June 14, 2023 • 36 mins
Dahlia Wilde and her Wonder Dog travel to Oxford University where she studied as a Truman Scholar in Public Service as well as at Duke University.
Dahlia connects with a few wonderful CERN Co-Discoverers of the "GOD PARTICLE" - Dr. Daniela Bortoletto from Oxford University and Dr. Mark Kruse, from Duke University.
Interestingly Daniela was Mark's particle physics mentor and Mark is now Dahlia's particle physics mentor! Mentor Rule! And mentors of mentors! We all need a great mentor - especially when we are trying to understand the universe and our place in it! Enjoy!
Please follow me at @DahliaWildeOfficial
The "OH MY GOD PARTICLE SHOW!" is Executive Produced by Dahlia Wilde and
iHEART Media and is a part of the Seneca Podcast Network.
Audio Design by Paul Mercier.
Music by Ivo Moring.
Keep looking up! We are the stars!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome vin kommen yin venido, yin venub benvenutiaduti. Welcome one
and all, Thank you for joining me. I'm Gallia Wild
and this is the Oh my God Particle Show where
we talk about science and art and music and good
good good vibrations and all matters near and far. So
(00:32):
ready or not, unpack your imaginations and get ready to
rumble through the universe that we are so so lucky
to live in. We are the stars.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
First a joke.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
A listener from Pratt Bottom shared this. A passenger called
the airlines, I'm calling to find out if faster than
light flights are available. The ticket agent replied, yes, we
do have faster than light flights, but these monthly pritic
lats what's on Saturday night day is required. I love jokes. Hey, omgpsers,
(01:08):
send us your best jokes and your questions and wonderings
about particle physics, the universe, the Big Bang, whatever the
heck ins fires you. We love it and we'll try
to get answers for you from our certain geniuses. Our
email is omgpspod at gmail dot com. That's OMGPS pod
at gmail dot com. Remember there are no dumb questions
(01:32):
in particle physics. Hi, I'm Dahlia Wild and this is
my co host Higgs Boson Wonderdog. Welcome back to the
Oh My God Particle Show. Thank you for joining us.
On today's show, we have two very groovy brainyacs. We
have the returning cham from New Zealand, my excellent Kiwi
mentor from the Large Hadron Collider, and Duke University doctor
(01:55):
Mark Cruz and her other guest today. She's originally from Italy.
Her name is doctor Daniella Bordoledo. She's the head of
particle Physics at the University of Oxford and miracle of miracles.
When I was introduced to the great Danielle, it turns
out that she was my mentor, Mar's mentor, mentors of mentors,
(02:19):
mentors really rule and they both were co discovers the
God particle at Cerne, where they are again researching together
at the Large Hadron Collider looking at collisions at even
higher energies. Hi, Daniella, it's so great to meet you.
Tell me all about running the whole particle physics department
(02:39):
at Oxford.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's a big responsibility. A twenty six faculty working in
the subdepartment of particle physics, and we are in a
lot of experiment you know, from Fromatlas to you know,
all of z and eutrino experiment in Japan and in
a US UH and in Canada actually, and then we
(03:03):
are on l z and experiment that is looking you know,
to search searching for that matter directly, which is also
based in the US. So really, you know, it's it's
you know, it's a lot of people, it's a big subdepartment,
and there is a very strong tradition for particle physics
here in Oxford. So if you look at almost all
(03:25):
of the professor at the other universities in the UK,
it's almost all graduated from Oxford University. It's quite amazing. Actually,
what is this.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
An undergraduate conference for women in physics that you are
in charge of the UK arm of that.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, so it started in the US and actually it
was started by two graduate students at the University of
Southern California many years ago now, and this student realized
that there was a big imbalance in the number of
women in physics, and so they decided to do something.
(04:01):
And what they did they did realize this event in
which you know, you will have undergrad The students will
be invited for three days and they will interact with
role models, you know, mainly women at other stages of
their career. And also you know, they will have a
lot of punels, you know, to understand better of the
(04:24):
possibility of what you can do with a degree in physics,
both in industry or in academia. And this really was
really aimed to give confidence to women to continue in physics.
