stick to a dog, climb a tree, sew, knit, bead, cook, balance on a beam, or bandage an arm or a wing, they should know of the many ways math marks the world. They deserve to be told: I believe in you. Sometimes that message comes from history.

  Keeping in mind real discoveries and dates, I imagined scenes with dialogue and sensory detail based on what’s known about the time, place, and questions of girls who loved math. I wanted to show not just the grand moments of discovery, but the importance of what’s not always recorded. History can happen when no one watches, as simply as a girl wonders about the sea, looks at the sky, counts backward, turns over a rock, or reaches up holding the string of a kite.

  All the women in this book faced discouragement. None let insults or a lack of faith stop them. With care and curiosity, they did astonishing work. They believed change is possible on earth and far above. More secrets of the
universe are certain to be found.

  WOMEN WHO WIDENED HORIZONS

  CAROLINE HERSCHEL (1750–1848) endured sickness and loneliness throughout her childhood. She grew happier when her older brother, William, invited her to live and work with him in England. He tutored her in mathematics so she could help him organize his observations of stars, and then she read upper-level math books on her own. Caroline was the first woman in the world to discover a comet and have it named after her. At a time when most women who earned money did so for domestic work such as cooking or cleaning, Caroline Herschel became the first woman to be paid for work in science and math. Scanning the sky for forty years, she discovered eight comets. She was the first woman to receive a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. Her Catalog of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars is still used today.

  FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820–1910) grew up in a mansion where her father taught her mathematics. After her knowledge surpassed his, he bought her books. Florence broke through the expectations of her family and society to become a nurse at a time when caring for the sick or injured in hospitals was done mostly by men. Today, she is primarily remembered as a kind and wise nurse, but after leaving the military hospital at the end of the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale spent many more years at home organizing health records and developing charts that would lead to social change. She helped start a nursing school in London, the first one not run by a religious order. She was one of the founders of medical statistics and was known for developing polar area diagrams, sometimes called rose diagrams or coxcomb charts.

  HERTHA MARKS AYRTON (1854–1923) loved watching her father fix watches when she was young. Wanting to know how things worked was the force behind her education. She registered twenty-six patents for her inventions, which included mathematical dividers and devices related to her work on arc lights and the propulsion of air. (I found no record of whether Hertha ever discussed patents with her friend Marie Curie, who refused to take out patents on discoveries she made, believing that science should profit not just one person, but all.) Hertha Ayrton was called the first female electrical engineer, and her book The Electric Arc, published in 1902, remains in print. She was always inventive, but in her later years, she spent more time fighting for women’s rights. After her death, her friend Ottilie Blind endowed the Hertha Ayrton Research Fellowship at their alma mater, Girton College. Hertha’s daughter, Barbara Ayrton-Gould, became a member of Parliament in 1945.