In this podcast episode, host Marco Ciappelli and guest Suzie Sheehy discuss the book "The Matter of Everything" which explores the history of physics through the lens of experimentalists and highlights the often-overlooked contributions of women in the field. They also touch on the topic of diversity and inclusion in STEM and the importance of recognizing the biases and cultural legacies that have contributed to the underrepresentation of women in science.
Guest: Dr. Suzie Sheehy, Author, physicist, science communicator, and academic professor of accelerator physics at the University of Oxford [@unimelb / @UniofOxford]
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/suziesheehy
Knopf Publisher | https://twitter.com/AAKnopf
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Hosts:
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/sean-martin
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Episode Introduction
In this podcast episode, host Marco Ciappelli and guest Suzie Sheehy discuss the book "The Matter of Everything" which explores the history of physics through the lens of experimentalists and highlights the often-overlooked contributions of women in the field. They also touch on the topic of diversity and inclusion in STEM and the importance of recognizing the biases and cultural legacies that have contributed to the underrepresentation of women in science.”
Welcome to a new Audio Signals Podcast Episode with your host Marco Ciappelli. In this episode, we feature a book that takes readers on a fascinating journey through the experiments that not only unlocked the nature of matter and shaped our understanding of the cosmos but also forever changed the way we live within it. This is a brilliant book that focuses on fundamental problems in physics written from the viewpoint of the experimenter. An inspiring story of discovery and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know.
In this episode, Ciappelli and Sheehy discuss the topic of diversity and inclusion in STEM, particularly the contribution of women in science. Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence, and luck, staged the experiments that changed the course of history. Many of these experiments were conducted by women, and the book highlights the challenges and biases they faced in a male-dominated field.
Sheehy delves into the stories of some of these women, such as Harriet Brooks, Mary is a blouse, and Lisa Meitner, who made significant contributions to the early understanding of radioactive decay, half-life, and the radioactive transformation of elements. The book also explores the cultural and sociological legacy that has led to the underrepresentation of women in physics and other STEM fields.
Ciappelli and Sheehy emphasize the need for more role models for young girls and women to increase their sense of belonging in the field. The conversation also highlights the importance of recognizing the contribution of underrepresented groups in science and ensuring that their stories are included in the main flow of the text.
Join Ciappelli and Sheehy as they discuss the experiments that changed the course of history and the challenges faced by women in science in this episode of Audio Signals Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and read the book to learn more about the fascinating world of physics and the people behind some of the most significant breakthroughs in science.
About the Book
A surprising, fascinating journey through the experiments that not only unlocked the nature of matter and shaped our understanding of the cosmos but also forever changed the way we live within it
"A book about the fundamental problems of physics written from a viewpoint I hadn’t come across before: that of the experimenter. A splendid idea, vividly carried out.” –Philip Pullman, best-selling author of His Dark Materials
Physics has always sought to deepen our understanding of the nature of matter and the world around us. But how do you conduct experiments with the fundamental building blocks of existence? How do you manipulate a particle a trillion times smaller than a grain of sand? How do you cause a proton to sail around a twenty-seven-kilometer-long loop 11,000 times per second? And, crucially, why is all this important?
In The Matter of Everything, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged the experiments that changed the course of history. From the serendipitous discovery of X-rays in a German laboratory to the scientists trying to prove Einstein wrong (and inadvertently proving him right) to the race to split open the atom, these brilliant experiments led to some of the most significant breakthroughs in science and fundamentally changed our lives. They have helped us detect the flow of lava deep inside volcanoes, develop life-saving medical techniques like diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy, and create radio, TV, microwaves, smartphones—even the World Wide Web itself—among countless other advancements.
Along the way, Sheehy pulls back the curtain to reveal how physics is really done—not only by theorists with equation-filled blackboards but also by experimentalists with hand-blown glass, hot air balloons and cathedral-sized electronics. Celebrating human ingenuity, creativity and above all curiosity, The Matter of Everything is an inspiring story of discovery and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know.
DR. SUZIE SHEEHY is a physicist, science communicator and academic who divides her time between research groups at the University of Oxford and University of Melbourne. She is currently focused on developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. The Matter of Everything is her first book.
Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/RTqJaNKxRw4
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Resources
Book: THE MATTER OF EVERYTHING: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624408/the-matter-of-everything-by-suzie-sheehy/
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording as errors may exist. At this time we provide it “as it is” and we hope it can be useful for our audience.