And the first conference at twenty six women. Now it's
one thousand, five hundred women going to the conference in
(04:47):
the US and Canada. And when I came in the
UK in Oxford, I met, by chance, of course, a
woman who attended the conference in southern California, and because
of that, you know, I decided that could be a
good idea to start it also in the UK. In
(05:08):
the US it's done in multiple locations so that people
don't have to travel a lot. But in the UK
we had like one location and we had it in
our ideas because I started it, and now it's going
around the UK and Ireland. We invite one hundred women
and it has exactly the same effect in the UK
(05:30):
that it had actually in the US. Women after the
conference believe that they are physicists, have confidence to continue
in physics. They are energized. You know, there is a
major step again, I repeat again, in confidence. You know.
It was fantastic for me too, because I was coming
(05:50):
to a different country. I didn't know anybody in the UK. Well,
I knew some people in the UK, but I didn't
know the system very well. And by starting the conference,
you know, I got to know many many fantastic women's
scientists here, women physicists, and it was tabulish for me.
I mean, every time I enter a conference where we
(06:15):
have a lot of women or anybody identified as women
in the conference, you really feel a boost. You know.
When I went to Purdue, you know, and I started
an assistant professor there, I was the first female professors
since nineteen forty five. When I entered the room, I
think that the first class that I studied was that
(06:37):
I toltal Purdue was actually I think it was mechanics
or not Electricity and Magnetism for engineers. I entered the
room and I was the only woman in the room.
I mean, you know, just unbelievable things have changed.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
How did you get started? Because I'm really interested in
how be an extraordinary happening of a woman walking into
a classroom where the only one house is going to
become ordinary, you know, where we don't even have to
say that it's a woman. You know, a particle physicist
is a woman. So how did you start and how
(07:15):
did you have your confidence to use your imagination and
creativity for science? And where did you grow up? In
the Alps?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I grew up in the Alps. I come from a
small town in the Italian Alps called Domodos Sola. Yeah,
I think that the likely is that I would become
a physicist. And the head of particle physics in Oxford
is in philit small I don't know, you know, it's
it's really difficult because you know, I'm the first person
(07:46):
to get an undergraduate education. You know, my mother and
my father didn't go to university. My father died when
I was nine years old, living my mother and I
really in a rather shake economical situation. And so I
I really, you know, honestly, I one step at the
(08:07):
time and always being keen to learn from other people,
to learn from their experience. It was not even clear
that I could go as you know, as I was
growing up, but to the school that was necessary to
do a degree in physics. But it was sort of
amazing because in my hometown we had a very very
(08:29):
famous private lyceum that was as a road to do
a degree in physics, but that would have been completely unaffordable.
And really the year that I was ready to go
to the lyceum, the open state school lessum, state school
lesseum in my hometown, and I went to that one.
(08:53):
I graduated with the top mark, and everybody was so
lovely and so excited because it was almost like the
kid from the wrong side of the truck that get
you know. The grade is called sixty over sixty because
you get, you know, one hundred percent, and to have
the state school kids that got the sixty over sixty
(09:14):
was amazing and everybody was so excited. So I'm almost
like a hero in my kim school. So and again
my it was really actually my physics teacher, a man
who really told me that I should try it, you know,
and then I was I went to school as an
(09:35):
undergraduate at the University of Pavia, and I was admitted
in a very prestigious college we called College of Vizieri,
which was Standard in fifteen sixty seven by pop Pus,
the fifth to accommodate a very promising student men. You know,
it was really you know, it was only for men,
and women were admitted starting in nineteen sixty five, and
(09:59):
so it it was really you know, you can take
this experience and take it negatively, because honestly, I was
coming from the high school in a very small town
and I had to deal with a lot of classmates
that were better propelled than I was. But again, I
never find that, you know, some I always find this
(10:22):
enormous appetite for learning, you know, and so for me,
it was just very motivated. I just said, oh gosh,
I have to study more, you know, I just had
to work more. Then in my third year of university,
I was admitted to the CERN Summer student program and
I spent you know, the old summer at CERN, and
I just loved it. And there I really decided that
(10:44):
I wanted to be a particle physics. You know, I
had like amazing lecturer. I think that one of my
lecturers was Martinez Beltman, the Nobel Prize of physics, you know,
teaching me the Standard model. I mean, you know, I
was like it was unbelievable. It was and you know,
you were doing research and you were really in this
(11:06):
very international environment, which I love these ideas that you know,
part of the feelings that I have, you know, and
I always wanted to be at a university is that really,
you know, it is universal. It brings everybody together, you know.
