Rosalyn Yalow

Rosalyn Yalomw was a nuclear physicist. She developed radioimmunoassay (RIA) together with doctor Solomon Berson. RIA is used to measure small concentrations of substances in the body, such as hormones in the blood. Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson tracked insulin by injecting radioactive iodine into patients' blood. Because the method is so precise, they were able to prove that type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inefficient use of insulin. Previously it was thought that the disease was caused by a lack of insulin.

Dr. Yalow received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977 together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally. In response to this, Dr. Yalow wrote a biographical essay about her life, influences, work experience and partnerships with other researchers. It is a very beautifully-written and impressive and moving history and it was published on the Nobel Prize website. She describes for example, "hanging from the rafters in Room 301 of Pupin Laboratories (a physics lecture room at Columbia University) when Enrico Fermi gave a colloquium in January 1939 on the newly discovered nuclear fission."

In another phase of her life, while being newly married and taking two background undergraduate classes, three graduate courses in physics, serving as a half-time assistant teacher, as well as being an observer of another instructor so as to improve her own teaching skill, she received straight As in two of her classes and an A- in one. In response, the Chairman of the Physics development told her "That A- confirms that women do not do well as laboratory work."

Awards & Honors

Awarded the title of Distinguished Service Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award
A. Cressy Morrison Award in Natural Sciences of the N.Y. Academy of Sciences
Scientific Achievement Award of the American Medical Association
Koch Award of the Endocrine Society
Gairdner Foundation International Award
American College of Physicians Award for distinguished contributions in science as related to medicine
Eli Lilly Award of the American Diabetes Association
First William S. Middleton Medical Research Award of the VA and five honorary doctorates
Nobel Prize winner 1977

Source:

Nobel Prize Organization: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977 — Rosalyn Yalow Biographical

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 28, 2022

Rumina Velshi

Rumina Velshi was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the CNSC in August 2018.

Ms. Velshi has had a long association with the CNSC, having been a Commission member from 2011 until her appointment as President and CEO.

Ms. Velshi has extensive technical, regulatory and adjudication expertise in the energy industry. Throughout her career, she has worked in various capacities at Ontario Hydro and Ontario Power Generation, the electrical utilities in the province. Ms. Velshi also previously served as a part-time Board member of the Ontario Energy Board, the economic regulator of the province’s electricity and natural gas sectors.

In February 2020, Ms. Velshi was appointed Chairperson of the Commission on Safety Standards (CSS), established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for a four-year term.

Ms. Velshi very actively promotes careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), especially for young women. Since joining the CNSC as President and CEO, she has launched a women-in-STEM initiative to consider ways to support women in STEM careers at the CNSC and elsewhere, and to further STEM education by working with interested partners. She has also delivered several international keynote addresses about breaking down barriers for women in STEM.

Ms. Velshi was one of the founding members of Canada's Women in Science and Engineering and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Institute for Women in Engineering and Science (CIWES), an institute that advances education in the STEM fields worldwide through an international network of organizations, foundations and experts.

She has served as Vice-Chair on the Board of Directors of Scientists in School, a non-profit organization that offers STEM-focused workshops to more than 700,000 students each year. Ms. Velshi is one of 150 Canadian women whose stories are compiled in Your Turn, a book published to mark Canada's 150th anniversary and inspire the next generation of women leaders.

Ms. Velshi holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in civil engineering, a Master of Engineering degree in chemical engineering and a Master of Business Administration, all from the University of Toronto.

Source:

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission: President

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 28, 2022

Kristine Svinicki

Kristine Svinicki was first appointed to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC) in 2008 by President Obama. She was then re-appointed to that role by three successive United States presidents. She was designated Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by President Donald J. Trump on January 23, 2017. By the time Svinicki stepped down as Chairman of the NRC in early 2021, she had become the longest-serving member in the agency’s history. Hallmarks of her distinguished tenure include growing a culture of “swing for the fences” transformative thinking in agency processes and advancing the use of previously untapped technologies to surmount the challenges of the COVID-19 public health emergency and deliver sustained assurance of nuclear safety and security to the American public.

