My Mother, the Scientist

Mom had been taught to turn to the synagogue in times of trouble, and it seemed to make especially good sense in this case, because our synagogue had more scientists in it than most Ivy League universities. Our rabbi, a celebrated civil rights activist, was arranging networking parties for unemployed eggheads. But when my mother asked for an invitation to one of these affairs, he accused her of being selfish. "After all-there are men out of work just now."

"But Rabbi," she said, "it's my life."

I remember her coming home that night, stuffing food into the refrigerator, then pulling out the vacuum cleaner. She switched it on, pushed it back and forth across the floor a few times, then switched it off and burst into tears. In a moment, I was crying too and my mother was comforting me. We sat there a long time.

"I know you want me here," she told me. "But I can either be a part-time mama, or a full-time madwoman."

A few months later, Mom was hired as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and we moved to Boulder, Colorado. From then on, she decided to "follow research funding around the country, like Laplanders follow the reindeer herds." She followed it to Washington, D.C., to work for the National Science Foundation, then to the Boston College Department of Physics, and finally, in 1985, to JPL, where she's been ever since. Along the way, she unlocked some of the mysteries of the aurora. Using data from Explorer 33, she showed that auroras occur when the magnetic field of the solar wind interacts with the magnetic field of the Earth.

In 1974, she became an officer of her professional association, the American Geophysical Union, and spearheaded a committee to ensure that women in her field would be treated fairly. She was named one of JPL's elite senior scientists in 1999 and the following year was awarded NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.

Soon she'll retire, except that retirement as my mother the scientist envisions it means embarking on a new project: comparing recent changes in Earth's climate with historic ones. "It's a pretty important subject when you consider that even a small change in the solar output could conceivably turn Long Island into a skating rink-just like it was some 10,000 years ago."

The first thing I did when I came home from Mrs. Weddle's class that day in 1966 was to ask my mother what my father did. She told me that he was a scientist, and that she was a scientist too. I asked what a scientist was, and she handed me a spoon. "Drop it on the table," she said. I let it fall to the floor. "Why did it fall?" she asked. "Why didn't it float up to the ceiling?" It had never occurred to me that there was a "why" involved. "Because of gravity," she said. "A spoon will always fall, a hot-air balloon will always rise." I dropped the spoon again and again until she made me stop. I had no idea what gravity was, but the idea of "Why?" kept rattling around in my head. That's when I made the decision: the next day, in school, I wouldn't just tell them what my father did. I'd tell them about my mother too.