I always felt like CERN was another place that brought
(11:27):
everybody together. And I just find this international aspect of
CERN where everybody is working together to get their experiment
working completely, you know, amazing and completely you know, very
motivating for me.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I mean, I love it too. That's the best thing
in the entire universe health that we could all be
working together. And it's so exciting that you had all
these helping hands. I've always had that too. And like Mark,
he was just a deny when I called him with
my crazy question. So I have a theory that because
(12:05):
you were his mentor perdue that. I mean, Mark is
already awesome and so creative and talented and patient. But
how was he as a student.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, Mark actually was my first student, so he deserved
a special a special place, I think, you know, and
it was not only my student, it was a share
student because I was starting up, and you know, I
was learning. Until then, I mainly worked in any plus
minus machine at lower energy, and for me, it was
(12:36):
a very big step to go to CDF, which was
an amazing experiment at the Tabathron, a proton anti proton
collider reaching the highest energy in the world. So I
was learning with Marc actually, so it was a fantastic experience.
And I remember Mark, you know, as I said, this
is special. Your first student is always special. And he
(12:57):
spent also a lot of time also called laborating with
people at the University of Chicago, et cetera. Because you know,
in this big collaboration, we are always working together. You know,
it's not you know, it's not one person that does
all analysis at times. There is always it's always a
collaborative work, you know. And so it was it was amazing,
(13:20):
and I was learning at the time with Mark in
some sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Mark, Danielle was saying, how you were her first student,
and that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, it's a long time ago now, but you you.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Were a joint student with with think or you remember,
and you work you worked a lot also with the
University of Chicago, was saying, you know, so it was
really amazing, Yeah, amazing times and it was so it
was so exciting. You know, we discovered the top work
and marquis is you know, it's one of the elements
(13:55):
that led, you know, to the discovery of the top quark.
So so it was really fantastic. And what is that excite?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Tell us a little bit about the top quark and
mark about your thesis.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, sure, so this was you know, it was it
was fortuitous in the timing sense because this was in
the early nineteen nineties and you know, we believe that
the top quark existed, so the top quark just to
you know, to step back on it a little bit,
you know, everything that we observe, you know, is made
(14:28):
up of what's what we call the first generation of
fundamental particles, so upquarks, down quarks, and electrons. But there
are another two sort of generations of fundamental particles. We
don't we have no idea why why there's three? Why
aren't there seventeen or two or whatever, So we have
no idea why. But the top quark is the sort
(14:51):
of third generation partner to the up quark, which is
one of the fundamental constituents of protons and neutrons and
things that you know, we are made of, but it's
it's something that you know, lasts very ephemerally. I mean
you you you create them and then they decay almost instantaneously.
So what we have to detect is, you know, the
(15:12):
remnants of the decay products when when as soon as
they decay. And so the top quark was theorized it
to exist, and so we didn't know how heavy it
would be, and so that this is one of this
is one of the complications in finding it because we
don't know, we didn't know exactly where to look. We
had some ideas and so there's but there's a lot
(15:34):
of different ways that can actually decay. So it can
decay into other particles that we then detect, and so
it can do that in a number of different ways.
And so my thesis was on one of those possibilities,
you know, one of those ways it can decay. It
wasn't considered at the time a very fruitful sort of
decay channel, but it worked. It worked, I mean, it
(15:54):
was amazing that that it worked, and so it was
actually it ended up being quite an important contribution to
the entire discovery. So that was really exciting. And a
very stressful time because as a graduate student, you know,
we had to show updates every week and it was
really quite incredibly stressful to get all that time. I
(16:14):
was quite quite glad when it was all over, but
that was extremely exciting time when we could have actually
announced that Okay, we've now seen evidence for the signals
for these top quark decades. Huh.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And it's an amazing particle in a sense. It's extremely heavy.
Its mass is like two hundred times the mass of
the proton, I mean, you know, and it decays instantaneously.