SPEAKERS
Marco Ciappelli, Suzie Sheehy
Marco Ciappelli00:00
Okay, here we go, we are on audio signals. This is Marco Ciappelli, with itsp magazine. And as you probably know by now, this is the channel where we talk about whatever captured our attention. And most of the time, it's still connected with technology and humanity, because it's kind of like in our DNA. And when I say AR is usually shown in AI, but again, today, I'm going to be flying solo. Except that, of course, I have a guest. And our guest is Suzy Sheehy. And she's joining us from down there on the other side of the world compare with Dan under. And so welcome to welcome to the show, I usually do a little bit of introduction. But you know, I'm so excited about this book that we're going to talk about today that you wrote. And what you actually do is not just a you're a writer, you you're a physicist, so I'm already like, I have a lot of questions already.
Suzie Sheehy01:02
Thanks for having me on.
Marco Ciappelli01:05
Absolutely. Like I said, it's exciting. And I just want to get to know you and why you wrote this book, which I understand it’syour first book. So we want to know what you do, who you are, and what motivates you. Maybe, too, yeah, the pen or the computer, or I don't know how you wrote it.
Suzie Sheehy01:25
Yeah, mostly computer. So, I am Suzie Sheehy, I'm a physicist, particularly an experimental physicist, and I work with the big machines that underpin modern experiments, toward the nature of the fundamental nature of matter in the universe. So I work on machines called particle accelerators. So I do research, but I'm also a science communicator. And this book, which I'm just gonna wave here, because you mentioned it, it's called The Matter Of Everything. It's my first book. And really, it was born of this knowledge that I came across, which was this idea that our quest to understand the nature of matter, out of necessity, has had to involve experiments, most of which have happened in the last 120 years. And that those experiments and discoveries have led to so many amazing things in our society, both technologies, but also the methods we use to collaborate and to even communicate, have come from this field. And so I sort of knew this parallel story of fundamental physics exploration, and this sort of wider story about society and technology and humanity. And I just felt like that was a story that needed telling in the world because it was just my driving force in my own work. And it seems that other people have resonated really strongly with that.
Marco Ciappelli02:48
Well, I mean, this is again, we were chatting before started recording on how most of my conversation are, they usually get philosophical, and around technology. So in this case, I love the fact that you is not just a book about theory, but it's a book about experimentation. I was reading the summary and I'm definitely gonna download it and listen to it. Because I'm really curious to see what you're talking about on top of your introduction now, but I want to start with something that the title so I could not not read the title and think about Stephen Hawkins and the movie The Theory of Everything. So I kind of like I was like, Okay, so the matter of everything. Do you have like Stephen Hawkins in mind when you wrote this? Or?
Suzie Sheehy03:37
Yeah, so it's interesting, I guess it's kind of a play on words, right? Between Yeah, literally, because matter is in everything. But then also, the everything can also refer to everything in our society and all of our lived experience outside of something as esoteric is particle physics, which is sort of the major field that that I work in. And you know, the matter of that being like so the so what, you know, the why should you care? The how does this affect your everyday experience? So I didn't necessarily have Stephen Hawking in mind although Good point. That that that movie that yeah, there's there's been a bunch of movies and things about everything I feel like in recent years, and so this one is about meta, and everything. And the subtitle is probably a bit more responded to actually the subtitle is how curiosity physics and improbable experiments change the world.
Marco Ciappelli04:30
And that's what grasp our attention because you think everything is made in science very consciously very pragmatically and plan and formula and maths but then you read and I mean, I've read some some of the stories that are probably not the one that you share, but I  to hear where it's kind of like you were looking for something and then you found something else. And that was good.
