Ili freestone are getting the right support after a sexual assault can be hard but it can make a huge difference to how you cope with the trauma and it can really improve the chances of convicting the attacker So South Africa has set up one stop centers where people can go to report to write and get the help they need and it offers 2 kinds of services to make sure that. It's physically unhealthy and then for forensic examination to gather the necessary evidence they also have specialized sexual offenses courts where everything's designed with the victim in mind the person who was sitting with me treated me like her own daughter she comforted me every time I cried and asked me if I needed anything we look at the difference the system is making people fix in the world after the b.b.c. News. B.b.c. News I'm Joshua there's been scathing criticism of a compromise deal reached at the u.n. Climate summit in Madrid delegates and environmental campaigners called it an after failure blaming some of the most polluting nations for holding back decisive action the marathon talks only agreed that wealthier nations would come up with more ambitious plans to cause emissions by the end of next year small island nations were particularly critical Tina stage is climate envoy for the Marshall Islands right now and asked if. I feel like much much more could have been done. I'm. Thinking about how I'm going to go home and explain that this is a really really challenging process especially for the. Island States and other developing nations. The president of Zambia go along says his government has asked the United States to withdraw its ambassador after the diplomat criticized the jailing of 2 men for being in a gay relationship Daniel Foote said he was horrified last month when a judge sentenced the man to 15 years in prison Well Leonardo reports this growing diplomatic row between Zambia and the United States centers on vastly divergent us choose towards homosexuality reacting to the long sentence handed to the couple last month and Buster Daniel 1st called on the Zambian government to review the case and the country's stringent anti homosexuality laws he received threats over his stance prompting him to pull out of official events and now his host country wants to kick him out speaking at a church fundraiser on Sunday President Ed Garland group called homosexuality among Christian values and said he was waiting on a response from Washington. Scientists in Indonesia have finally been able to examine rock debris on the sea floor around the volcanic island of cracker tower which collapsed a year ago part of the island slid into the ocean after an eruption triggering a tsunami our science correspondent Jonathan Amos reports it took quite a while to get near and crack a tower after its collapse because it continued to erupt explosively but when this activity died down scientists took sonar equipment into the area to map the sea floor what they see a colossal blocks of rock some 90 meters high that were once part of the Southwestern wall of the volcano that new data allows the team to more precisely calculate the volume of material that fell into the water just less than 200000000 cubic meters of rock this can be used to update tsunami models reports from France say the authorities are extraditing to Argentina a former policeman accused of torture and murder during the military dictatorship of the 1970 s. And eighty's Mario Sandoval was arrested in a Paris suburb on Wednesday prisoners who survived the did dictatorship say he was nicknamed child asco meaning barbecued meat because he allegedly interrogated victims attached to electrified bedsprings while news from the b.b.c. . Hundreds of students and activists are holding an overnight protest in the Indian capital Delhi accusing the police of forcefully entering a university campus and beating students followed a rally against a controversial citizenship law on Sunday police insist they acted after protesters began pelting them with stones and set vehicles on fire the new law allows migrants fleeing religious persecution in neighboring countries to claim citizenship but not of their Muslim. The u.s. Envoy to North Korea is due to meet the South Korean president shortly to discuss ways to halt rising tensions between young and Washington Rebecca reports Stephen begin arrives in Seoul as Pyongyang ramps up the pressure on Washington to come up with a deal before it's huge and deadline it's unclear whether Mr Begin will meet with North Korean officials at the border the trip has led to speculation that he might try to salvage negotiations he's due to make a statement just after meeting with the South Korean president Mindy and the North Korean leader Kim Jong un and u.s. President Trump have met 3 times to try to negotiate an end to Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs but there has been little progress Mr Bagan arrived in Seoul just hours after North Korea said it conducted another successful rocket engine test the Turkish president regift I've heard one has confirmed that he would consider expelling American forces from Turkey's injure like air base if Washington presses a head with sanctions he made the comments in a live broadcast on Turkish radio or Wednesday the u.s. Senate will debate that dislocation that would sanction Turkey for buying the Russian As for hundreds missile system. And briefly thousands of anti-government protesters have gathered again in the Lebanese capital Beirut or after a night of clashes with the security forces dozens were injured in some of the worst violence since the demonstrations began 2 months ago b.b.c. News. And then shall I then make a noise I just thought there. Is something that I feel life and. About there South African police recorded more than 40000 rights last year are not small or never reported. There's been quite a few high profile write a murder as of women in the country this year to fountains of people have been protesting on the street. Right. And there's a long and intimidating journey through the criminal justice system for special reporting centers and courts are helping to improve things. Very friendly and very supportive. There are a lot of hope that I am going to get through this. Was fixing the world. I'm really Freestone and you're listening to people fix in the world from the b.b.c. World Service we look into some of the world's toughest problems and hear from people finding solutions. About a 3rd of women experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives and the u.n. Estimates that around 15000000 teenage girls have been forced into sex but most of the perpetrators are never brought to justice one of my best