As Mark said, it's a very interesting particle because now
that we have discovered a Higgs bosone, for example, we
explain the mass of the particle in terms of its
(16:49):
interaction with the field of the Higgs bosone and the
top quark as what we call these interactions, we call
it coupling, as a coupling that is equal to one,
but for example, the electron, as a very small coupling,
tend to the minor six something like that. Okay, So
it's really and as Mark said, you know, we don't
(17:11):
know why we add this different generation of particles and
perhaps you know understanding bat as the couplings and understanding
beat as the Higgs boson can solve, help us solve
the mystery of We call it the mystery of flavor.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, and I think the top quake is still the
heaviest fundamental particle. We know, it's heavier than the Higgs boson.
Even so the fundamental particles couplings to this Higgs field
which give them their mass. We don't know why or
what fundamentally generates these different couplings, and so understanding the
(17:46):
Higgs boson more. And so this is one of the
goals in the next you know, several years at the
LC is to understand the Higgs boson better. Now that
we've discovered it, you know, there's still a lot we
need to measure about it and just understand. And so
it is one of our big mysteries. And it's always
I always think that, you know, whenever we discover something,
it just opens up another whole set of you know,
(18:08):
fundamental questions that we don't know. So the more we discover,
the less we know in some sense, which is you know,
which makes it feel extremely exciting. I Mean, we're really probing,
you know, the fundamental nature of the universe and I think,
you know, the more questions we have, you know, I
almost believe you know, the more questions you have, the
closer you sort of get into it.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, and it's almost like, you know, we say that
we understand mass, but in a sense, now we just
translated the problem of why the masses of this particle
are so different in the problem of why is the
coupling of this particle with the Higgs fields are so different?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
What are your experiments now we are on the.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Same experiment, we don't say Atlas experiment. Yes, yeah, we
are collaborators.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Collaborators again, that's right.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Collaboration is so important because a lot of times we
science is solitary, and that is definitely so exciting about
international collaboration. Can you tell me what just so we
can add a little tiny glamor what was the beauty experiment?
Was that adcern? Was that your mentor?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah? My advisor, Sheldon Stone, who passed away actually recently,
is one of was one of the experts in UH
in the beauty in the Physics of the Peak work,
which is also called the beauty work, and so it
was especially influential in LHCb. I worked with him in
(19:36):
another experiment which was called Cleo that was at Cornell University.
And again you know, it's he was fundamental in, uh,
in my development as a scientist. I mean, it was
so odd nosed. I mean, you know, it was really phenomenal,
you know, this kind of going back to the basics,
(19:56):
and you know, don't tell me something that is not true.
I mean, you know, very very amazing scientist, really, you know,
and you know, so I really work very closely with
him on B physics. So my teasis was on B physics.
And and it's strange now that you know, I'm back
doing in a sense you know, H T B B.
(20:18):
So the higgs they came into two beauty quarks.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
So that's what the H two B B stands.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, so it's going to beauty. We
called the B quark is a beauty worker.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And how do you come up with that name? It's
like a T shirt top quark and beauty cork. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
But the top and bottom clarks quite often called the
truth and beauty clerks said they mean the same thing,
but truth and beauty I think a little too poetic
for physicists top and bottom unfortunately. I think true truth
and beauty. I think a much more descriptive names.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
We're going to have the sellers T shirts along with
the pet God particle, which is basically a box of air.
You guys are just awesome, and I just hope we
can get the message out how wonderful and amazing and
supportive and collaborative you know this field is, and that
we can hope to build the confidence, especially women and
(21:20):
girls and everyone in between well need yeah, well, so
they'll believe in their visions and to follow it through
the experimentations. Was that true that Cecilia paying Kabushkin She
took like maybe it's an exaggeration, three million, you know,
recordings of stars, and just that persistence, which is just
so important in thesistence.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Is extremely important in science, and I think that it's
really one of the reasons that makes break a scientist,
you know, and.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Anybody in any field. Yeah, especially Yeah, but again.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It's the same things. Actually, you know here in Oxford,
we are justly in Belbono. And again you know, she
was able to see pulses, I mean really by looking
at meters and meeters and meters of recording, and again
she was extremely persistent, and I do think that it's
some also characteristic. You know that women often have this
(22:20):
impostal syndrome.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yes I have it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah so, but and again not only women. But I
do think that sometimes having a little bit of the
impostal syndrome helps you to achieve almost this persistence. I
don't know to say, because you really want, you know,
to do everything, to think that you have not left
any stone unt terms, that you really have been systematic.