Prior to her appointment to the U.S. NRC, Svinicki served as an expert and policy advisor for over a decade to members of the United States Senate on topics ranging from energy to national security. She previously managed nuclear research and development programs at the U.S. Department of Energy and worked as an energy analyst for the State of Wisconsin.

Sviniki is an internationally recognized policy expert and innovator with over 30 years of public service at the state and federal levels and in both the legislative and executive branches. Before joining the NRC, Svinicki spent over a decade as a staff member in the United States Senate advancing a wide range of policies and initiatives related to national security, science and technology, and energy and the environment. She also served as a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee where she was responsible for the Committee's portfolio of defense science and technology programs and policies, and for the atomic energy defense activities of the U.S. Department of Energy, including nuclear weapons, nuclear security, and environmental programs.

Previously, Svinicki worked as a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Department of Energy's Washington, D.C. Offices of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, and of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, as well as its Idaho Operations Office, in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Before that, she was an energy engineer with the State of Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Public Service Commission in Madison, Wisconsin.

Born and raised in Michigan, Svinicki earned a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan in 1988. She is a longstanding member of the American Nuclear Society and the Society has twice honored her with its Presidential Citation in recognition of her contributions to the nuclear energy policies of the United States. Chairman Svinicki was named Woman of the Year by the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment in 2013. She was selected as a Stennis Congressional Fellow of the 108th Congress and as a Brookings Institution Legis Congressional Fellow in 1997. She has been honored by the University of Michigan College of Engineering as its 2009 Alumni Merit Award recipient for Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and, in 2017, was awarded the College's Alumni Medal.

She was selected as a Brookings Institution Fellow in 1997 and as a John C. Stennis Congressional Fellow of the 108th U.S. Congress.

Svinicki is currently an Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiologic Sciences at the University of Michigan and sits on the boards of TerraPower and Southern Company.

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Sources:

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Chairman Kristine Svinicki
TerraPower: Kristine Svinicki
Southern Company: Kristine L. Svinicki

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 28, 2022

Katy Huff

D r. Kathryn D. Huff serves as the Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy. Prior to her current role, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she led the Advanced Reactors and Fuel Cycles Research Group. She was also a Blue Waters Assistant Professor with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Before joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Huff was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she led the Advanced Reactors and Fuel Cycles Research Group and taught reactor theory and the future of energy. She was also a Blue Waters Assistant Professor with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in both the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science at the University of California - Berkeley.

Dr. Huff received her Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013 and her undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Chicago. Her research focused on modeling and simulation of advanced nuclear reactors and fuel cycles.

She is an active member of the American Nuclear Society, Chair of the Nuclear Nonproliferation and Policy Division, a past chair of the Fuel Cycle and Waste Management Division, and recipient of both the Young Member Excellence and Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women's Achievement awards. Through leadership within Software Carpentry, SciPy, the Hacker Within, and the Journal of Open Source Software, she also advocates for best practices in open, reproducible scientific computing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnsOPodptHQ&t=86s

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Sources:

University of Illinois Alumni: In Class Power Source: Nuclear engineer Katy Huff on teaching with IPythons, reactor theory and the future of energy
DOE Office of Nuclear Energy: Dr. Kathryn Huff, Senior Advisor, Office of the Secretary.

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 21, 2022

Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar

Mary Lou is the associate dean of the Idaho State University (ISU) College of Science and a senior reactor operator at ISU’s Aerojet-General Nucleonics nuclear reactor. She was the 66th president of the American Nuclear Society (from 2020 to 2021, and the fifth woman to be elected in ANS history), and her research projects on nuclear energy are published internationally.

