A scientist - up by the bootstraps

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, scientists

Psyche is asteroid #16, the 16th to be found, discovered in 1852. It's the largest metal-rich asteroid, so intriguing that NASA, in a project initiated and led by geologist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, intends to send a spacecraft to have a close look. No collision is intended! The hammer is a metaphor for the actual instruments that will be used (next paragraph).

Psyche is about 226 km (140 miles) in average diameter. The instruments that will peer at and into the asteroid include a magnetometer, a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, and a dual-camera multi-spectral imager. All for just under a billion dollars. Launch was initially set for this year, but is delayed a year while an instrument that was delayed is finished and tested.

Dr. Elkins-Tanton's memoir A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman outlines the paths that led her to a scientific career and sufficient prominence to become a Principal Investigator (PI) on a NASA mission.

She writes of several threads: childhood and growing up but having different interests from many others;  a very brief and concealing sideswipe at the childhood sexual abuse she suffered; education at MIT and elsewhere, where she was sometimes informed flatly that she didn't belong and was there "on sufferance"; a courtship, marriage, childbirth, and breakup (fortunately not a bitter one but any divorce is traumatic); renewed love with a more compatible husband; a growing career dogged by continued symptoms of the "glass ceiling"; field work in Russia, where they are openly dismissive of women in science; building a leadership-facilitation business with her husband and her son; growing leadership roles, one of which led to the Psyche mission with NASA; and her growing leadership in fostering a scientific culture that is more welcoming of women and others formerly left out.

If you didn't just think or say, "Wow!", I don't know what it takes to impress you. For myself, I am overwhelmed. This is one admirable woman and a scientific rock star. For me to write much more than this would be a disservice. Get the book!