(22:46):
And I do think that a lot of women who
have done, you know, important contributions of science tend to
have that. You know, this persistence is commitments.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Is so important.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, I think I completely agree with that. I think
imposter syndrome is a real thing, and I think it
does motivate you to in some sense have a deeper
understanding of things. I mean, you sort of see it
if you don't feel that you belong or you feel
that someone else understands something better than you, although they
probably don't. They're just better at, you know, making you
(23:22):
believe they understand something better. It's quite quite often they
simply don't. But in some sense it sort of motivates
you to have a deeper understanding. I mean, it's a
I completely sort of empathize with you know, where Danieller
came from. It's the same in my case. You know,
neither of my parents even graduated high school. So I
never really believe that, you know, I deserve to be
(23:43):
you know where I am. But I think that really
is a motivating factor. And if you've got a sense
of sort of competition that you want to you know,
learn more than you know or know more than someone else,
it really does sort of motivate you to do that.
So I think that is a really important components. It's
sort of interesting, as Danielle mentioned that quite a few
(24:03):
people in very high positions, you know, in the in
the physics community, you know, did not come from very
privileged or you know, academic backgrounds. It's necessarily so you know,
they came from environments that I believe sort of allowed
them to sort of interact better with other people and
(24:24):
tell you know, you know, Danielle is extremely good at
interacting with people, getting amazing people, you know, groups around her,
and I think that's that's almost you know, a very
key component as well.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
And also Florencia Connelly had said her father was a
car mechanic exactly. She said she never noticed she was
the only woman until your weddings.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So it's really interesting. It's really yeah, if you look
at where where people actually came from, it's it's quite interesting.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
And the challenge though, so as Florencia was so clearly explained,
was it was in her post doc where she started
to feel a little bit uncomfortable and you Mark were
saying that it was because the structures of the universities
and the research teams were mostly.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Men.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
But the it's just going to take time, right, because
doesn't it take eight to twelve years to get through
the physics.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yes, So I think the although there are you know,
more and more women, you know, becoming physicists, I think
the institution itself is still very male like, and so
you know, if you're in meetings, it's you know, the
person with the highest, you know, the loudest voice, or
the person who's you know, in some almost the rudest,
who can interrupt someone and you know, give their own opinion.
(25:37):
Those are the ones whose voices are typically heard. So
it's still you know, male dominated in that sense. And
so I think there are sort of institutional changes I
think that you know, would also be good for the field.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Of general and what can we do Danielle and make it,
you know, more a better environment for women.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, I think that, you know, you should all always
think to make it a better environment for everyone. Yes,
you know, I think that whenever you achieve something for
women and it's better for everybody. And again I think
that everybody has a different experience or for example, for me,
(26:18):
my post doc was the time of my life. I was.
I stayed in Cleo. I had a lot of freedom,
you know. I felt like I was maturing very fast.
I was only a postoc for two and a half year.
I got to a faculty position in my third year
of the postoc, which is quite amenius. No, No, it
was just a coincidence. Sometimes you're lucky also a little bit,
(26:40):
you know. So so I've had a very quick postoc
for me, It's a difficult part was more like when
I was at Purdue, you know, because I was really
the only woman in the old faculty fifty men. I
had a daughter before getting tenure. That nobody does it,
you know, So I've not done things according to what
(27:01):
you should do, perhaps you honestly. My daughter was born
December twenty, I was back at work January seventh, and
I if you ask me now, Daniella, why did you
do it? And Daniella, why how did you do it?
I probably will say that I don't know. I will
go with my you know, I will go and shift
(27:23):
with my daughter. We will will drive together, you know,
from Purdue to Fermila, and I will stay in the
Fermina village. My husband will ask, tell me why don't
you ask to don't give you shift because you're you know,
you have a small child. And I would say, well,
I feel like if if I ask, then I'm treated differently.