It was a high school teacher who introduced chemistry and physics to Mary Lou in a way that made those subjects come alive and influenced her to major in chemistry. But growing up in Millersburg, PA, about 40 miles from Three Mile Island, at the time of the TMI-2 accident in March 1979, also had a profound effect on her. Rather than turn her off to nuclear power, TMI-2 convinced her to do something nuclear-related.

Dunzik-Gougar matriculated at Penn State in 1994, setting her sights on a master’s degree in environmental engineering and received her master’s degree from Penn State in 1997 under the supervision of Prof. Barry Scheetz, who guided her creation of a waste form for spent fuel processing calcines at Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). In 1997, she had a summer internship at Argonne National Laboratory–West, which was merged with INEEL in 2005 to become Idaho National Laboratory. This led to an opportunity to return to Argonne-West to conduct research focused on processing fuel from the sodium-cooled fast spectrum Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) and modeling the use of zeolite to remove fission products from the molten salt used to process the fuel. Unfortunately, the EBR-II was shut down in 1994 when the Clinton administration removed funding for the Integral Fast Reactor program and she arrived at Idaho just a few years after EBR-II closed, and saw the effect the program’s loss had on Argonne employees.

Dunzik-Gougar received her nuclear engineering Ph.D. in December 2003, a took a job teaching at Idaho State University. At around that time, Argonne-West merged with INEEL to become Idaho National Laboratory. Dunzik-Gougar found herself working with INL’s Kamal Pasamehmetoglu on a lab-directed research and development project creating a fuel cycle model from first principles. After Pasamehmetoglu was pulled into other tasks, Dunzik-Gougar took over administration of the project, called SINEMA (Simulation Institute for Nuclear Enterprise Modeling and Analysis).Soon after, she found herself working in South Africa with their Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), a venture established in 1999 to build and demonstrate a small-scale helium-cooled high-temperature reactor. There she worked to help PBMR and the University of Pretoria in setting up a lab to study irradiated graphite for PBMR’s waste minimization program. This led to her work on a European Union–funded project focusing on the decontamination of radioactive graphite, as well as work on a Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) project, when she returned to Idaho. Dunzik-Gougar has since also worked as a consultant to Électricité de France on irradiated graphite waste treatment.Dunzik-Gougar served as acting chair of the university’s Nuclear Engineering and Health Physics Department and as the associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering. She also serves as the reactor administrator for ISU’s AGN-201 reactor, and became an NRC-licensed reactor operator and senior reactor operator. Dunzik-Gougar is still doing active research, having been awarded a NEUP grant in October 2019 to develop a method of testing the tensile strength of TRISO fuel particle layers.

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Source:

ANS: "Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar: A passion for teaching" July 15, 2020, published in Nuclear News.
Tomorrow's World Today, "Five of the Most Important Women in Nuclear Science."

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

March 1, 2022

Rita Baranwal

Dr. Rita Baranwal was nominated by the President to serve as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 20, 2019 (by a vote of 86 to 5), becoming the first woman to ever lead the Office of Nuclear Energy.

In that role, Dr. Baranwal directed programs to promote research and development (R&D) on existing and advanced nuclear technologies that sustain the existing U.S. fleet of nuclear reactors, enable the deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems, support nuclear technology for space and defense applications, and enhance the U.S.A.'s global commercial nuclear energy competitiveness. She also:

Launched innovative programs to demonstrate advanced nuclear reactor designs, launched a new U.S. reactor innovation center, and a unique private-public partnership to develop new U.S. nuclear testing capabilities
Collaborated with U.S. intergovernmental agencies (e.g. Departments of State, Commerce, and Treasury, National Security Council, Office of Science & Technology Policy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Development Finance Corporation) to globally deploy new U.S. civil nuclear technology.
Implemented civil nuclear agreements with two countries; initiated civil nuclear agreement discussions with eleven countries.
Partnered with NASA on nuclear technology and expertise for space exploration. Contributed to the National Strategy for Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion, Executive Order on Reactors for Space Exploration, and DOE’s Space Strategy.
Managed Congressionally-enacted budget of $1.5B (FY20).
Served as the Equity in Energy Champion for DOE’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity.