friends was raped when we were 14 and no one was ever convicted for having seen how the attack and the legal process affected her and still does I want to find out if any want to try and make things easier for people who were right at her case is an unusual in South Africa for example only about 9 percent of rights that are reported and in a conviction I read that the authorities are trying to do something about it so I decided to visit. I. Guess why lovely to me if you are you do a. Great crisis is an NGO that does lots of work in this area obvious is of rape crisis in Cape Town but it doesn't really feel like an office or feels like a home I'm in the kitchen I can feel the life spring breeze Quito the smells of coffee it was hey I met a Mischka which isn't her real name right crisis gave her counseling after she was right. She poured me some coffee and then told me about what happened to her she was raped by a man she should have been able to trust her husband in the months before her and she refused to have sex with him because he'd been physically and emotionally abusing her and every game for 18 years of my life that morning when I was getting done for work I was busy I knew my clothes a good story and the t.v. I get a noise the I'm clicking on me. And he was the friend go lock the door to me that I'm not going anywhere. He said in floods of the. Phone is the only on the that is came to have sex with me. To do this and. That dick of my clothes. I didn't shout I didn't make a noise I just thought that this is something that I feel all my life and it's about that then he put his gun in his shorts and we drove to the beach and as I was sitting at the beach I just started crying so sorry to have our experience as. Often if you are right it's by someone you know for Mischka this meant not reporting it could pull apart her whole life sometimes a book at the at the station you said known person to you that's fear of the community labeling you blaming you there's a lot of stigma to it so people feel that they'd rather not get reported and they were. Bowden's time works right crisis she explained to me that those who do decides reporter often have to tell the story over and over again this is because the police lawyers are medical fashionables don't always understand how to work with people who've been might that makes the system really difficult. Advocate and write in person and to tell very sensitive and very dramatic story in such a setting increases 2nd recall my hand can really affect the presence of healing and as well as potentially reach a woman tied in someone the police might fail to ask the right questions or collect crucial evidence which makes for a weak prosecution case later down the line that also really has an effect on whether or not that Survivor is willing to engage with the criminal justice system in the future because if you had a really bad experience or someone that know had a bad experience the livelihood of wanting to have anything to do with a grievance are very high and that means it's hard to improve the conviction rate so all feeds into a big cycle. In early 2000 the Department of Justice realised as well as preventing sexual violence in the 1st place these issues needed to be dealt with if they were serious about supporting victims and convicting rightists So they came up with a new system for reporting right they created something called to desire sentence then and after a close a word meaning comfort stuff especially trying to help people who've been right that's where a Mischka went after our understood and believed at. The lady that good taste . Actually it up my dad told me that I'm going to be Ok that same space that you get to cry and feel that emotional breakdown at that time is amazing just that added layer of hope that I am going to get through this the 1st one was opened in 2001 and now there are 55 doctors across the country they're funded by the South African government which uses N.G.O.s like great crisis to offer counseling and other services all in one place. It offers 2 kinds of services to make sure that the rape survivor is physically healthy but if there are wounds that that is being cared for and then the other component is a forensic examination together the necessary evidence that the police and the Prosecution Service will need this can be done more quickly which helps with the quality of the evidence there's also psychological support but also. The fact that that it is innocent this is set up in a way to provide the circus or show support really provides an opportunity for the evidence to be collected in a way that the survivor understands what's going on but also that limits the secondary trauma so that the future is Alice and you still have to deal with doctors nurses police officers but the difference is they've all been trained to understand how sexual trauma affects people and how to work with women and children in a sensitive and empathetic way. P.s. Meth works in South Africa's National Prosecution Authority and oversees a teacher's Alison what kind of thing to they learn about this is where the Internet training comes in we've got that for the for a sickness is all medical doctors because they need to get that specialized training and how to deal with the victims because we picked up and it's not necessarily such a focus at me because school for prosecutors this also dropped an additional focus on search of training at school so we need to provide that focus in addition to the training to equip them with the necessary skills image collector husband and the support she got from the cheetah Zala Center gave her the strength she needed to take a case to call but once she got there it was even worse than she'd imagined she have to sit directly opposite him they're offering and it's like playing the midnight you and that space having to sit right opposite them is so intimidating that you wonder if you're going to go through with this all the way her court case went on for more than a year she couldn't stand the intimidation anymore so she withdrew I couldn't go through with it so I. Asked the prosecutor to drop the case and she was our usual and. As I said they had the grin on his face and. They actually made me feel that and a good deal just get out of the room and just close the door on this. Because of experiences like this one lots of rape survivors withdraw from the legal process before it's finished when the perpetrator gets away with it. Now this is where the 2nd part of South Africa solution comes in a specialized course designed to deal with sexual offenses saying to make the legal process less traumatic so that people are Commish to keep going with that case until