I was silly almost, you know, I don't know why
(27:45):
I did something, you know, but again, you know, I
did them, and sometimes I regret a little bit that
I've done them because I didn't spend as much time
with my daughter as maybe I should have done. But
in any case, I think that again, you know, don't
make women choose, you know, all men to have more flexibility,
(28:06):
so that you know, you understand that, you know, if
you have a child, you have to take some time
off and this shouldn't count against you. Making the environment
more open and make it more clear what as a
requirement for promotion for every step of the career. And
(28:26):
I think that these steps are really important for everybody.
And again, you know, having classes for every body against
people who bully you, people who interrupt you, you know,
avoiding these things that Mark was saying that they happen
in faculty meetings. That is always like the man with
the loudest voice. That as the final world, you know.
(28:49):
And I think that you know, letting everybody knows that
it's okay to say stop it, you shouldn't do this,
you know, being being more able to talk and more
able to express our thoughts and when things are are
not right, when I'm wrong, and trying to give a
(29:09):
lot of encouragement and our knowledge the work that's done
by everybody at their career stage. You know. I think
that it's a long list of things that we have
to do and the.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Whole planet where you have to fix. And what a
field did your daughter go into? Did she run screaming
from physics?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, she runs screaming from physics. Yes. She never wanted
to come to a physics department, you know, you know,
she doesn't even enter them, you know. And she she
studied actually boys performance at Oberlin College, which is a
fantastic music school a fantastic environment.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, that's wonderful. That's what I especially interested in the
art set zarn And that's why I'm so grateful to
Mark that he embraced my theater project and he never
made me feel I asked a dumb question. And look,
we've actually made progress here. Hopefully we're gonna have a
lot of listeners who really excited about this. And yesterday
(30:09):
I was talking to a friend of mine, a Fulbright
scholar from a program that I am involved with, Vital Voices,
and I was telling her about you, Danielle and Samantha
Christopherretti up there at the space station, and she said
to me, why do I not know about these women.
I'm so in awe of, you know how, the women
(30:31):
who've done great work in science and incredible men too,
like Mark, who are supporting us and also have their
own discoveries. And I'm really hoping that, yes, since if
we're all made of the same God particles, we're gonna
all get along, We're all gonna collaborate, We're just gonna
keep moving forward. And yeah, this fact of the you know,
(30:52):
flexibility and being allowed to make a mistake, that's also
really important. And that's especially I appreciate more. Never maybe
not to my face, laughed at me, or I mean,
I would ask Mark some real doozies, because I used
to be a lot more interested in vibrations and spirituality
and where art and science meet. But what do you
(31:15):
do when someone's condescending or they laugh at your research,
or they tell you, oh, you must be nuts. I
noticed a lot of these women's scientists. They were told
they were kind of nuts, right, but they kept going.
So I just wish for myself also and to inspire
other people. When people are condescending in a group setting,
(31:35):
or disrespecting your discoveries or your intuitions, your hunches, how
do you keep going with them?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I don't know at the moment. I'm ahead of the subdepartment.
So I put in as a grant, and I put together,
you know, the big grunt that pays everybody. Everybody is
nice to you. Yes, it's okay, yeah we did well,
and you know so, so in the thanks. I don't
feel that at the moment, but I feel it a
lot for the students. Actually, you know, it's very competitive
(32:08):
to enter in Oxford, and I hear that a lot
of the students. Male students tell to the female students
that they are there only because they are women. And yeah,
so I do think that you know, what you're saying
is you're spot on in some respect. You still have
(32:29):
to fight against that. And again the only thing that
you can do is is to train people. You know,
we're planning, for example, to have classes that the students
who are in you know, like in the practicals, and
they are sort of teaching and interacting with the undergrad
with students. We are trying to teach them and to
(32:51):
explain that actually the way that we select women and
men to enter in Oxford is exactly the same. There
is no bias. And again, so we try as much
as possible to go over and to teach people to
talk about it and to you know, dispel this kind
of preposterous idea. Yeah again, but you're right. You know,
(33:13):
in some when I'm not in Oxford and when I
go somewhere else, you know, obviously you know there might
be somebody that you know that listen, what I find
strange sometimes, but it happens to me more in social situation,
Like my husband is also a physicist, and you know,
(33:34):
if my husband and I go together, you know, to
another college where, for example, they might not know us,
et cetera. They will tend to listen more to hymn
than to me. So I do notice when the two
of us are together.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, wow, Okay, we're gonna keep moving forward. It's gonna
take time to write what was reading Cecilia Capushkin Chip.
