We wished to think cops communication for sponsoring this venules been used in the college of science. The presentation will last one hour including questions and answers please hold the questions to the and. Immediately following the session the authors will autograph books at the bookstore tent on the of all bouffe 141. Books are available for purchase at this location. The of the will be 20 minutes late to signing books with a 20 minute interview with cspan. Text friend 52 04 14 book. I feel like i am in car talk. [laughter] your gift makes a difference to keep the program free of charge with critical literacy programs in our community. If at of respect for fellow audience members i urge you to turn off yourself alone and it is my pleasure to introduce the two authors we have here with us known for a variety of books that i think was reversed one comment i originally a New York Times reporter of psychology and somehow went to the dark side laugh laugh and she has a National Science board publicservice award for and as a microbiologist working with nasa general in the first book that she wrote was called cured as a fellow of the institute she works for the of your times, l. A. Times and slate. What they probably dont know is the community that you live in is indebted in the sciences and astronomy and the department was working at the moon so the Apollo Mission could land safely in the cameras are now mapping mars. And we also have a tradition we have a famous event going on that is trying to catch and destroyed in the Deputy Director this day big deal and another woman from the Planetary Sciences department as a champion of change by the white house it is my pleasure to have you both here with the books you have written. So lets just art with a broad observation for aboard the view decided to write not about this thing go woman but an entity, or enterprise and in fact, the enterprise that you both with wrote about was and innovation and improbable to happen at the time with the computers at j. P. Hill or the women at harvard. So how do these innovations come about . Water the results . Because i want you to pick whenever you want. Number three is a tremendous amount of racism and number four that is important what is going on todays special mature book these with the edward koch and obsolescence the plant from computers to programmers and how much of that is happening with artificial intelligence. So what would you like to talk about . [laughter] so yes. At harvard and they got in at the very beginning of the science of astrophysics. Before their project most astronomers were involved with mapping the stars in the service and navigation and and people thought they would never be able to figure out what the stars were made death because they were too far away. But once it became possible to spread out the starlight to look at the spectra instead of points of light, when it was possible to see what type of chemicals were in the stars and even learn something if about the movements of the stars. The real innovation that started the project was the ability to photograph the spectrum that required a lot of technological experience and henry draper and his wife decided to devote their lives to this project to figure out the taxonomy and right when they had it in order he died. He was only 45 in his wife was determined to see him is a dream realized she thought about and assistant but that was too difficult said she approached the director of the Harvard Observatory and said i will give you my personal fortune if youll do the work and in a mitt for my husband. Sheet tripled about the operating budget which freed him to hire a large Group Proposal that is how it started. So similar the women at the j. P. L. Or jet Propulsion Laboratory were first called computers they were women to computed and were very good at math. So they started in the late 30s and of laboratory in pasadena and i will lead met when i first heard of them i assumed the work would be clerical and and not really involved in the research they were a part of indecorous arrears would be short if so that was my assumption so actually win the opposite was true and they worked there 40 or 50 years one of them still works there today they were exceptional at math and hired at a time when it was very difficult for a woman to find a job in the sciences. There and not very options for those interested in the field so to come together to be a group of women met quite a bit because it went from being the only woman in the math and science class to be a part to the of this elite group that the laboratory. In the beginning sh it change so much but in the beginning they are working on early weaponry the corporate and missile and a sergeant smaller surfacetosurface missile and this involves incredible calculus, a long hours and takes an entire day to calculate a symbol trajectory but at the same time they are looking at the potential of different rocket propellants the real focus and lowest is Space Exploration nbc that in the 1950s when they start adapting the calculations and start to applying them to what will be the First American satellite. I was surprised to learn how that came to me we heard about sputnik but one that was designed by using of calculations using the scaleddown version by doing the calculations with of missiles they could create a staged system of rocketry they launched jupiters see and breaks all records raises 3,335 miles into the air and it could have launched the first satellite of fullyear ahead of sputnik but it was played down with sandbags weighed down with sandbags but to hear the bitterness and the inter that they should have been able to launch the first satellite. But not until sputnik was launched then second sputnik was launched that eisenhower finally gave the group the goahead a plunge in 90 they launched in 1958 that is one of many