ANDREA GHEZ!!!! #NobelPrize #ThatMakes4

I had the incredible privilege to work with Andrea Ghez as an undergrad REU student -- it was my first astronomy research project, and I can honestly say I would not have embarked on this career without her brilliance, warmth, and mentorship. I am ecstatic for her and her group.

In my AST100 class (coincidentally ending today), we talk critically about the #NobelPrize -- what they recognize, who they recognize, whether it is possible to separate the science from the scientist or the scientist from their team.

We also talk about what "contributions to science" look like: big discoveries sometimes, but often the development of environments that support the future science of people around them. Some folks with big contributions by the first metric negate them through the latter.

I can't speak for everyone's experience with Andrea Ghez, and I only worked with her for one summer, but these are the memories that stick out:

(1) she sat on a panel and talked about managing being a parent and part of a family while doing science, and she said it was hard but possible

(2) she encouraged me and other students to take care of our mental and physical health by prioritizing sleep and exercise, and IIRC she modeled that with her swimming

(3) she took me on as a student with no python experience and celebrated my small victories in learning programming (slowly and painfully) as much as the scientific plots I'd bring her later that summer

(4) she was palpably excited about the science she did and about our project, and that helped me be excited too. I have spent the last 13 years continually excited about supermassive black holes, in part because of her.

Again, I don't want to speak for her other students -- I know that different people can experience the same mentor differently. For me, however, I think of Andrea Ghez when I think of someone who can do great science and raise up the people around her instead of pushing them down

And that's why I'm so excited that a lot of people will learn her name today!

If you haven't seen it, this animation from her group is one of the great results of modern science: a bunch of stars bring jerked around by 8 billion billion billion billion kilograms of SOMETHING we can't see.

Through ingeniously creative techniques (first speckle imaging, then adaptive optics), exacting measurements, and decades of perseverance, Andrea Ghez's group (as well as that of Reinhard Genzel, a co-recipient this year) demonstrated that they orbit a supermassive black hole

I want to be absolutely clear here: Andrea Ghez was awarded the #NobelPrize on the basis of her exacting, creative, and brilliant work. The Nobel committee has made it very clear that they do not give awards for mentoring or for modeling a work-life balance.

As an undergrad student, I did not have the tools to appreciate the work and intelligence that went into her research; it was her mentoring that impacted me. As a more senior scientist, I am now awed by the science underlying the deceptively simple animation above.

There is a trope that says women scientists are good when they are kind and men scientists are great when they are brilliant (this trope only admits two genders, and of course it ignores other axes of identity and experience).

This is not just a trope: the expectation that women scientists of all races, ethnicities, sexual identities, and disabilities model care-giving behaviors in their work (suffering a proportionate lack of time if they do and demonization if they don't) is real.

Plenty of women have expressed these ideas more clearly than I have or can, but I mention this because I did not, as an undergrad, question why the first woman mentor I had was also the first to model these behaviors.

I am still working to excise these patriarchal tendencies from my own behavior, just as I am working to excise my racist and ableist behaviors. I am also working to recognize how I benefit from these same systems I profess to oppose.

In the future, I hope we can celebrate scientists of all genders for their humanity as well as their discoveries. As long as there are 4 women Nobel laureates in physics for every 211 men (and zero Black Nobel laureates in STEM for every 616 non-Black laureates) identity matters.

FWIW, portions of this thread were conceived while talking with @AmyLLytle about how focusing on the humanity of women scientists reinforces patriarchal systems and enables misogyny. This thread is not meant to reflect her views, but I have benefited from her expertise.