Suzie Sheehy04:58
Sometimes transformative Sure, no, yeah, I think that's um, that's also where the power of experiment really comes in. I mean, it's pretty hard if you're writing down equations to accidentally stumble upon something, right. But when you're working in the real world, when you're working in a lab, those serendipitous things tend to happen a little bit more. I think the other key reason I really wanted to focus on experiments is because if you walk into the popular science section of a bookstore, you would get the impression that physics is only theoretical, because that usually isn't a single book that explains how any of this stuff was discovered. So you know, someone can talk about general relativity. And then on page 374, it was say, and this was verified in 1927, or something. And he's like, how, how did that? How did that happen? Just like with the stories of our understanding of matter, and particles, and particle physics, people, you know, refer to these amazing theories that we now have, like the Standard Model of particle physics. And I read these stories about this amazing theoretical progression. And I was almost offended when I'd find you know, it's almost like a footnote that says, Oh, and this particle was founded in 1946, or something like that. But the stories behind how we find these things, and that history told through the forward direction is much more interesting, and often a lot more, yeah, serendipitous and unexpected than you might imagine. So very early in this process in like 8096, one of the early researchers called will and Ron Cohen, who was a German physicist, he was working in his his lab, and he was working with these tubes called cathode ray tubes. So it's like a glass tube with electrodes in it. And there were these glowing green rays inside the tube that no one could really explain. And he was working with one of these one day, and across the side of his lab, he saw this screen that was glowing. And the screen was like a fluorescent screen that lights up when, when different types of radiations hit it. And so he, he realized that this was not an accident, and he decided to investigate. And so he, you know, he'd turn the machine off, the light will go away, he turned it back on. And he realized he sort of gave up on looking at what was happening in the tube and realize that this thing that was happening outside the tube was something new and dramatic, and something that no one had talked about before. And he spent seven weeks in the lab putting different things in the way of this, this new beam, sending it through the door, putting it through his hand. And when he put it through his hand was when he really realized what was going on, which is that he could see the bones, clearly. But these rays were passing straight through the soft tissue of his hand. And so what he discovered was what we now call X rays. And you sort of think, well, today, if I was working in a lab or festival, everything would be probably neater. So they wouldn't be something sitting on some device sitting across the room, that lit up. But also, you know, we may be under so much pressure, that we go, oh, there's something lighting up over there. Oh, that's some effect, I don't understand. Okay, I'm going to ignore that and stick with my original experiment. And so this is why this idea of doing experiments goes beyond just taking an idea from theory, and building something to test what we've already predicted. Because our imaginations are pretty limited, actually, in how we can conceive the universe works. And so one of the skills and experiment has to have is to understand the theory, but always keep their mind open to the idea that a the theory might be wrong. And be they may be able to observe or measure something in the lab that has never been predicted before. And that's the way that at least some of our discoveries have been made. Some of them are intentional, you really go after a specific thing. But this other more serendipitous route is one that I think we've almost forgotten to appreciate a little bit.
Marco Ciappelli08:53
So let me let me ask you this, because I'm thinking, Is it like two different mindset that you apply like you? Is that like, someone that is just more theoretical? And another one that is more hacking mentality? And hands on? Things is like, Yeah,
Suzie Sheehy09:10
I think a lot of people don't realize that most physicists kind of fall into one of two flavors, the sort of theoretical flavor, or the experimental flavor, and that they do crossover. And especially in the early days, people often did both. But usually, you're sort of working in one mode or the other, you're sort of in the lab testing something, or you're sort of working through the equations and trying to figure out okay, well, based on this data, or based on this idea, how can I predict what would happen in some mathematical way? But nowadays, we really do even train like, you know, the courses that we do here, in my university. We even have sort of a theoretical physics track, right? So people who are really going to become theoretical physicists, and develop new theories have to do more mathematics and more training in that than the people who are going to Be experimentalist. But the experimentalist have a whole other series of skills that they need to learn. So, you know, in the early days, I would have, if I was an experimentalist, then I would have had to learn how to blow glass. Because to build my own apparatus, I would have had to make it myself out of glass. Today, that's more like, I need to know how to use a computer aided design program to do a first order design or something, and then work with an engineer to understand how to machine something to a precision of a single micron, you know, so, so the skills have changed. But, you know, I have to understand things like cryogenics, I have to understand the properties of materials. I have to know how to use electronics and how to design electronics. I even have a crane license, this surprises people, but I have a crane license because sometimes I need to crane heavy equipment in my lab and move it around. Probably the only woman I know with a crane license to be fair.
Marco Ciappelli10:57
That's pretty cool. I mean, I like that. So So you're talking about like crane. So you're talking about moving big machines, and you know, you say, accelerator, so you work with like the CNR in like Switzerland, where there is the the particles I collaborate with CERN, and that thing is a movie. Yeah, and that loop is like, what kilometers long?
Suzie Sheehy11:22
27 kilometers in circumference? Yeah. So that's kind of the pinnacle at the moment of this field. Yeah.
Marco Ciappelli11:28
So here's the question. So a new study the smallest particles in there. So you need big machines to study something very, very small. So why everybody may understand a cathodic tubes or a glass or chemicals and chemistry and all of that and hands on, we thought at a certain point. And I saw that in the notes. And I was actually very fascinated by how we thought we knew everything, and then we don't. Right. So at the end of the 1800, we thought we had it all down, we I guess we knew turn and so for them, then we started going into, you know, when I look at quantum physics now it's very, it's so out of my mind, I was reading a book about the simulation theory, and there is a reference on you know, the the atoms and the quantum the works in a in a twin way or the double of a imposition and all that kind of stuff. Can't even grasp it.