innovations in one of the most surprising for me to learn about then later things change so much they go from being computers to the first computer programmers at the lab and that is due to a woman named helen their longtime supervisor and her push to bring them early training and from there they went on to work on an incredible number of missions. In the case of harvard it was somebody giving money order j. Plo or nasa. I want to answer your third question from before about the adl of the sexes and because she also hit on it but even now there are people who feel whenever these women were doing it could not be that important because it was done by women. There was a full professor in harvard one that read my book as a technical expert in said she only saw to it was a cute and point story and quaint but did not realize they were doing science. Of how these things happen and it was not simple or menial it was difficult. So all round of world of photography of the heavens. The women were given a glass plates the size of eight by 10 photostat being the images of the sky. And actually making discoveries. So the reason why the group was that all women a woman named macy was made a supervisor of the group was a big deal to have a woman as the head of the important section the lab was still small if you know, anything about the history of the lab was basically founded by crazy people who love to fire rockets and creates havoc so they saw her as the mother figure so they put trusted in her so even though she received applications from bin and women but she literally hire women. Her thinking was that she wanted to create a Cohesive Group in wanted it to feel like a family she was worried if she hired then there would not listen to her simply because she was a woman. Coming from all over the country many had advanced degrees when of the first africanamerican and hired in a technical position having a degree in Chemical Engineering today to be hired as an engineer. The first woman to work there was the wives and sisters and daughters of the astronomers that were roped into the calculation work there was a logical next up to hire women from outside the university to continue the work. So in some ways in both cases it was accidental because of a particular individual or circumstance. Yes. Certainly heart is not someone thinks of as being open to women in the 18 eighties. But the director was a big believer in Higher Education for women. So those who devoted themselves because of their age that going to college would cause the of reproductive organs to atrophy laugh laugh you laugh. And it shouldnt be noted that the women were a bargain. They were exceptionally skilled but could be paid quite a bit less so another thing that is important to note that the women at harvard, their observations for extraordinary. That women have done it before he did. Key use the discovery of andrea day levitt to bolster his claim that there were galaxies beyond the milky way. Then denims all based on the discovery 1908. So i will poll the business of absence lessons because the folks that you wrote about have been net jpl for ever had careers of 40 years or more enduring those careers to be a computer went away because computers came on board. So how did they deal with those transitions . Is very unique to their group because those who worked as computers were mostly for when i am came along so the fact that they were able to remain with the same female supervisor is quite exceptional and can be attributed to the culture given sole many opportunities that there is a real feeling that they need to get up to speed and many were hesitant that there were machines that could not be trusted and that they adopt ibm computers so much later than other industries that there was a fear so the women will capitalize on this by not being afraid and to be on the verge of falling this especially in the mid60s with a history of computing it is such an incredible time for i am computers i am computers of whiff calculations but yet they are still subject to those gender norms that the time so there are beauty contest. [laughter] at the same time they are exceptional computer programmers they are competing in the misguided missile contest and the queen of airspace. [laughter] i have heard john glenn refused to go to space unless one of the computers figured the trajectory. That was not in the movie vat nasa did not trust the Machine Computers he wanted a human computer to do the calculations. Sow o so how did both of you to do all kinds of interesting things . I came across this topic the most random way you could decide to research a book in all have to do with a baby names. Started in 2010 my husband and i had just moved to boston and i was pregnant with my first child in we could not agree on any baby name. And my husband suggested the name elenore francis when it first heard the name i was not sure because it is an oldfashioned name so i google the name and the first person to come up in my search was a woman named eleanor francis. I remember so vividly even now. To be filled with the picture of her taken in the 60s excepting in aboard that nasa and i was completely struck by it i had no idea that women worked at nasa at this time. So i became obsessed with learning more i contacted the archives that jpl and learned she was one of large group of women and ultimately a conceit all of the wonderful images in photographs at the lab and as distinct as they were they had so few names in the photograph with no contact intermission and it struck me because it is the same group of women working over decades that the laboratory. So i became the assessed not knowing it was going to be a book so it is a word of passion. So mine had no hope to interview them but i kind of like it that way. But i had learned about them in charge of the project to determine the expansion rate of the