Anomalous biography

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, oceanography, bathysphere, biographies

Naturalist William Beebe (1877, Brooklyn, NY – 1962, Simla, Trinidad) was already a noted scientist when he and Otis Barton made 35 descents using the bathysphere, designed by Barton. Funding was mostly provided by The National Geographic Society.

The descents were made to increasing depths as Beebe and Barton and the diving crew gained confidence in the equipment. The deepest descent, on August 15, 1934, reached 3,028 ft (923m). The dives were made off Nonsuch island, in Bermuda.

Had there been another 253 feet of cable on the drum, they could have reached one kilometer, but that probably would not have changed the title Beebe used for his book about these experiences, Half Mile Down (Published Dec. 1934). The final descent with Beebe in the bathysphere was on August 27, 1934.

None of the items above, except for the Nonsuch Island location, is found in The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths by Brad Fox. It is a biography of the bathysphere itself, not of Dr. Beebe. However, much of the material is derived from Beebe's writings, so naturally he is at the forefront. The painting above is by Else Bostelmann, who painted many of the species Beebe described over the telephone installed in the bathysphere, recorded topside by Gloria Hollister.

One matter Beebe studied was the increasing blueness of the light reaching the bathysphere as it descended. He carried a spectroscope and colored sheets. In early dives there was still a trace of light from above, of an intense blue color that Beebe despaired of describing. Below 1,000 feet or so, however, Beebe would sometimes be heard (by Hollister) muttering, "Black, black, black". He and Bardon would turn the searchlight off for periods of time, and back on again to see what creatures were present. Many of the animals of the deep are luminescent; what appears as a row of blue dots in the dark sea would be seen, with the light on, as a fish such as those shown in the painting. Not all creatures were so clearly seen; several times something large, barely visible as blackness against the black deeps, kept its distance.

The author makes much—more than he should have, in my opinion—of the love affair between Beebe and Hollister in the 1930-34 period, and a later, longer-term affair with Jocelyn Crane. I find it sadly interesting that so many modern writers, supposed heirs of the sexual revolution my generation brought about, are galvanized by supposed misdeeds, when the desired result of the SR was that we all would say, "Who cares?"

After the last dive, the bathysphere was displayed in a few places, including at the 1939 World's Fair, and used by the U.S. Navy to study the effects of underwater explosions. Now it resides at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island.

I read Half Mile Down in the late 1950's, one of many books of popular science that cemented my desire to be a scientist. As I recall, it was in 1958 or '59 that my father and I built a small telescope, which I still use.

The Bathysphere Book has a unique style, similar in concept to the "mosaic memoir" I have been writing about my own life, but my work is much better "glued" together. Each of the fifteen chapters is composed of vignettes ranging from one or two sentences to at most three pages, accompanied by illustrations, many of which are paintings by Else Bostelmann. 

Other painters include George Swanson, who spent about a year on Nonsuch Island. He apparently had plenty of time on his hands, as this list indicates. I find some of these items utterly mystifying; how can a sane person not only do that, but write about it?

Quite a number of the 2- to 3-page vignettes are mini-biographies of seemingly random persons. It takes some care to discern their connection with Dr. Beebe or others in the text.

One later item describes the dive by Jacques Picard and Don Walsh in 1960 to the 7-mile-deep Marianas Trench in the first bathyscaphe. Alfred Wegener's early theory of continental drift had been discussed just before it. But then the text states that samples collected at the Marianas Trench included recently-erupted new crust from the central valley, supporting Wegener's theory. This is clearly a blunder: the bathyscaphe did not collect samples. The samples of nearly fresh lava, collected by a different submersible, were from the central trench of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, hundreds of miles away in much shallower waters (but still a couple of miles deep). They did indeed support sea-floor spreading, a key part of Wegener's theory.

In spite of the very choppy nature of the book, it is mostly quite enjoyable to read. However, I would recommend a first reading of Half Mile Down, which is still available in reprint.

A big SciFi compendium

 kw: book reviews, science fiction, anthologies, short stories

Androids and AI's and Bots, Oh My! It isn't hard to figure what is on people's minds: just look at what is popular in science fiction.