a verdict is reached most 2 thirds out of sense is a link to one fortunately a mesh this case wasn't heard him on but I spoke to someone else whose case was Tina he was right when she was 4 years old she's 15 now to be concealed her real identity and often asked her to read her words a family friend used to come and visit my grandmother he would call me outside and he would know me and to my pants or skirt and then he'd rape me at the back of the house when even my grandmother was in the well she was out of sight it was a couple of times not only once he told me not to tell anyone and that if I did tell anyone that he would turn the story against me and say that I was lying so I listened to all of that until I was 12 years old when I was 12 he came to my grandmother's house I was there for the December holidays and I felt disgusted seeing him so I felt that's enough now I have to talk. I told everyone about what he had done and they called the police so Tina's case was heard in one of these calls and in order to understand how it helped her I looked around one in Johannesburg. There are 3 things that especially about South Africa sexual offenses court the 1st is that they're made to feel comfortable and safe. Just going up the stairwell it's only a very few staff was working on for weeks 5 years into court it's very secure area . Solid grey marble steps feel very new so they come through 8 a private entrance and the attic and to a private waiting area it is a place that is that exhibits comfort that makes them not to feel like that at the court environment this is advocate praise come She's from South Africa Department of Justice and has been heavily involved in setting up a section of fences coats she's funny and outgoing and dresses head to toe in bright orange and red she's been an activist against gender based violence for 20 years I can feel her passion for the cause and she shows me round one after the day's Herring's have finished as you can see here. We have made provision for. For the stress balls and we have also made provision for the safety play but this one is for the stress and so on the leaflet says things like breathe deeply stretch your poly positive self talk kind of says things like reduce stress before you testified in court yesterday for techniques I suppose and it's not only those you know for those who want to say that you know what I don't want information that is all about all these I want to read just a modest read then I read about that concept really teenagers here as you will see there then ere we have this message that we have written for there is there sitting here it seems that you have it you have a special strength inside you I believe you because when they come here they will think that they are disbelieved and it is into your fault you are not and no so is that information that is some of these they are hearts and it motivates them to participate with the criminal justice system so the 2nd thing that's unique about the court is the building itself and how it's designed which is with the well being of the victim a mind their wall separating their private area from areas where the defendant. On the way into the waiting room there's a really kind of high wall we want to increase the privacy for the victims remember that when they come here they don't want to be seen by people and at the same time we don't want them to expose them to the cause about intimidation by that I can use Yeah I can see it's kind of about 5 and it's about my high a concierge right and and it really separates off the area you know. And we also hear the private discipline remotes of a double weaknesses somebody will say that you know what I don't want to have the physical contact with this person so we encourage it and that isn't just of like a privately and would hear everything that happens and be able to respond in this room as a closed circuit cameras set up so that they can give that testimony to the court from a private place and the 3rd thing that makes the courts unique is that the legal professionals who were trained specifically to deal with cases of sexual trauma much latitude as Alice senses survivors have a Corp officer who builds up a personal relationship with them before the trial starts that helps them understand what's going to happen so they feel confident and in control being only 12 at the time of her cold case Tina got less support from an NGO called the teddy bear foundation. In the private room I was sitting with a lady she was translating all the questions for me into my language so that I could understand it was a day able and to cheese I sat opposite her and there was tea and a box of tissues the result of speaker where I could hear the questions of the perpetrators where how did it feel when he went to court I was confident because the preparations I got a k.g.b. So I knew it was coming on Saturdays we used to get court preparation where they told us about the court and the type of questions I would get and not to change my story and how did that preparation help you it helped me a lot because when I started I didn't want to talk about what happened but by the time I went to court I was ready so the people who supported you the social worker the person who translated the corporation officer how would you describe those people. The people were kind and I felt like the person who was sitting with me treated me like her own daughter she comforted me every time I cried and asked me if I wanted breaks if I was Ok Wi-Fi needed anything after going through all of this Tina's trial finished and sentencing day came around tell me all happened to the perpetrator who did this to you the perpetrator was sentenced to 20 years and how do you feel about the outcome now I feel like a good justice and he got what he deserved so Tina feels she got justice and a Michka tell me that if her case had gone through a section of fences call she think she would have been able to go through with her trial. South Africa's 1st sexual offense court was set up and 993 but problems of funding and criticism that these crimes were getting more attention than others meant that after the initial rollout the process was stalled until 2013 I wanted to get the bigger picture about the difference that making so I had a chat with Gloria because of Unicef child protection officer his job of fall supporting the Colts you necessity Africa has been helping to measure their impact so we interviewed about 221 people all in all and we found that there was an increase in the satisfaction rate the study was based on a variety of things both the services so called preparation offices private testimony rooms and the way the victims are treated