They didn't even give her a degree right at Cambridge,
not until nineteen forty eight. I don't know the year
that Oxford started giving women degrees. But this is going
to all take time until we all figure it out
(34:08):
and dismantle the old structure.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
So yeah, but I can tell you that, you know,
in the last faculty search that we had around a
year ago, not two years ago now, of the six
candidate fire by women that we hire, you know, in
different subdepartments, there is a lot of fantastic women coming along.
You know, there are more women entering the field, There
are more women you know, postal, more women applying for
(34:35):
faculty position, and their quality is fabulous.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to come back to school and
have you and Mark as my teachers. We're gonna have
to go have a party at CERN. I thank you both,
for all your enthusiasm and patience and creativity. And thank
you for all your time and brilliant thoughts.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Thanks Dan Okay, fantastic talking to you. Danielle.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Oh it was so nice. I can't believe it. Real nice.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Hopefully ill Yes.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Bye bye, Thank you glad truth and beauty quarks, wow,
and and God particles. I mean it's so poetic and
so elegant. Thank you doctor Mark and doctor Daniella.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You guys really rock.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I'm truly inspired. Monumental mentors and mentors of mentors and
mentors of mentors of mentors, mentors really rule. Join us
next week when we have doctor Mark Cruz, our amazing
mentor from CERN and his colleague, the amazing Florencia Canelly
from the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Remember
(35:44):
keep looking up, stay positively charged. We are the stars.
Goodbye for now, Adios a rivederci afeedersen abientos. Claimer we
want to be as it's not responsible for loss of
this podcast. It's subsidiary words Listenawers disappear into a wormhole.
The Oh My God Particle Show is part of Cenical
Women podcast Network and is produced by Dahlia Wilde and
(36:06):
iHeartRadio with sound designed by Paul Mercy, a
Welcome vin kommen yin venido, yin venub benvenutiaduti. Welcome one
and all, Thank you for joining me. I'm Gallia Wild
and this is the Oh my God Particle Show where
we talk about science and art and music and good
good good vibrations and all matters near and far. So
(00:32):
ready or not, unpack your imaginations and get ready to
rumble through the universe that we are so so lucky
to live in. We are the stars.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
First a joke.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
A listener from Pratt Bottom shared this. A passenger called
the airlines, I'm calling to find out if faster than
light flights are available. The ticket agent replied, yes, we
do have faster than light flights, but these monthly pritic
lats what's on Saturday night day is required. I love jokes. Hey, omgpsers,
(01:08):
send us your best jokes and your questions and wonderings
about particle physics, the universe, the Big Bang, whatever the
heck ins fires you. We love it and we'll try
to get answers for you from our certain geniuses. Our
email is omgpspod at gmail dot com. That's OMGPS pod
at gmail dot com. Remember there are no dumb questions
(01:32):
in particle physics. Hi, I'm Dahlia Wild and this is
my co host Higgs Boson Wonderdog. Welcome back to the
Oh My God Particle Show. Thank you for joining us.
On today's show, we have two very groovy brainyacs. We
have the returning cham from New Zealand, my excellent Kiwi
mentor from the Large Hadron Collider, and Duke University doctor
(01:55):
Mark Cruz and her other guest today. She's originally from Italy.
Her name is doctor Daniella Bordoledo. She's the head of
particle Physics at the University of Oxford and miracle of miracles.
When I was introduced to the great Danielle, it turns
out that she was my mentor, Mar's mentor, mentors of mentors,
(02:19):
mentors really rule and they both were co discovers the
God particle at Cerne, where they are again researching together
at the Large Hadron Collider looking at collisions at even
higher energies. Hi, Daniella, it's so great to meet you.