Suzie Sheehy12:28
Can I can I tell you a little story about some of the early quantum experiments, because so one of them, I researched a bit. So it's very early days of the proposal that nature might have a sort of quantum nature. The theoretical physicist, Max Planck sort of solved a theoretical problem by putting in this trick whereby he said that, you know, energy might come in in sort of chunks, or quanta, as we call them. But he didn't think it was actually how the universe worked. But then Einstein a few years later realized that if he took this concept, and he applied it to a particular experiment that we're talking about, he realized he could explain exactly how that experiment might work in a theoretical way, based on the idea that that light in particular, came in, like specific chunks, and this was kind of motivated for him by this idea that like everything else in nature, we treat in a particle, like way. So if I think about how our theories of gravity work, it's based on on particles moving with forces between them, electromagnetism, particles, moving the forces between them, even waves, like you know, water waves, is based on you know, the motion of individual molecules, sound waves or molecules moving your with pressure waves through air, even our understanding of temperature was based on the movement of tiny particles, and that being a cause of temperature and pressure. And Einstein was determined to be like, Well, why, why do we describe light differently? Why doesn't like consist of discrete pieces, there's quanta, and so he developed this theory. And there was an experimentalist in California, whose name was Robert Milliken, who was sort of new to the game, he was a new, had a new lab. And he thought he was failing as an experimental physicist, because he was doing these experiments where you shine light on a metal plate, and electrons come out, and it's called the photoelectric effect, which is literally just converting the light from the, the photons. So now, we know it's photons or the energy from the light to the metal to the electrons and then they they jump out if they have enough energy. But the classical theory before Einstein's theory, didn't make any sense to explain the experimental results. And so Milliken comes across Einstein's proposal, and these new ideas of quantum mechanics coming in, and like many people at that time, he did not believe that it was how nature worked. It was really hard to wrap their heads around, just as it's really hard, what you were saying it's hard to wrap your head around this idea that there might be some smallest chunks of energy or that light might not be a wave as it was sort of thought to be for for a long time. And so he spent 12 years in the lab doing experiments on this idea. And ever he perfected his apparatus, you know, it was this complex thing in a vacuum chamber with like spinning pieces and metal, you know, different metals and different lights. And he measured it all. And after 12 years, he gathered the best evidence yet that showed that Einstein was right. And it was funny, because even then he still couldn't admit to himself that nature might work this way. And he was like, Well, you know, okay, the experimental results do seem to agree with the predictions of this theory. But he wouldn't say that, you know, his conclusion was that, you know, light was actually made of particles. And it took him another, I think it was 10 or 11 years after that, until he was awarded the Nobel Prize, partly for these experiments, before he then changed his tune. And then he said, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, you know, he starts out with this thing of when I set out to prove Einstein's theory of the federal electric effect, blah, blah, blah. So he made out like, he tried to prove it all along. But actually, you know, he and many other people had been struggling for decades, just to accept this idea that nature might work in this counterintuitive way. And that light might be made of, sort of particles and waves at the same time. Yeah.
Marco Ciappelli16:36
I don't know if some somehow that would make more sense. I mean, when you look at things in the bigger things, it's like, okay, it's a table, and then you start looking at Quantum law. Yeah, but it's not really there. Right. It's kind of like, okay, but then to go back to my question, like, when Why do you need to? Sounds to me, like the experimentalist? Are inventor, like, you really need to come up with something? And how is it you need such a big machinery? To work on something so small? It's almost like the like, so can you? Can you tell me, what's the Yes, yes, there the secret site?
Suzie Sheehy17:14
Yeah, so there's kind of, there's sort of a transition point at which things have to get bigger and bigger. So if you want to get inside the atom, and this was where it was, in the early days, inside the atom down to the level of the nucleus, which they knew was this tiny, tiny bit at the center of the atom. So that was the original motivation for building these big machines called particle accelerators, boosting particles up to high energy like a high energy projectile. And then the original idea was that sort of intuitive idea of this idea of high energy thing coming in with enough energy to overcome the electrical repulsion getting into the middle of the nucleus, and then something would happen. And that was the very early experiments, starting in about 1932, when they first managed to do that with protons onto lithium. And they split Split The Atom for the first time that lithium then created two different helium nuclei. And that was an amazing thing, because I thought, oh, my gosh, here we go, we can get particles into and explore the dynamics of the nucleus. So that's one thing. But as you try to explore smaller and smaller objects, so the things inside the nucleus, for example, you'd have to get to higher and higher energies. But at some point, you're no longer just going inside the nucleus and pinging things that what is already there. At some point, we have to then rely on Einstein's equals MC squared instead, right? So now what we do is we have these big colliders where we have two beams at high energies, and they're coming in. And in physics, all of that energy of both beams coming in both directions, can be used to do something new. So instead of just looking at what is already there, inside the atom, we're now creating new particles that weren't there already. And so so that the conversion rate, if you take all this energy that's coming in, including the mass energy, all those original particles, you know, when they collide had, if one of them collides head on, they're gone. They're just like pure energy at some point, right. And the conversion rate is from equals MC squared, which is only a rough equation, there's a more precise version, but we'll go with it, we'll go. The conversion rate is c squared, right, which is c squared is a huge, huge, huge number. So you're not going to be able to generate much mass. In fact, to generate a high mass, you need a very, very, very high energy because of this terrible exchange rate of C squared. So that's why now if you're trying to create something which is either very rare or has a high mass, but isn't there in the initial collision, so the Higgs boson, for example, is quite a heavy particle. And because it's heavy, that requires more and more energy to be put into the collision, which is why the machines have to keep getting bigger and bigger, because we're limited in how strong how strong, we can make a magnet to bend the beam around, which is why they keep getting getting bigger and bigger. So it's slightly conceptually different to sort of a collision where things come out of it, that were already there. And a friend of mine likes to describe this as if you're colliding apples. And instead of getting up pieces of apple and the pith and the pips and the skin, you're getting at three bananas and a mango. But it's something completely different that wasn't there in the first place.