Following her service as the #1 at ONE, Dr. Baranwal served as the VP of Nuclear and Chief Nuclear Officer for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) for over a year. As of 2022, Dr. Baranwal has returned to Westinghouse as the Chief Technology Officer.

Prior to her appointment to the ONE, Dr. Baranwal served as the director for the DOE's Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) since 2016, an initiative hosted at Idaho National Laboratory. GAIN is the way the U.S. Government connects industry with national laboratories to help commercialize nuclear technologies. Under her leadership, GAIN positively impacted 112 projects and companies.

Before that, Dr. Baranwal worked for Westinghouse in the nuclear fuel division, leading a number of research and development programs. She started her career at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory helping to develop advanced nuclear fuel materials for US naval reactors.

Dr. Baranwal has a bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in materials science and engineering and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in the same discipline from the University of Michigan.

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Sources:

LinkedIn: Dr. Rita Baranwal
NayaFace: Rita Baranwal sworn in as 1st woman US Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at DOE, July 25, 2019.

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

April 4, 2020

Isabelle Boemeke

Isabelle Boemeke is a social media influencer who has chosen to use her star power as a fashion model to create educational videos and messages for her followers to advocate for nuclear power as a solution to climate change. Tweeting and posting at Twitter, Instagram and TikTok under the name "Isodope," Isabelle speaks knowledgeably about energy and, in particular, about the benefits of nuclear energy, to a social media-savvy community that is not usually engaged in discussion of energy technology, science, industry or even climate change. This has required both great courage, talent and commitment, and has revealed the power of Isabelle's creativity and resourcefulness. Isabelle has been so successful in doing these things, she was invited to present a TED Talk, which was also well received.

Examples of Isodope Social Media Videos (At Twitter: @Isodope, at Instagram (@I_sodope), at TikTok (@Isodope)

https://youtube.com/shorts/jh24kJ96qos?si=yP9zAAz_LT3kT23dhttps://www.tiktok.com/@isodope/video/6902456563613617413
Screenshot 2023-09-30 at 12.39.32 PM

These efforts have had an enormous impact. In 2020, the haute-fashion media outlet, Highsnobiety, ran a cover-story interview with Isabelle which candidly raises the topic of the horrors of the most dangerous energy on earth: fossil fuels.

“Let’s talk about the most dangerous energy source on earth. The World Health Organization blames it for 29 percent of all lung cancers, 24 percent of strokes, a quarter of all heart disease, and 43 percent of chronic lung infections — all of which could be prevented. [It] produces invisible particles that fill up the sky like a bucket, trapping the sun’s heat and choking rivers, plants, and animals like us. The worst of all . . . the companies who burn it are not required to take care of their waste.”

Then, she counters that with a discussion of “what might be the safest power source we have, by many countable metrics,” which, of course, is nuclear energy. Speaking for herself, she claims:

“I think it’s the coolest form of energy. Everything else sucks in comparison. Fossil fuels are obviously bad. It’s just burning stuff like coal, oil, or gas. Solar and wind are fine, but they’re intermittent and very granola. Nuclear is like a technology from the future.”

As impactful as her social media presence has been, Isabelle’s efforts have not been limited to interviews, TikTok videos or even TED Talks. Working with a team under the auspices of the "Save Clean Energy" name, she was the mastermind and powerhouse behind an organized rally that was held in San Luis Obispo in support of saving Diablo Canyon. This rally drew hundreds of people, local politicians and experts, and resulted in a flurry of articles and opinion pieces expressing public support for nuclear energy in California, a place where such views have been in rtreat for decades.

Isabelle Boemeke (holding the sign) is flanked by Save Clean Energy's organizational partners, Heather Hoff and Kristen Zaitz from Mothers for Nuclear (on the left side), and members of other pronuclear groups.