universe and she mentioned the name henry etta about 25 years ago. When i went to learn more i found she was working in the room full of women at harvard and that was the big surprise taiwans did to know more about them then i was surprised nobody had done that. It was such a good story that they went from these jobs being computers there were six in the beginning then the core stretched 20 at a time in because of their presence various women philanthropist supporting the black programs created a Fellowship Fund for women to work at harvard for one year then move onto another job in the observatory that help them to infiltrate all over the country with the new director came in and wanted to create the program of graduate education in astronomy the only fellowship money he had was this program for rural women. For women so the First Harvard ph. D. Went to cecilia who came to this country from england because she was told she had no future social got her ph. D. In the course of which the stars consisted mainly of hydrogen and other discovery not expected at the time the roughly david be the same proportions so the idea hydrogen was 1 million times more prevalent did not seem feasible and she was told to soft pedal that thought but it typically four years for the whole Astronomy Community to agree that it was mostly hydrogen she stated harvard retired career to become a full professor and chair of the department which you know, is a terrible job she did not want to be chair for very long. [laughter] wait until they become 18. [laughter] off so with one interview with these people making give you the phone number to shirley maclaine. There was an impact at the time in harvard to the point that what about this group of women or how did that influence the culture at jpl . Connected really did because this group of women working very closely with the engineers particularly on these Early Missions the first to the planets and to the moon they are responsible for so much of what is happening with the space ship design and the trajectory and retreat closely with the of pensioners that they make the problems and we solve them. [laughter] so if it is interesting to me because those who were working with them said howard did you feel about this . Du feel they were given a raw deal . Many thought that they were and it wasnt fair if they were computers or paid less so we can see even in the 50s and 60s say are included as a coauthor and this is very unusual at the time for women to be included this way precut made a big difference because it helped the longevity of their careers in 19609 we see a huge shift because the women are finally made engineers for commitment so much to them to finally be given that recognition that they deserve and at this point she decides she wants to increase the numbers of the group but was to bring in even more it is not easy to do because this time most engineering schools are closed to women so when cal tech opened the doors it only admitted three women into the program so she decides to get around this to higher been and who have degrees in mathematics training them in the lab and encouraging them to go to night school for engineering. Okay well i would like at this point to open the floor to everybody in the room. And i am sure that our office he will be interested in your questions. If not i have my own questions. If you do you have to go to the microphone right over there. Please. How did world war ii affect what was going on in caltech and the loss of then to the war effort . It affected it quite a bit. Not only because the lab received its first big contract because of world war ii. At that time the group is working on something called jet assisted takeoff. This idea of a rocket plane. So they were putting rockets on his light fixed wing aircraft. And world war ii but really the First Investment in Rocket Research in this country and it is a very big dell because at that time Rocket Science was considered this in science. It was not something that serious scientists or engineers really want to be associated with. So to have that funding was just the basis of how the jet Propulsion Laboratory forms. And then of course, as the years go on, we see that funding coming in the late 1930s and then by the mid1940s men are in scarce supply to be hired as computers. And it doesnt make such a difference at jpl where they were not interested in hiring men in that group anyway but it does make a difference and influence the number of women that were hired as other nasa centers in particular. World war ii also had a big effect at harvard also. All of the operators several of the women wound up teaching celestial navigation. That became an Important Role for them. Interested in more detail with his computers were computing. Acing what it is they were using the integration to solve differential equations for trajectories below that there were methods they were using. Simpsons role . And today set up where they just given this sheet is a calculate these arithmetic calculations . Im afraid i cannot going to quite the detail about the differential equations that they use. For the methods they use. There was only doing the strength of differential equations and it was in the beginning, it was a lot that they were given many of these early equations they were plugging in numbers. So they were adapting the equations as they went. It was sort of like a spreadsheet as they were putting these numbers in. Then of course the work change quite a bit later. So it is funny because i actually originally included a lot of these equations in my first draft of the manuscript. And my editor felt like nobody wants to see those. [laughter] i do. They got taken off and now i wish they had been in there so i can show you a peek at them. Todays pencil and paper or calculators . These pencil and paper. They also had calculators, these