by the people who work on that case. Unicef talked to people whose cases have gone through normal regional courts and then compare their responses to people whose cases have been heard at sexual offenses courts we found that $48.00 the same to of the actions were satisfied with the services that they received at the regional court and then when we went to the 11th sexual offenses courts in 20162017 the overall satisfaction was at 69 percent so that's 21 percent higher there's also been success at the 2 to zealous census over the past 2 years the National Prosecution Authority found that the number of rapes reported to the senses rose they went from about 32000 to about 34 and a half 1000 the number of rapes reported to the police increased over this period. Pierre who I talked to earlier and here if it sees that it is at a census sees this is a positive thing what we would like to believe is if there is an increase in matters being reported it shows that these are the belief in the system always believe in it is there are cases and to model or it's a belief that Marcus will be out of by experts and hopefully that contribution to the fact that people will be more willing to come forward to report that and the most recent statistics from the National Prosecution Authority show that conviction rates are increasing tell you this year the conviction rate for rape cases reported to senses is around 74 percent 7 years ago it was 61 percent most teachers are less centers are linked to sexual offenses courts so these numbers suggest that as the model is rolled out further it is helping to get more convictions but and it's a big but these convictions are only measured out the cases where the trial actually started in cold. Naima Abrams has worked in gender based violence for more than 20 years she's at South Africa's medical research council so maybe RINGBACK a service offered that's important to police do not go further than just being documented as a crime and being a statistic and they for what their national impi a Das they will make sure they can fiction the right according to the number that has caught the prosecuting process and not the number of cases reported or the number of charges that has been so it became clear when talking to people in South Africa that they think there needs to be a wider range of success measures because focusing only on conviction rates means the National Prosecution Authority often drops cases that won't help them reach their targets this leads lots of survivors with no sense of justice at all so a case where they think the witness is a weak with noise which invariably poor woman or man with poor mental health when I do not get the charms of the cases being I think if I had to take it further to the prosecutor. Process overall do you think the the truth is Alison says and the Sexual Offenses caught are having a positive impact we know that if women are just validated and they are believed that it makes a difference for women in their experience so. I think we need to think about the. Way Maybe in the future that we do not necessarily expect that it's only be to improve. A prosecution we need to think about what is a woman want what supporters they want that we need to think about I guess is what is justice to women it's not always a puzzle it's often it's actually just been believed a respected. I was told about other challenges today giving so many staff specialized training costs a lot and not everyone across the country has access to services like these yet one way of getting around this is to adapt existing courts rather than building new ones from scratch. The Department of Justice has been sharing what is learnt the achievements and the challenges with governments from Chile and Namibia on the one stop model is also used in other countries such as Malawi Rwanda and Ethiopia. It's always going to be hard to get convictions just because of the nature of the crime but this system does seem to be helping among thing I've really got from speaking to women in South Africa was that justice isn't just about convictions it's about the way you treated when you've been right and thinking about my friend I can't help wondering whether this kind of support might have changed things for her. That's it for this week thank you for listening We'll be back next week with more solutions and people trying to fix the world if you can't wait for them then check out our pod cast last month we went to Madrid to find out how protection dogs are helping women who've left abusive partners but for now from all of us here goodbye . This is the b.b.c. World Service and 9 with news of the next world big club Here's Harriet Gilbert's a lakeside property in a forested area just outside Bolin is the setting for our next book visitation by the German writer Jenny up and back no way the house is a knot of all the stories that are leaving food this place is a chain of owners of loving happy memories and of terrible dark tragedies for 2 minutes she confused offend beneath her shoes then he takes off her shoes for ever and goes to stand on the board to be sought I notice that the book is dedicated to Doris Cup plan is there any connection there is couple and was the girl I'll be talking to best selling author Jenny Aplin Bank last of all the name of the girl herself is taking back the name no one will ever again call her by World big club at b.b.c. World Service dot com slash world pick up. Mary love what was more than the wife of and 20 love was the man who named oxygen in an age when science was almost a closed book to women she was her husband's collaborator in the lab as skills were invaluable to him perhaps most of all her ability to read and translate scientific words written in English I'm Philip Ball and in discovery after the b.b.c. News I'll be telling the science story of the remarkable mad am lab was yay b.b.c. News I'm John Shea there's been scathing criticism of a compromise deal reached at the u.n. Climate summit in Madrid delegates and environmental campaigners called it an utter failure blaming some of the most polluting nations for holding back decisive action the marathon talks only agreed that wealthier nations would come up with more ambitious plans to customizations by the end of next year. Reports from France so the authorities are extraditing to Argentina a former policeman accused of torture and murder during the military dictatorship which ended in 1903 Mario Sandoval was arrested on Biden's day. The president of Zambia go longer who says his government has asked the United States to withdraw its ambassador after the diplomat criticized the jailing of 2 men for being in a gay relationship Daniel Foote said