Marco Ciappelli20:29
And that's kind of like what how much it kind of blows your mind. It's almost like, it sounds magic. Like cleric. Like if you don't know how it works, it's probably magic. But if you know how it works, it's not like magic.
Suzie Sheehy20:42
That's the thing. And the magic in there is really Yeah, the development of all of this understanding of how these different forces and all of that energy can go into these, this creation of new particles, and the different rules of what you can do and how, what the probability of it is. And then also, of course, the experimental techniques to actually measure all of that and figure out what's going on are just mind blowing.
Marco Ciappelli21:06
So here's the big question. And that's why we need to build really big stuff, because we need to create so much energy. So the question that I may, I may have, in my mind thinking, what is the audience wondering now? And many times up? And is why, what why do we do all these? Like, why do we do in space? Why do we go back to the moon? Why do we spend all this money when we could do all the things a year? And I'm like, because for me, it's a way to know ourself, right? It's in the way I know the planet. But you have also disconnection in the book about how there is a the humanity, improvement in the soul. Can you bring some example of how this actually take place? That probably is in the book as well?
Suzie Sheehy21:54
Yeah, yeah. So let me let me start by saying this sort of the fundamental Why is yeah, that curiosity, that search for new knowledge. And I think the important thing here is that we are fundamentally curious as a species, we want to learn how how the world works. That is, like we should do it even if it had no practical application. But beneath that, why that people ask is often this question of well, so what you know, so we've spent billions of dollars on the Large Hadron Collider, we've found the Higgs boson that we'll never use, there will never be Higgs therapy, I say with 99.9% certainty. Because it's too hard to generate Higgs bosons to do anything with them. So why on earth are we doing this like, it's not like we're about to cure cancer with with the Higgs bosons, right. And what actually happens through this story of this cutting edge experimental work is because you're pushing at the boundaries of technology, often you're having to invent new technologies, or new methods, or new ways of doing things. And that is where this kind of research actually has had enormous spin off in our society. So everything from basically any high tech cancer treatment relies on a small particle accelerator using radiotherapy, which is about 50% of all cancer cases, I should point out all of nuclear medicine, so there's like whole sections of your hospital, which are entirely reliant on things which came from, from particle physics. But when we look more broadly than that, so much of our technology, from everything from electronics to the World Wide Web actually came from this kind of curiosity driven research, just in physics, like there's no way I could expand out to all the other fields and how that accumulation of basic knowledge has led us build on it over time, in order to innovate and to develop new ideas, and to develop these new things in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. So I gave the example of X rays before, right. If you'd asked, say innovators in around 1895, the year before that happened, to find a better way of understanding what was happening in the human body when people were sick, or when there was a suspected tumor or something like that. surgeons would have invented a better scalpel. Right? Okay, we need a sharper scalpel. So there's less side effects, blah, blah, blah, they would never have come up with X rays. And this is where the power of understanding new things that you could never have imagined actually comes in. And these fundamental discoveries and fundamental types of research. And here, I don't just include physics, but sort of all fundamental and curiosity driven research, tend to have this effect of their usefulness compounding over time, so I might discover something over in this corner. And then 50 years later, you know, the Computing Technology exists, and we managed to combine it and then you get some, some new device that can help humanity. And I think what's often missing from these marvelous stories, and they are they are inspiring and they're wonderful stories about discovery and just the mind blowing quantum mechanics and the nature of our universe. What's often missing is that okay, so what like, has there been anything practical that's ever come from this? And the answer is a resounding yes. And yet most people do not connect those two stories up. So that's effectively what I've tried to do.