large bulky desk calculators but i was surprised at how little they could do. I mean it was kind of shocking that youre such a big machine but it can really only do basic addition and subtraction. Later models to do square roots and those were very prized. Actually they had a number of races that they did for the square root calculators. And helen frequently run those races. One those races. Here comes somebody else. This is another world war ii question. A lot have the code breakers for the project im just wondering if that group of women or because there were a lot of women on that project if it had any influence on the selection of women for the projects that you have been writing about. Or if there is any communication between them. So i think that the fact that you have women in these roles, its only illustrates the fact that there werent very many men who were available. There certainly wasnt communication between the groups at all. But it is interesting that you have these groups of women that really rose at that time. And so many of them just lost their jobs. It is unique when you find women like this that had decades of contributions. I think there is also a sense that women have a better ability to discern patterns. I dont think that has been proven but there is certainly a perception that it is the case. Even the first recognized American Woman astronomer, she felt that the hand that held the needle also helped the eye of the telescope. So in both of your books, in one book obviously people that are alive and another book people are dead. But which, did you sort of connect with one of the particular women in your books and why we if that is the case. I certainly did. I worried at the beginning if i could bring them to life. Because none of them work. And i did not know going into it what i would find at harvard. But fortunately the records are wonderfully full. And all of the correspondence has been saved. So i can really get their voices through letters and one of them who created the classification system that is still used today, she was a lifelong e i was brought two boxes labeled ms. Cannons diaries. And sure enough they were just full of some of them very feminine leather bound volumes with lock and key and others just notebooks. But they stretched from her 20s to her 70s. That was a great source. And it made me feel i knew her the best. It is hard for me to pick favorites. Of course because either a real woman who i just feel i still feel so privileged to got to meet them and spend time with them and many of them i do consider me . I dont know if youve struggled with this at all but it was difficult for me learning all these personal details about them. I really wondered how much i should put in the book. I did not want to detract from the work that they did as scientists. I particularly appreciated findlay. She is probably one of my favorites. She not only had such an incredible career, she still worked and she was hired in 1958 by macy roberts. And she has worked there for 59 years. She is still in the lab today. She is nasas longestserving female employee. And i was particularly struck when i spoke with her not only about all the achievements she had and she has worked on such an incredible number of missions from these first planetary and Lunar Missions to voyager, to mars rovers. And at the same time she was very open about wanting to have her personal experiences in the book. Particularly the loss of her first child. And it is such a tender moment i was really worried about how she would feel about seeing it in the book. And she felt very strongly that this was not an issue. That must women feel open about and she wanted to included in there. So just getting to know her and getting to record her stories was so important to me. And especially because she, her story is a bit disappointing. And 2004, nasa decided that if you do not have an advanced degree you cannot hold the title of engineer. So even though shed gone from being a computer and 58 to the receiving the title of engineer in 1969, actually took that away from her in 2004. And it has been very disappointing for her. It is something that i really was hoping that we would be able to change. It has been very difficult to do so. But sue loves her job. She has no plans of retiring. And she is currently working on juno which is our mission to jupiter. We have already listened to your book on cd and enjoyed it very much. We have your book on the bookcase ready to go but we had our book club had a different book we had to finish first. [laughter] no pressure. I am curious to know if either of you or both of you found out something that was just a total surprise that you never anticipated encountering from these two groups. I can answer that and i will give you a moment to think. But it was that i think i already mentioned that all of the first graduate students were women. I hadnt put that together in the beginning. And realizing that that happened because of the earlier team of women was a wonderful surprise. That the graduate students all had to be recruited from schools like wellesley. It is such a hard question. There are so many points that we are really surprised when finding out these histories. But i guess i was really shocked to learn when i spoke with many of these women and many of the male engineers also how little enthusiasm they had for the early Lunar Missions. They really felt like it was boring, wiry spending effort going to this dead piece of rock when their plan is to explore . And you really actually see the effect of that because theyre working on both of these missions at the same time so theyre trying to get these cameras to apollo im sorry to the moon to find appropriate landing spots for apollo. And at the same time they are sending off these mariner spacecraft and so our first success in the space race is mariner to in 