he was horrified when the man was sentenced to 15 years in prison the u.s. Envoy to North Korea is due to meet the South Korean president shortly to discuss ways to halt rising tensions between Pyongyang and Washington Steven bigan arrived in Seoul just hours after North Korea said it had conducted another successful rocket engine test a study published in the medical journal The Lancet warns that an increasing number of low income countries are facing both under-nutrition and obesity similar Taney Asli sometimes even in the same family the researchers say this double burden of malnutrition could have affects for generations to come anti-government protesters in the Lebanese capital Beirut have again clashed with the security forces protesters threw bottles and fireworks at police officers who responded with tear gas and water cannon and scientist in Indonesia finally been able to examine rock debris on the sea floor around the volcanic island of Krakatau which collapsed a year ago part of the island slid into the ocean after an eruption triggering a tsunami b.b.c. News I'm Philip Ball and today on Discovery from the b.b.c. I'm here with another story from the history of science today the remarkable man damn love what you. It was meant to be a portrait of a great scientist but the painting didn't quite turn out that way. Here is the man himself elegantly be when writing at his table with his experimental glass outrated in front of him with a figure who dominates the painting is not the scientist but his wife she leans over him her wig by far the more exuberant her voluminous white dress out shining her husband's somber black in looks up at her adoringly perhaps a little anxiously watch she is the one who's cool mildly amused but. Looks out of the canvas at the viewer and her expression tells us who is really in charge this is the French chemist and twang. And his wife and polls are level as you say painted in 788 by the most distinguished artist in France at that time Jack Louis Daveed and what a time that was it was the best and worst of times in just a few years Daveed a supporter of the French Revolution was doing very well for himself and One Love Was he a meanwhile was dead. Beheaded at the guillotine during the turmoil we now call the Tara and his wife. Just take a look at Daveed portrayed and you sense that Mary live was Yea was a survivor jailed and humiliated she wasn't going to succumb to the revolutionaries he organized her husband's notes and memoirs helping to ensure his legacy as one of the greatest chemists in history then she left for England. Was a formidable figure in an age when science was almost a closed book to women she was her husband's collaborator in the lab and in the library her skills were invaluable to him perhaps most of all her ability to read and translate as well as to understand and criticize scientific works written in English Barry Lavoisier is translation work reminds us that as modern science was taking shape in the late 18th century it lacked any universal language it might be written in French or English in German Italian Russian Latin in science has always depended on communication and communication between nations was becoming ever more vital scientists as they would later be called had to navigate many tongues and the skills of someone like Mary love was a were indispensable. Mary was just 13 years old when in $771.00 her father Jack poles are a senior partner in a firm of tax collectors needed to marry her off fast a baronet was insisting to him that his daughter be wed to the Baronesses 50 year old brother Mary was having none of it calling the man a fool and ogre. But it was hard to deny a baronet. A father's hesitation began to threaten his position with the tax company. There was a solution though he couldn't marry the old nobleman if she was already married and her father had just the right person in mind a dashing and rather brilliant young man in the tax company called Antwan laugh was it was he agreed it was all hastily arranged and in a grand ceremony in December 17th 71 the bond was made. And 20 had already made a name for himself because as well as being a tax collector he studied chemistry in those days science was conducted as often as not by men who had other jobs left studies got him elected to the French Academy of Sciences and just 25 years of age. In the $770.00 s. He conducted his most brilliant work figuring out how materials right would burn the general view was that they release a mysterious substance called Flood just and that was said to be why a log on the fire gets lighter as it goes up in flames because the flick just in is released not serviceable avoids yea for one thing when metals are heated in air they don't get lighter but heavier. Argued that this is because they combine with a component of the air a gas he named oxygen in the 780 s. Used his oxygen theory to construct a whole new framework for chemistry he clarified what a chemical element is a substance he said that can't be reduced to anything simpler and he introduced the modern naming system that means chemical equations can be written in a universal language understood all over the world. Set all this out in a 789 book that laid the basis for the future of chemistry. Barry powers as marriage to a was a good match from the start rather unusually for the times they seem to like each other now relive was a was smart and perceptive and in a later age should surely have been a professional scientist herself she didn't stand back demurely while her brilliant husband worked away in the lab she got in there with him she learned chemistry herself kept notes of his results and made sketches of his lab and equipment putting to novel but excellent use the training in drawing that was considered an important part of any well to do girls' education but perhaps the greatest boost Mary gave to and one of his fellow chemists was in keeping them up to date on what others were doing across lam on the English Channel and one of was it wasn't the only one trying to work out the chemistry of Aaron combustion and others were on the oxygen to Sun such as the English chemist Joseph Priestley had even isolated pure oxygen already and had seen that flames burn more brightly in it. But he didn't interpret it that way for precisely what love was he a cold oxygen gas was different just decay did air and that it had its fluid just and removed so that it was eager to recoup it from a burning substance. These simple tiniest studies lead chemist even today to debate who can really be considered the discoverer of oxygen but the ambitious wanted to stay ahead of the game and needed to know what his rivals were up to he could