Then, on February 1, 2022, shortly after that public and well-received rally, Isabelle help organize a group of 79 experts to write and send a letter to Governor Newsom urging him to save Diablo Canyon for the sake of not reversing our climate progress. For the many nuclear professionals and energy experts dispairing about the prospects of saving the state's sole remaining nuclear power plant, this was an opportunity to address the Governor as scientific and academic experts in energy and climate action.

What happened next is the stuff of actist legend: Governor Newsom listened! He started to consult his own experts and apparently his own team of energy experts at the CEC, CAISO and elsewhere agreed that shuttering Diablo Canyon would almost certainly cause unnecessarily more severe power outages and likely result in the loss of life. Governor Newsom then began to take the necessary political steps to bring the California legislature around to his point of view.

There were a series of CEC-hosted hearings on Diablo Canyon which invited the public to weigh in. California's pronuclear community attended these sessions in droves. Newsom himself went out publicly to visit Diablo Canyon and explore the truth about the safety of the plant and wrote articles about it, that got published widely in major newspapers. He then sought out support from PG&E executives and the DOE's Civilian Nuclear Credit program for the funding to help the plant restart its licensing work. Fortunately, the DOE had just secured $5 billion in funding for the CNC to help "at risk" nuclear power plants through Biden's Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act. There Newsom found a very receptive response, so he was able to avoid having the bulk of the cost of this reversal imposed on the ratepayers. This helped sway the California Legislature to do the right thing. Combined, these actions resulted in the passage of S.B. 468, that laid the authority to save Diablo Canyon.

It seems very clear that the Diablo Canyon rally and the letter from scientists, both of which were organized by Isabelle, provided positive press coverage for the Governor to make his very public about-face on nuclear power. Of course, the fact that two other Democratic Governors, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Governor Gretchen Witmer of Michigan, both had previously come out in support of their state's nuclear power and still maintained their political support, gave Newsom the confidence to do the same in California, which probably helped greatly with his political calculus.

Nevetheless, Newsom's ability to listen and decide to support Diablo Canyon and nuclear power in general, was an historic political shift for the most overtly progressive and antinuclear state in the union. In doing so, California took the advice of its scientists, distancing itself from Germany, whose politicians were unable to muster the political backbone required to listen to its experts and overrule the antinuclear ideologues (and so shuttered its last nuclear power and now is now sadly razing villages and forests to dig up and burn lignite coal to keep the power on).

Which shows that a single, motivated and talented woman can make a major difference in the fight against emissions.

Brava, Isabelle!

Sources:

Highsnobiety: Isabelle Boemeke Is the Nuclear Influencer the World Needs, April 2021
The San Luis Obispo Tribune: Diablo Canyon supporters rally in SLO to keep nuclear power plant open, by Kaytlyn Leslie and Laura Dickinson, Dec. 4, 2022
The Atlantic, The West's Nuclear Mistake, by David Frum, Dec. 4, 2022
More about the letter to Governor Newsom at Climate Coalition: Sign the letter to Governor Newsom to Save Diablo Canyon

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, NEWS, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Pro-nuclear campaign, Solving climate, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

February 20, 2020

Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu, also known as the “First Lady of Physics,” was a Chinese American particle and experimental physicist who worked on the Manhattan project and played an important role in the advancement of nuclear and particle physics.

Madame Wu was born in 1912 in Shanghai. She received a degree in physics from what is now known as Nanjing University and later enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley where she completed her Ph.D. She worked as a physics instructor at Princeton University and Smith College before joining the Manhattan Project in 1944. Her work at the Substitute Alloy Materials Lab was meant to support the gaseous diffusion program for uranium enrichment. Her research also improved Geiger counters for radiation detection.