I see that it has been two weeks since I posted. The current volume contains 31 stories, many of which reward close reading: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7 (2022-2023), edited by Neil Clarke. It has been an enjoyable fortnight.

Unlike any other volume of SciFi stories in recent years, this time there were no stories that I actively disliked. I awarded at least one "+" to all but three, and to those I gave a "~", for "ordinary, but not bad." The majority received "++", meaning, "I'm glad I read it", and three of them I marked "+++", for "good and full of great ideas".

Had I had time for more than reading these past two weeks I'd have reviewed a few stories at a time, daily. As it is, what I have time for is to touch on the three "+++" stories, and leave you with this chart of my notes:

As I finished each story I wrote a one-line impression on a copy of the table of contents. Now, on to the stories I liked best:

• "Aptitude" by Cooper Shrivastava – My one-liner is, "Interviewing to be a god—Parable of Gödel's Incompleteness". The woman being tested is one of the last humans, the last denizens of our universe, among a "room" full of singular persons—they appear mostly human to her—who are presumably from other universes. The interview candidates are each tasked to build a model universe, on a much-too-short timeline. Without giving away too much, let us just say that she and another interviewee collaborate to sidestep the process, using recursion to break the system.
• "Jaunt" by Ken Liu – Here I have, "Telepresence robots!! Reaction – Counterreaction". Imagine a very capable, roughly hobbit-sized, robot on a farm in Myanmar through which you can experience much of what it is like to work on that farm. Further, imagine hosting such a robot as it shadows you and your work or leisure activity, conversing with you as though the person "riding" the robot were actually with you. Of course, governments will want to either get involved or control such activities. Imagine the dollars lost by traditional tourism companies! Naturally, an encrypted system is developed to get around the totalitarian restrictions. It resembles TOR, the first incarnation of a hidden Internet.
• "Bots of the Lost Ark" by Suzanne Palmer – I wrote, "AI vs AI – Artificial Initiative almost as good as the real thing". Like in many of the stories, here Bots are small, ranging down to barely visible, and exist in huge numbers. They can conglomerate to perform more complex functions, even carrying out a human's duties; the word "glom" is coopted for such groupings. But these bots and gloms get a mind of their own, and the superintelligent Ship needs all the help it can get from a small number of more loyal bots to regain control of mutinous gloms.

I note that a recurring theme is subversive activity. It runs throughout this anthology; not in all the stories, but a majority. It makes sense from a societal perspective: those who still trust Government are seen as threatening to a majority who have lost that trust. The feeling is mutual. So, modern "saviors" and "heroes" are those who get the better of the powerful persons and organizations that are seen as dominating our lives, or attempting to do so (Does anybody want to know why Mark Zuckerberg is building a house the size of a football field in the middle of a 4,000-acre self-sufficient farm in Hawaii?).

Get this book, read the stories, write your own one-line summaries. You'll be the better for it.

A nearly-erased legacy

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, scientists, entomologists, botanists, female scientists

The Hessian fly or Barley midge, Mayetolia destructor (former genus name Cecidomyia) is the most destructive pest of wheat plants. Barely exceeding 3mm in length, a female such as the one shown can lay 300 or more eggs in her adult life span of 2 days. The larvae eat into stems and prevent the plant from reproducing.

During a huge outbreak of the pests in 1836, entomologist Margaretta Morris studied these flies intensively. She noted that most Hessian fly females laid eggs on the stems, while others laid eggs in the culms (where the leaves met the stems).

Considering that there might be two species of near-identical appearance, she collected culms with egg masses and raised them under a bell jar in her study room. She documented the lifestyle, noting how it differed from the lifestyle of the "traditional" Hessian fly (already well known for a generation or more). She described the new species as Cecidomyia culmiculo and sent the description and numerous specimens, including all stages of the life cycle, to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. There they were ignored, and over time the specimens were destroyed by "cabinet pests", the bane of every insect collector who doesn't keep specimens in cedar boxes or in sealed trays with moth balls. To this day, the species goes unrecognized, being grouped with C. destructor as a variation; after all, economic entomologists reason, the same pesticides kill both species/varieties, so there is little incentive for a still-male-dominated discipline to validate a woman's scientific work.