barely read English though and he relied on his wife to translate papers in that language that helped him banished register and replace it with his oxygen theory was. The revolutionary ever affluent tax collectors were considered enemies of the people who were. To make it worse had also worked for Louis the 16th government in a commission on gunpowder in 7903 it was branded a traitor to the state and sentenced to death. Visited her husband daily in prison and petitioned for his release but on the 8th of May 794 and one went to the gifts. In a terribly cruel twist of fate her father was executed on the same day it's often said although probably apocryphally the when and scientific accomplishments were held up as a reason to spare him the head of a tribe you know replied that the Republic has no need of savants. The sentiment though seems true enough people had had enough of experts women are almost invisible in many accounts of science in the 18th an early 19th centuries but that doesn't mean they were absent from its day to day practice I spoke to historian of science Patricia far of the University of Cambridge about the largely unrecognized contribution that women like Mary Lou foresee a made to the early days of modern science the 1st thing she did after they got married was to learn English because she wanted to be able to translate all the chemical books and papers that were being published in England into French so that he could understand them and conversely she wanted to translate his work into English so that his ideas could be spread further around the world because and one of the 8 didn't speak he didn't speak English and one thing she did which I really admire is that she translated a paper by an Irish chemist into French and she was race Nicky she put little footnotes in which actually were criticising the results of this Irish chemist had reached clearly women were excluded from the formal practice of science to the universities and so forth but I have a sense also that there was preconception prejudice really about women's ability to do science that also excluded them there was I think their position was very different in France from what it was in England in England basically social gathering split into 2 groups there were groups of men and the groups of women in France the situation was very different and there were very many scientific men in Paris and throughout France who had wives who worked with them as collaborators as partners they weren't regarded as equals they were regarded as fulfilling complementary roles so while of was he was carrying out the experiments he was putting his name on all the books her role worst. Who organized the supplies of the tree to take notes during the experiments to write the experiments to do the translation and she also provided all the illustrations of a ton of us in his book and the illustrations were absolutely crucial because at the center of all of us is work lay this idea of precision of accuracy of quantity and so when of was seeing Drew these instruments she had to draw them very very accurately and she sort of visually took them to bits so you could see the insides as well as the out sites and that meant that when one of us is book arrived in Berlin or in London or in Philadelphia that any chemist there could see what of us he had done could build exactly the same instruments as he had done and obtain the same results and it was more real of r.c.a. Who ensured that that was possible so she played a key role in disseminating the ideas that he had put his name to I want to talk a little bit about the particular situation that the live was with were facing when they were doing this work in the run up to the revolution with these what must have been extraordinary so from tensions around what was it like before the revolution of 7989 Love was really himself had a relatively radical approach by the standards of the time although he earned his living as a tax collector that was you you bought the right to collect taxes on behalf of the Crown he instituted lots of reforms so for example he he tried to introduce a sort of sickness benefit scheme to reform the street lighting of the drainage systems I mean those were his passions so he wasn't some sort of old fashioned arest across the spot he was very very interested in establishing fairer conditions for the people that work for him I suppose and one's fate. It is a reflection of the downside of being so socially and politically involved it can be hazardous especially in $171902.00 during the reign of terror there were gangs of looters swarming the street anything that had any remote suggestion with the old regime or with royalty was being confiscated or all of that of was years possessions it was all looted and I think perhaps the worst thing of all was that you couldn't trust anybody everybody was informing on everybody else and then it seems that the last straw was that there was another revolutionary who was also interested in science and chemistry a man called Murat and love was CIA had absolutely slated one of his scientific papers so in revenge Morat denounced school of r.c.a. And that was apparently why love was he was sent to the guillotine goodness me there are plenty of disputes and happen in science but they don't usually end with one party having their head dropped off this is fortunately true but after the revolution and after love was his death a lot of his friends got together and tried to promote him and they came out with the label that he still known by that love was yours chemistry was as revolutionary as the revolution itself and he worked incredibly hard he used to do 3 hours of chemistry in the morning and then he went off and did all the business work and then in the evening he did another 3 hours in the laboratory and the day that he really looked forward to every week was Saturdays and I'm really fussy writes about that Saturday was the day that all his friends came and the students came and she uses the word we we all went down to the report actually sat there and we chatted over lunch and we discussed the ideas that were going to be in his book and it is that we is missing from the standard account in the history of science of what happened at this period and after do you think that in order to. Really recognize and acknowledge the kind of work that women like Marie Laveau say we're doing we need a different way to talk about the history of science if you look at the ideology of science it is teamwork a scientific result is not created by one single man or one single woman science it's all about collaboration cooperation if you look at a modern scientific paper has about 20 names at the top but