1962. The first interplanetary spacecraft to fly by venus. And at the same time that we were having these Successful Missions to venus, mars awe were just having very active failure in the early ranger missions. Which i trying to get these close up lunar images. And there are many reasons for this. Additionally lack of enthusiasm surprised me. And i think it did play a role. One thing that has been obviously talking from your books is that women and their history have been in the culture of these institutions for very long time. Why do you think it has taken so long for the general public to start realizing these histories as well . If you like 10 years ago this panel would have been unlikely if not impossible. I think the stories do not get told. So somebody has to get interested and care and bring it to the front again. I agree. I think it like your say before it is time. It is time for the stories to be told and especially for these particular women because youre seeing such a drop in the number of women pursuing Computer Science and i frequently talk about this statistics were in 1984 37 percent of bachelor degrees in Computer Science were awarded to women and today that number has dropped to 18 percent. And at the same time we are seeing a very stagnating interest in the number of women graduating from high school who want to pursue this as well. So having this story and realizing that women have always been in the forefront in these fields have always played a role in math and sciences is so critical. We certainly need his role models. And i would add that. They were always there but always just a few of them. So it was easy to think that women just do not do those jobs. And a lot of friends my age were actively discouraged from going into science. Because you know their brothers were the ones that were going to go to college and become scientists but it was not appropriate for girls. And that is changed so that is good progress. Let me just ask one question. I would just like to push a little bit on this on that particular question. Why do you think that there is all of a sudden a stagnation and interest by women in the stem fields . Do you have any sense of that based on your research . Unfortunately i dont think it is all of the setting. I think is a 20 year trend that has been hovering about 15 percent for women, High School Graduates that had this lack of interest. Where male High School Graduates it is right at about 45 percent and it has been on an incline. As for why there has been this drop in the number of degrees in Computer Science, there are a lot of theories about why this has happened and what we can do about it. But what i find really interesting is how some universities are particularly one school in southern california. They made really big changes in their curriculum and in the Research Opportunities that they present to students. And sitting there female Computer Science student to this conference in computing. And so they went from having only 12 percent graduates from their Computer Science program that were women to now is more than half. And that happened within about five years. So i think there certainly is a path that we can follow to improve those numbers. Kind of as a volunteer comment that nobody talked about this. I would encourage the t. V. Listeners, parents and kids if they might be listening to this, grandparents and greatgrandparents. Communicate with each other. Because i regret not communicating with my grandfathers and grandmothers they had an enormous amount of knowledge that i do not have because i did not talk to them. And my parents two. I just think if you know we may be in our own separate worlds and thats how that happens. But if you make a conscious effort, talk to each other. Tell them about what is going on in your life. And what happens 30, 40, 60 and 80 years ago. Yes. Okay so now, another important question to me anyway. You both well, i think you always got interested in writing. Since day one it was my understanding anyway. Even though i think some of your writing wasnt it doing i was a technical writer. The, what took you then they tell you to well both of you actually, to writing about science actually . I have always been very passionate about science. Ive always loved to write although i never consider myself a writer. I never thought there would be writing these books. I think it really comes from having a story that you feel so passionate about telling and just deciding that youre going to pursue that and make it happen. Kind of no matter what. That is certainly how i thought about rise of the rocket girl. I just felt so much that these Women Deserve the recognition. That they needed to have their stories told in a book. That it had to be everything about them. Their personal stories, how they shape the culture of the time. That is what really drove me. What was the question . [laughter] why are you a Science Writer . Thats right. Id certainly never heard that term growing up. Which is unfortunate because i wasted a lot of time changing majors and wondering what to do. And i got a job at a newspaper the year of the first earth day. And that gave me freedom to, i was writing for the womens pages. It really didnt matter what i was writing about. I had tremendous freedom. And because you know we still have the womens pages and i would just call them something else. But i was interviewing people, preparing for the first earth day. I was writing about pollution and conservation. And i did not learn the term science writing is about a year later. At the same time i attended a Public Lecture given by carl fagan. So before he was really famous and it was a lifechanging experience. In this particular book that you wrote, . I am sorry. I have a specific question about how you both went about getting these specific books published and in the works . Did you have to