To compound the slight, Miss Morris had found that the 17-year cicadas of what is now called Brood X (10), which erupted in the Philadelphia area in 1834, contained two populations of differing sizes, which she suspected might be two species. This photo compares a periodical cicada on the left with a larger annual cicada, which is green with brown eyes, rather than black with red eyes. The periodical cicadas were initially thought to range in size from 18-38mm, whereas the annual cicada is 40-45mm. She concluded that the "dwarf cicada" was 18-26mm, while the other was 30-38mm.

She corresponded about the phenomenon with a number of scientists, but she was focused more on another matter, that cicada nymphs were ruining fruit crops, particularly of apples and pears. She hosted visitation by numerous scientists to her garden, where her groundskeeper would dig up roots from an apple or pear tree, so they could see the nymphs lined up by the dozens, sucking sap from the roots. She invented a method of root pruning plus fertilization and mulching, to cut off the food supply of the nymphs and strengthen the tree, a method that is still the most effective. Her neglect proved nearly fatal to her legacy as a scientist. Entomologist James C. Fisher named the dwarf cicada Cicada cassini after his friend John Cassin in 1852; it is now known as Magicicada cassini.

It required much detective work and a few lucky breaks for Catherine McNeur to winkle out these facts and others about Margaretta Morris and her sister Elizabeth Morris, a botanist. She has documented the lives of these remarkable sisters in Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science. It is a big book, eminently readable.

Both women had loved natural science since they were little, and they became prominent scientists in an era of pervasive misogyny. They did indeed transform science in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, firstly by diligent and extremely thorough study and work—which family wealth enabled—and by equally diligent correspondence with numerous scientists and collectors. Their studious care for correspondence networks had a political undercurrent: they knew they needed allies, allies, allies, in their fields of study and related fields. They befriended scientists, sharing and trading specimens and ideas. They hosted many, and some became lifelong friends and supporters. They held demonstrations of their ideas, such as the "cicada digging" parties mentioned above. Later in life their correspondence was equally in support of younger, up-coming scientists, particularly young women.

Ms McNeur notes frequently how a number of male scientists, who might be quite friendly early on as they built their careers, became more distant and abrupt in their correspondence as they became prominent, taking the women for granted as "helpful collectors" but little else. Some men were openly hostile, and the book details a couple of battles-royal engaged in (via letter) by Margaretta, in which the men were at least abashed if not distinctly disproven. One scientist, to his credit, if belatedly, came to respect her and promote her after about a decade.

Elizabeth, the elder by two years, lived from 1795-1865. She was less assertive than Margaretta, but in the end, a trace of her legacy remains in the public record. Here I provide an illustration with its caption. I trust that Trinity College Dublin still retains the specimen named for her. The online biological database WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species) calls the status of the species "uncertain" and its Original Description "not documented". Perhaps someone in Dublin can clear this up! 

The Cladophora seaweeds are very common, bright green, and some are pests. This one from an estuary near Delaware Bay is more of an entangle-your-feet-as-you-wade alga.

The last chapter of the book, "Forgetting", is sad indeed. Step by step, perpetrated by generations of thoughtless and ambitious scientists, the Morris sisters' work was almost entirely erased from the public record. Much of the material used by the book's author was found, sometimes by happenstance, in private collections of letters and other documents. 

While misogyny is not dead in America, or in the West generally, it is much less pervasive than before. But it is not stamped out. In fact, the odd phenomenon of the 2020's titled "Wokeness" is increasingly misogynist, favoring false females over the real article!

In my experience, scientists who are insecure in their standing are more prone to oppose and marginalize others, particularly women (if they themselves are men); such persons deserve their obscurity. Those of prominence who are still insecure are shameful.

Mischievous Creatures is excellently researched and written, full of information and stories of these two remarkable women. I looked for the phrase "mischievous creatures" as I read, but didn't find it (maybe I read some parts too fast), so I don't know if the author intended to refer to the Morris sisters thus, or something else. This book is a must-read for all who are interested in the history of science, particularly in early America.