looking back over the past it's much more tempting it's much more appealing to see history in terms of big geniuses great discoverers and you know if you're considering the whole of science more realistically then you need to think of all these people they're often called Invisible assistants the people who actually do the work the people who do the illustrations who do the translation Marial of us it did some marvelous sketches 2 of which have survived a Cornell University and they show what actually is happening in the laboratory and of what ca isn't doing anything of was is standing there like a stage director he's just waving everybody else around and there's a poor guy who's lugging equipment from one place to the other there's a man who's sitting in a rubberized suit pedaling a travel up and down so they can measure all the oxygen on the carbon dioxide he's the guys really doing the work and then Madame revising is sitting on a chair it's interesting she's sitting on a chair at the side in exactly the same posture that I am to one of us CIA has got into its portrait so she's sitting there and she's writing down all the experimental nights and love was years notebooks of got her writing all over them so she really played a central role in the day to day practice of the experimentation after. Execution Mary was briefly imprisoned but her spirit was undiminished although now bankrupt he recovered her husband's confiscated books edited his notes and got them published a decade after his death. Eventually however she knew that revolutionary France was no place for her she left for England where she met and married the intrepid adventurer and physicist Benjamin Thomson Count Rumford who co-founded the Royal Institution in London in 171009 to bring science to the public but the marriage wasn't happy and didn't last it said that after one argument she went around his garden pouring boiling water on his flowers the fact that she kept her 1st husband's name probably tells us where her affections lay she returned to France dying in Paris in 836 at the age of 78 the role that Marie Laveau was a played as a translator of scientific works is one frequently underestimated in the history of science these days pretty much anyone entering science is expected to learn English but it hasn't always been that way and there's a great deal of potentially valuable research dating back 100 years or more that is only available in German Russian Japanese Chinese to find out about the importance of scientific translation in the past and how it features today I spoke to historian of science Michael Gordon of Princeton University. Why didn't and when love was the ace speak and read English himself there was actually really no need for him to do so at the time that he's writing there are basically 2 international languages across Europe there's Latin and there's French and there's an expectation that most people who are involved in this republic of letters or scholarly interchange knows one of those 2 languages well enough to communicate so the people like Priestley that love was a gazin dialogue with he's in dialogue with in French and he assumes that everything that's important will eventually filter to him so it's really the reverse of what we see today yes that's exactly the situation that we have at present inverted and even more strongly because while love was you knew that at least there were other languages the contemporary angle of phone native speaking scientist just assumes everything will be born in English and doesn't have to even be translated into it today of course or at least at the moment English has become pretty much the universal language of science when I started studying chemistry some years ago it was suggested to me that it be quite handy to know German as well so how recent was it that English became the universal language of science that depends on how you define universal but no matter how you define it the answer is more recent than you think by about 1950 English accounted for roughly 50 percent of publications in the natural sciences that's more than any other particular language and the 2nd at that point was Russian with about 20 percent but it is still far from universal it's not until the 1970 s. That you see a real takeoff in English and a real decline in Russian German and French to the point that English is now above 90 percent of publications in the elite natural sciences is it possible to identify why that happened I mean I know that at the start of the 20th century one might imagine that German might become the universal language of science and that the lead when perhaps this is spent with the wars had something to do with it but were there other factors at play. Yes and yes the wars did have something to do with it and there were other factors at play in about 880 which is the 1st period for which we have reasonably good data if you look at publication of the sciences it's basically a 3rd in English a 3rd in French and a 3rd in German that starts to destabilize at the very beginning of the 20th century and what you start to see is a decline in French a mild growth in English which is largely related to the expansion of the American scientific establishment which begins before World War One and a really rapid expansion of the German establishment so if we were to meet in 1900 and I told you there would be one language of science in the year 2000 you would 1st of all laugh at me and say that's impossible and then if you did agree that that would be the case you'd bet it was German and so the question is not so much what happens to English but what happened to German and German goes through a series of transformations which are nothing short of catastrophic in terms of its position with respect to the sciences but they start with World War One because of very strong nationalist antagonisms across all rounds of culture and politics there's a boycott initiated by the French the Belgians the Americans and the British against German and Austrian academics and that produces a significant hit on the German language in that fewer people publish in those journals who are not native speakers of those languages fewer people choose to read that material and fewer students go to study and so they don't develop the kind of familiarity with the language that a post-doctoral tore in Berlin or Frankfurt would have given you so that's a very serious phenomenon that begins the German starts to recover and then the Nazi period settles in in 1933 the effect of that is twofold there's a large emigration of scientists principally in the physical sciences mostly Jewish some socialist some just political who wanted to be out and that