Marco Ciappelli25:10
So when, when you were were writing the book, who was your audience? Who would you have in mind? I mean, when you write something, either an email or a book or short story, kind of like, or, or a talk, like, who am I talking to? And how do I adapt my language? How do I, you know, dumb it down? Or bring it up?
Suzie Sheehy25:31
I would never say “dumbing things down”.
Marco Ciappelli25:33
Of course, but what I'm saying, is like, I think Einstein actually was the one that the set, or at least the quotes come up that you know, you only understand something when you can actually explain it to I don't know, your grandma or child and you really own the subject. So in your case, is it a book for everyone? That is curious? Is it a bit for academic?
Suzie Sheehy25:55
Yeah, no, no, it's definitely it's for anyone who's curious about it. I'm privileged that my entire publishing team, we're all non scientists, and that helped me immensely. Because they were like, what? Yeah, cuz they were like, now we've heard of atoms, but you're gonna have to explain what one is. Because it's like, you know, for me, it's like, Oh, I've heard of Henry the Fifth, but I couldn't put him in context at all. Like, you'd have to give me the context of you're telling a story about about him. So as someone who's always done science communication, as well as my research, that was a fun challenge was to bring that out and, and also just bring the exciting narratives and stories of the human stories that happened through this through this whole process. So in my mind, I guess actually, one of the people I was writing for was actually my identical twin sister. So she's actually a very smart woman does amazing things in the world. But she's more in that sort of history, philosophy, museum curation space. And she reads voraciously. Right? And I sort of thought, if, if I can write something that engages through the narrative, someone like her to engage with these, what are quite complex ideas and physics and she doesn't normally consume, like physics popular sides, I guess she'd just come to me and ask me if there was anything exciting. She's my sister. But I sort of thought, Okay, if we can if we can get someone like my sister on board that sort of, you know, intelligent educator, but not necessarily with a science background, that kind of where, where it's aimed at.
Marco Ciappelli27:29
I love it. And I was actually scrolling through some of the review that you had, and you have like Brian Eno, it's fairly Pullman, the best selling materials. Oh, he's bright red and get embarrassed. No, but I mean, that's, that's great. Because these are not, you know, many times when you when you read about an academic piece, you the reviews are from other academic. Oh, yeah. And then then you normal, not and non experts are like, Okay, this is great, but probably not for me. But in this case, you have like musicians, and you have like other fantasy writers. So I mean, that must be a very good thing. It's like you're hitting the
Suzie Sheehy28:12
it was it was lovely. I actually, I got because I was living in Oxford in the UK at the time when I wrote the book. And I've spent a lot of my career there. And I still have a visiting lectureship there as well. And Philip Pullman and I struck up this sort of email conversation, and at one point, I asked him, because a lot of his work has been based on this idea of cosmic rays. And, and the cloud chambers. So so the Northern Lights are sort of various physics inspired in his writing. And I asked him, whether he's ever actually seen a cloud chamber, working in person, which is the very early particle detector, which is this mesmerizing device where these like little tracks get formed. And you can just sit one there with no radiation source. And you'll see every so often these little white tracks coming across. And now this is a invention that revolutionized physics. But I asked, I asked Philip Pullman if he'd ever seen one, and he said, No. And I was like, oh, yeah, he's just down the road, you know, from from where I was. So I actually invited him in to the physics department in Oxford. And we set up a cloud chamber and I tell you what, it was like watching a kid in a candy store, he was just mesmerized, and he's such a lovely man. And it was it was just a really, such a privileged special moment for me as a physicist to be the physicist who gets to show Philip Pullman kind of what he's been writing about. Like who gets to do that? Right?
Marco Ciappelli29:39
That's amazing. And then makes me think about how you know who writes sci fi or even fantasy fantasies? Maybe. I mean, Pullman is kind of in between but you know, sci fi, I mean, a lot of things they were predicting what could be possible, you know, like Asimov and others is, you know, even space out They see, you know, they know we do have a new version of all 9000 in the chat. Yeah.
Suzie Sheehy30:11
Yeah, they kind of predicted in a way, and then, you know, sort of sort of comes through in a slightly different way, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
Marco Ciappelli30:19
Listen, one, one more thing. I mean, I know you have, I think 12 experiments that you're telling in the book, and many of these are actually women. So I know you are. As a science communicator, I'm sure in being a woman. You know, I would love to know, you know, what is your take while you were doing your research and know, why are we still talking about?
Suzie Sheehy30:47
I know, right, why we're talking about it?
Marco Ciappelli30:52
I know, right? But, here we are.