As a leading physicist on beta decay, Madame Wu was able to confirm Enrico Fermi’s 1933 theory of beta decay. She was also responsible for disproving “the law of conservation of parity” in what is known as the Wu Experiment. In this experiment, she measured the small particles released from cobalt-60 atoms and found that they were emitted asymmetrically. This proved the theory that parity is not reserved for beta decay, vastly altering long-held beliefs in the physics community.

Awards & Recognition

1958 – Became the 7^th female member elected to the National Academy of Sciences
1964 – Was the first woman to win the Comstock Prize in Physics from the National Academy of Sciences
1975 – Became the first woman president of the American Physical Society
1975 – Honored with the National Medal of Science
1978 – Received the first Wolf Prize in Physics
1990 – 2753 Wu Chien-Shiung asteroid was named after her
Held honorary degrees from Harvard University, Dickinson College, University of South Carolina, University of Albany, SUNY, Columbia University, and National Central University

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Source: Versant Physics, "The Seven Most Influential Women in Radiation History."

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

February 20, 2020

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin was a chemist and X-ray crystallographer who is best known for her work on the structure of DNA, RNA, and coal. She also performed cutting-edge research on the molecular structure of viruses that cause plant and human diseases.

Franklin was born in London, England in 1920. She studied physical chemistry at Newnham Women’s College at the University of Cambridge. During World War II, Franklin researched the physical chemistry of coal and carbon under the British Coal Utilisation Research Association. By studying the porosity of coal, she concluded that substances were expelled in order of molecular size as temperature increased. This work was important for accurately classifying and predicting coal performance for fuel and wartime production and served as her Ph.D. thesis.

After the war, Franklin accepted a position as a research fellow at King’s College London. During this time, she investigated DNA samples. She took clear x-ray diffraction photos of DNA and was able to conclude that the forms had two helices. Her work–specifically her image Photo 51–was the foundation of James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery that the structure of DNA was a double-helix polymer, for which she was not cited or credited.

Afterward, she continued working with x-ray diffraction photos of viruses at the J.D. Bernal’s crystallography laboratory at Birkbeck College and collaborated with virus researchers from around the world. She studied RNA of the tobacco mosaic virus and contributed to published works on cucumber virus 4 and turnip yellow mosaic virus.

During her career, she published 19 articles on coal and carbons, 21 on viruses, and 5 on DNA.

Awards & Recognition

1935 – Received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of artificial radioactivity (with Frederic Joliot-Curie)
1940 – Received the Barnard Gold Medal for Meritorious Service to Science (with Frederic Joliot-Curie)
Was an Officer of the Legion of Honour.

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Source: Versant Physics, "The Seven Most Influential Women in Radiation History."

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

February 20, 2020

Tikvah Alper

Tikvah Alper (1909 - 1995) was a renowned radiobiologist and physicist whose work on identifying the infection agent in Scrapie revolutionized scientific understanding of diseases like mad cow disease and kuru.

She was born in 1909 in South Africa and graduated with a distinction in physics from the University of Cape Town in 1929. She was mentored by Lise Meitner as a doctoral student in Berlin from 1930 to 1932 where she published an award-winning paper on delta rays produced by alpha particles.

In addition to her life as a mother and homemaker, she was a physics lecturer at Witwatersrand University and researched in Britain on the irradiation of bacteriophage. She became head of the Biophysics Section in South Africa’s National Physics Laboratory; however, she was forced out of this position in 1951 due to her opposition to apartheid. Afterward, she moved to London with her family and worked her way up to director of Hammersmith Hospital’s MRC Experimental Radiopathology Research Unit in 1962.

Alper found that radiation did not kill the infective agent in Scrapie, an infectious brain disease found in sheep. Instead, by irradiating scrapie samples with different wavelengths of UV light, Alper was able to prove the infective agent was able to replicate despite its lack of nucleic acid. This work became extremely important during Britain’s Mad cow disease outbreak in the 1990s.

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Source: Versant Physics, "The Seven Most Influential Women in Radiation History."

Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID

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