means those people who are some of the elite of the elite move principally to the u.k. . In the us and they end up speaking English so that's what the client at the elite level and then there's a further decline The happens because of visa restrictions that are imposed by the Nazi regime so that fewer people end up going to study in Germany and that ends up breaking a series of interconnected scholarly networks which after World War 2 are reconstructed but they're reconstructed centered around New York San Francisco Boston Princeton and not around Frankfurt cologne you know I wonder whether now that we do seem to have a pretty universal language of science English whether there is some risk of something being lost in that yes and I think there's 2 losses you can look at one is the loss of the kind of richness a language has when a native speaker someone who's flew into uses it in all of its full registers a kind of flattening of the language to make it easier to parse quickly and also easier to write for a non-native speaker and that effect in English is quite strong so that's one loss the other loss all around the world people are studying science there's a huge amount of potential from all walks of life but as they get further and further on English becomes more and more essential in their training they needed to read the advanced textbooks they need it for graduate study and for conferences and so at a certain point someone who might be very gifted in the sciences has to drop out because they're just not gifted linguistically and can't handle the language and the situation today is such that if you just don't have a facility in English you can't succeed in science that's a loss we're never going to see do you think we can take it for granted today that English will remain the universal language of science it's always very dangerous to ask a historian about the future we're quite bad at it but I'll give you my best shot of all the Anglo phone countries were to somehow vanish away tomorrow English would still be the dominant language of science because in order to learn any. Science up to the point we were yesterday you would need to have English and you saw this in Europe when Latin started to lose its hold because of the Protestant Reformation it was still 2 centuries before vernacular languages broke into that the stranglehold Latin had on scholarly discourse so for the conceivable intermediate future it seems hard to imagine that something would displace English but in the long run the general tendency of history is towards change and I think that the equilibrium we're in now is a strange one I don't think it's likely that English will be displaced by a single next language in say a century and a half it's much more likely that we would return to a 19th century model where there were 3 languages and the languages you could imagine would probably be still English probably something like Mandarin and maybe something like Portuguese or Spanish in science language battles you've never actually made a discovery until you've communicated it so that others can understand it who deserves priority for the discovery of oxygen is disputed because I'm torn of what Yay Joseph Priestley and up as you different would to describe what I saw. In how translating and interpret ing of foreign papacy and scientific illustration was about right of what he played a key role in the way chemistry underwent a revolution in the late 18th century Frons. Today we can see that but it wasn't always so the Chemistry Nobel laureate Roald Hoffman has said but Madam Love Was he a moved in the company of scientists and good ones at that the sadness that comes over me is that they did not recognise her abilities. Did indeed move in the company of what we today call scientists because she was one of them. This is the b.b.c. World Service and this month's World questions comes from I'm Anita and Albion remaining as the country marks 30 years since the fall of the communist regime it's now one of the issues fastest growing economies but is still plagued by corruption and rural poverty remain in people tell us what they think needs to change the world questions in bicker rest at b.b.c. World Service dot com. And. It's science in action with Bill and he ends one see scientists from around the world in San Francisco to debate the latest developments in volcanoes and earthquakes global warming oceans ice caps the past and the future of our planet. By each $1.00 and $2.00 this is the b.b.c. World Service the world's radio station. Hello I'm Russell Padmore this is well business report on the b.b.c. World Service Well North America enjoys the last 1000 of Sunday a new business week is already underway in Asia where China has been measuring the value of a new deal to end its trade war with the u.s. But is the Chinese commitment to buy much more from American farmers achievable it would mean more corn and wheat than we've ever export of before we will get all headline crazy about the 40 or $50000000000.00 actually seeing it play out is going to be a much different story suddenly this math just doesn't work the bolt at the French automotive company p.s.a. Makes this week amid expectations it will finalize a merger with fee at Chrysler on the world's oldest central bank is set to move Sweden away from negative interest rates more on that and other developments but 1st let's get a bulletin all the latest world news. B.b.c. News I'm John Shea there's been scathing criticism of a compromise deal reached at the u.n. Climate summit in Madrid delegates and environmental campaigners called as an art of failure blaming some of the most polluting nations for holding back decisive action the marathon talks only agreed that wealthier nations would come up with more ambitious plans to consummation by the end of next year may Bouvier is the executive director of the Climate Campaign Group $350.00 dot org This year we've seen unprecedented amount of action on the streets 7 and a half 1000000 young people rose up last September calling for action and the gap between what they are calling for and what the science that said so clearly and what happened at the tax and the dread and what politicians are willing to deliver is only getting wider the u.s. Envoy to North Korea is due to meet the South Korean president shortly to discuss ways to hold rising tensions between Pyongyang and Washington or pick the reports Steven bacon arrives in Seoul as Pyongyang ramps up the pressure on Washington to come up with a deal before it's yet a deadline it's unclear whether Mr Beacon will meet with North Korean officials at the border the trip has led to speculation that he might try to salvage Nicolas.