Suzie Sheehy30:53
It’s true, and here we are. And I find myself as you know, there are fewer than 10% Women in my subfield working in particle accelerators still, right? And so yeah, it's a real, it's a real thing. And when I learned physics, even when I was taught it, there was a really obvious kind of, I hate to put it this way, but like, the great white man narrative, right? I mean, almost every scientist that I was introduced to in the history of physics, was a white man, almost every single one of them with a few exceptions, with the exception of Marie Curie, who's like the one female physicist that most people can can read about. And so I actually didn't include Marie's story in as one of my 12 experiments, because I was like, everybody knows about that. And my story starts off after her anyway. But what astounded me is when I read through, and because in my research process, I really had to dig in, read all the original papers of the experiments, read the autobiographies and biographies of all the scientists involved. At first, the ones I knew were involved, and what started jumping out at me with these stories of women. So they'd crop up either it maybe it was a footnote, and they were thanked in a paper for their contribution. Or maybe they were an author on the paper, and I looked up who they were, and I was like, Who's this woman, I've never come across her before. And in one case that I still remember the day I saw, it was just this photograph of this research group in 1899, in Montreal, with Ernest Rutherford, who becomes the father of nuclear physics. And there's this woman in the center of a photo of a group of men all wrapped up in their big winter coats and hats and things. And she's just this stunning woman sort of staring out at the camera. And you sort of think, well, how could you miss her? She's so obvious. And I just had to delve in and find out who she was. And it turns out her name was Harriet Brooks, and she was actually relevance. First Research Student in Montreal, she made amazing contributions to the early understanding of radioactive decay and half life and, and the radioactive transformation of elements. And her story I could go on about her story, because it's fascinating. But eventually, she ends up leaving physics when she gets married, that at one point, she actually turned down an engagement because she wanted to keep working in physics. But up until the 1960s, most people now forget this. Women were required to resign their jobs if they got married, up until like the late 1960s. In some places, it's pretty astounding. And so that's pretty limiting if you're trying to be a physicist. Yeah, but her work, you know, you could you could argue her work was alongside the contributions of Rutherford and others, and maybe, you know, maybe because she was never perhaps going to win a Nobel Prize for that early work. Maybe we shouldn't have heard of her, I don't know. But there are other women who I came across who we should definitely have have heard of. So Mary is a blouse of physicist working in Vienna in the 1940s, she invented a whole new type of particle detector. She was nominated for the Nobel and with some bias reviewer reports, she never she never wanted, or Lisa might know who actually coined the term fusion in the first place, made amazing contributions to physics. She was nominated for the Nobel 44 times and didn't get it. Yeah. And then Viva chattery, who's this Indian researcher discovered not one, but two new fundamental particles, using the detector that Blair had invented, which is a nice like, female to female line. And she's working in India in World War Two, she discovers two new particles, first authored Nature paper, this was not obscure research. I mean, I wish I had a first author, Nature paper, right. And, and this discovery because she has sort of second rate, photographic plates, because it's World War Two, and she's working in India. Other researchers pick up this idea, they go and make the same discovery, and they were aware of her research, it's in the notes. And then these other researchers actually get the Nobel Prize and she's not even cited in in the Nobel Prize acceptance speech. And I have to say, like, I'm not trying to make a pity party here for all of these women. It is like a sociological effect that's actually got a name, and I intentionally name it. In the book, because I think it's really important that we recognize these the stories of these women and also that we understand why they're normally left out of the history. It's called the Matilda effect. And it's named after suffragettes, Matilda Gage, who first realized that so many women's contributions that either marginalize, you know, reduced attributed to somebody else, or just forgotten about almost because we can't believe that women are making these contributions. And so there was a science historian called Margaret Rossiter, who gave this effect of the forgetting almost of women in science. The Matilda effect was what she named it. And the idea of naming it is to encourage people to sort of make sure that when they're doing their research or writing stories about the scientific process, and who was involved, that we make sure we put these, we bring these stories out, we put them back in their rightful place in history. And we don't just gloss over them, because it's too difficult to add an extra character to a narrative. And trust me as a writer, it's it's difficult, right? If you've got too many characters, sometimes you're like, Well, this one nobody's heard of. So I'm just going to forget their story. And then the other aspect of it that was really difficult is no one interviewed them, no one kept the letters, there's no biographies and autobiographies because, you know, they just didn't have the name and the status that the men had working at that time. So that's, that's what I try to do basically, is put their stories back in the main flow of, of the text, because it, it really mattered to me to discover for myself, even as a working female physicist, that these women had been there all along, and that they'd always been making amazing contributions. And that the reason I didn't know about them was a series of biases and forgetting things that had trickled down to the 21st century. And that sort of just thought, no more like they were there. They were, they weren't as numerous as the men. But this idea that women don't do physics isn't even true.