write a proposal . How did you work with your editor . Did you already have an editor and that whole process. Yes. I had to write a proposal. Even though i had a long track record with an editor. It still needed to have things spelled out. Pretty extensively. When the idea was accepted, so you have to do fairmont the research to write a proposal. And then i showed the book, should the book to the editor. Something i do not always do. But there was time pressure from the editor so i wanted to know as i went along that i was in the, going in the right direction as far as they were concerned. So it was similar for me. I had to do a lot of research before i wrote a book proposal. And it is funny because it is really a long. So Much Research he forgets that point. And a lot of that you dont know what is going to happen. So in 2013 i have this big reunion at jpl where berthold is when he works in computers back to the labs. And it was such a great inventive is so much fun to be there with them. To see the lab with them and i think being in that environment front memories back that might not have come back so easily. But i really did not have a book deal and i did not know if it would be a book at that point. It was really that event i think that made me feel like i have to make this happen. So i wrote the proposal and my editor had written a book about hiv and was not so excited about this very different book. But i was fortunate enough to have a lot of interest from other publishers. And find a good home for which i feel very fortunate about. So of all of the things that your books touch on, i mean i have these questions at the beginning. If you wanted the public to pick up on one in particular for, what in particular would you hope in addition to being a great story obviously, what in particular would you hope your book transmits or you would like our communities to get from it . I would like communities to realize the importance of telling true stories about science. Especially now. True stories in general. [laughter] [applause] so when there are intrinsically good stories, stories that you realize as soon as you hear about this, this is a great story. For anyone right that it is a great story. And when those stories can incorporate a lot of science, that is very appealing and i think very important and i feel very privileged to do this kind of work. I certainly agree with that. That is very well put. I guess i would also add that women have always been a part of this work from the beginning. Just to know that these are not unique individuals, these are parts of large groups of women who are working on this project and they have played a vital role in math and science from the early days. I also see my book, your book, described as a group of extraordinary women. And always want to saying well know it is, they were women doing work. And i do not think they would have described themselves as extraordinary. But they did have an extraordinary opportunity. The business of alternative facts. They used to get me to, used to get me in timeout when i was a little kid. [laughter] i am not sure why all of a sudden it is why dont you write a book about war what can we do to make science what it is . It is a discipline filled with facts and truth and has completed candid as it may be and as bizarre as truth may be in reality, so what is your opinion about why all of a sudden we are so stuck in a situation like you sort of related to right away . As you are reading between your books you started worrying about that. As we all know, it was a growing sector of the population who feels marginalized, feels being thought less of by an educated elite. And so discoveries being made, things that seem to most of us like facts are suddenly suspect. And i think the more revelation there is of science, not as a body of facts but as a discipline, a passion, activities pursued by people who are really interested in the world. The better and monitor appealing science sounds. One of the nicest things anybody ever said to me was i did not think i would be interested in the book about science. But i read your book and i liked it. [laughter] i guess i would add onto that. It is also so important that we portray scientists as just regular human beings. That are flawed people, they have no every, like all of us. And even though many of the people we have read about such pillars in their field are so well respected and are even famous in their scientific communities that they are just regular people who have you know their own Life Experiences that really shape what they do. I think it is so important to show scientists that way. Yes and they are so often portrayed as odd. [laughter] not that they arent odd sometimes. So what are the next books . Anything in mind . I do. I am working on a book right now. It is still early but it is about a group of female artists and animators that work at the walt disney studios. It has been such a pleasure for me because it is not only about their experiences there but also the technology that they help develop. That is great. I do not have another idea. [laughter] yet. Well, well see what happens. I had carried the idea for this book for about 25 years. And the book i did before that i had in mind for almost 40 years. So thought that maybe something will come to me doesnt seem realistic. [laughter] but i remain hopeful. Well, the record shows i want to thank you all for attending this session and for your support in the festival. Do not forget to become a all audience members are asked to vacate the venue quickly so that we can begin the next program and thank you so much to both of you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktv live coverage of the tucson festival of books continues from the campus of the university of arizona. It is a Beautiful Day here in tucson. It is about 90 degrees outside here. And t