Marco Ciappelli36:58
Yeah, I have a ton of conversation like this with many amazing people in the, in the cybersecurity world and technology. And the question is always the same. Why? Right? And yeah, you know, and there's like, there is a gap, and there is diversity and inclusion problem. And it just like, I don't know, I I personally don't say things that way. So for me, you know, a physicist is a physicist, I don't even want to distinguish between a woman or a man or any, any other gender that somebody wants to prove himself. But unfortunately, we do need to actually put these things out there. Because for many people, it just, you said it clear about the the picture in the Canadian group, and you're like, just don't expect to see the woman there. So you don't see it? Probably because you really don't even expect it. Is it a real bias that is yet in your head? So
Suzie Sheehy37:55
yes. And that's, and that's where, you know, we're at the point now where, you know, legally, yes, of course, you know, we have to have equal hiring practices, we've had all these, you know, campaigns. But actually, now what, as you say, what we're fighting here, as it were, this sort of bias that we carry from this cultural and sociological legacy that's happened of women being pushed out? And if it were a simple answer as to why I think, you know, if I could give a simple answer in two seconds, the problem would be solved. It's a very complex issue as to why women are less likely to work in those fields. But personally, I do feel it comes down to culture and belonging is how I would summarize it. And so I think one of the wonderful things about this process of putting the women's stories back where they belong, is that for me anyway, and I've had this reflected in a number of emails from from people and conversations with people is that it enhance their sense of belonging in the field. It made them go I'm not weird for doing this. Absolutely. You know, it's I belong here, and I have valuable contributions to make, and I shouldn't you know, I shouldn't listen to these strange societal messages that we've inherited, that it's somehow not for me. Yeah.
Marco Ciappelli39:19
Yeah. And I think it comes down to having role model role model for young young women, young girl that can look up and say, Yeah, this is totally feasible. I mean, now there is astronauts that are women. Yeah, thankfully, you know, one of our hosts new hosts is a former astronaut. He was on the on the space shuttle that went up after the Columbia accident, and it was the first time that Eileen Collins was a woman Commander of the Space Shuttle. A Big thing and we need to have more stories about it.
Suzie Sheehy 39:52
Yes, but I agree. It's great to have the role models. The only thing I'd say is like, we really like to reduce it to what we Nate is just this. And we've shown already, as you know, right? Like, it's always more complicated than that. But I agree, we can't go wrong with having more more role models, I think.
Marco Ciappelli40:10
Absolutely, absolutely. But so I love the fact that we ended up talking about this. I know it's important in our society to talk about this, as we talk about why we do experiment and why we we study and our curiosity and all of that. And, again, I said, I'm definitely in for reading the book, or having some artificial intelligence read it to me, is an audible or some actor. And and, yeah, and just learn more about about this, I want to give you one last, you know, light, let's say, spotlight to send the message to, you know, invite people to read the book, what what they kind of get out of it. In the case scenario, worst case scenario, nothing but I don't think so.
Suzie Sheehy41:02
I think best case scenario is that you'll get to put together these sort of curious questions about the universe and how it works on a fundamental scale, which is so fascinating and or inspiring. And you'll get to put that together with the human stories of how it is that people have gone into the lab over the last 120 years, and completely revolutionized our view of that. But in a in a sort of practical hands on way. It's not all equations, there's no equations in the book, actually, except for equals MC squared, but you knew that one already. So it's really giving you that like, putting you in the shoes of the experimenter putting you in the shoes of the people who've walked in and gone, asked the questions about the universe, and then somehow figured out how to do that and giving them giving you an insight into their world. And then also, bringing that together with stuff that you may or may not already know about our technology, about our society, and about the impacts of how doing this kind of research can sort of have a flow on effect in our world. And I hope that at the end of all that when I demonstrate how we've got 1000s of people working together, across all sorts of boundaries, including international boundaries of countries that have traditionally been at war with each other, I hope what you'll walk away with is actually a story that gives you some sort of hope for the future, in terms of the way that we can work together and collaborate as smart people with different sets of skills and different backgrounds and different mindsets to achieve something that is much greater than what we could do alone.
Marco Ciappelli42:36
Wonderful. I don't ever want to add anything to that. I usually do it wrap in but you did it so well that there is no need. So I want to thank you very much Susie for being part of this conversation. I truly enjoyed it and learned a lot. We will have notes on the podcast notes or if you're watching the video, then there will be the link to the podcast where the notes are with the links to so people can get in touch with you. They can check the book buyer if they're interested. And maybe you'll get some much more even more amazing review from people that you wouldn't expect. Wow.
Suzie Sheehy43:15
That would be lovely. Thanks for having me on. It's been a really great chat.
Marco Ciappelli43:18
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Bye bye, everybody. And stay tuned for the next episode of audio signals on ITSPmagazine