Tell me all about running the whole particle physics department
(02:39):
at Oxford.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's a big responsibility. A twenty six faculty working in
the subdepartment of particle physics, and we are in a
lot of experiment you know, from Fromatlas to you know,
all of z and eutrino experiment in Japan and in
a US UH and in Canada actually, and then we
(03:03):
are on l z and experiment that is looking you know,
to search searching for that matter directly, which is also
based in the US. So really, you know, it's it's
you know, it's a lot of people, it's a big subdepartment,
and there is a very strong tradition for particle physics
here in Oxford. So if you look at almost all
(03:25):
of the professor at the other universities in the UK,
it's almost all graduated from Oxford University. It's quite amazing. Actually,
what is this.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
An undergraduate conference for women in physics that you are
in charge of the UK arm of that.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, so it started in the US and actually it
was started by two graduate students at the University of
Southern California many years ago now, and this student realized
that there was a big imbalance in the number of
women in physics, and so they decided to do something.
(04:01):
And what they did they did realize this event in
which you know, you will have undergrad The students will
be invited for three days and they will interact with
role models, you know, mainly women at other stages of
their career. And also you know, they will have a
lot of punels, you know, to understand better of the
(04:24):
possibility of what you can do with a degree in physics,
both in industry or in academia. And this really was
really aimed to give confidence to women to continue in physics.
And the first conference at twenty six women. Now it's
one thousand, five hundred women going to the conference in
(04:47):
the US and Canada. And when I came in the
UK in Oxford, I met, by chance, of course, a
woman who attended the conference in southern California, and because
of that, you know, I decided that could be a
good idea to start it also in the UK. In
(05:08):
the US it's done in multiple locations so that people
don't have to travel a lot. But in the UK
we had like one location and we had it in
our ideas because I started it, and now it's going
around the UK and Ireland. We invite one hundred women
and it has exactly the same effect in the UK
(05:30):
that it had actually in the US. Women after the
conference believe that they are physicists, have confidence to continue
in physics. They are energized. You know, there is a
major step again, I repeat again, in confidence. You know.
It was fantastic for me too, because I was coming
(05:50):
to a different country. I didn't know anybody in the UK. Well,
I knew some people in the UK, but I didn't
know the system very well. And by starting the conference,
you know, I got to know many many fantastic women's
scientists here, women physicists, and it was tabulish for me.
I mean, every time I enter a conference where we
(06:15):
have a lot of women or anybody identified as women
in the conference, you really feel a boost. You know.
When I went to Purdue, you know, and I started
an assistant professor there, I was the first female professors
since nineteen forty five. When I entered the room, I
think that the first class that I studied was that
(06:37):
I toltal Purdue was actually I think it was mechanics
or not Electricity and Magnetism for engineers. I entered the
room and I was the only woman in the room.
I mean, you know, just unbelievable things have changed.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
How did you get started? Because I'm really interested in
how be an extraordinary happening of a woman walking into
a classroom where the only one house is going to
become ordinary, you know, where we don't even have to
say that it's a woman. You know, a particle physicist
is a woman. So how did you start and how
(07:15):
did you have your confidence to use your imagination and
creativity for science? And where did you grow up? In
the Alps?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I grew up in the Alps. I come from a
small town in the Italian Alps called Domodos Sola. Yeah,
I think that the likely is that I would become
a physicist. And the head of particle physics in Oxford
is in philit small I don't know, you know, it's
it's really difficult because you know, I'm the first person
(07:46):
to get an undergraduate education. You know, my mother and
my father didn't go to university. My father died when
I was nine years old, living my mother and I
really in a rather shake economical situation. And so I
I really, you know, honestly, I one step at the
(08:07):
time and always being keen to learn from other people,
to learn from their experience. It was not even clear
that I could go as you know, as I was
growing up, but to the school that was necessary to
do a degree in physics. But it was sort of
amazing because in my hometown we had a very very
(08:29):
famous private lyceum that was as a road to do
a degree in physics, but that would have been completely unaffordable.
And really the year that I was ready to go
to the lyceum, the open state school lessum, state school
lesseum in my hometown, and I went to that one.
(08:53):
I graduated with the top mark, and everybody was so
lovely and so excited because it was almost like the
kid from the wrong side of the truck that get
you know. The grade is called sixty over sixty because
you get, you know, one hundred percent, and to have
the state school kids that got the sixty over sixty
(09:14):
was amazing and everybody was so excited. So I'm almost
like a hero in my kim school. So and again
my it was really actually my physics teacher, a man
who really told me that I should try it, you know,
and then I was I went to school as an
(09:35):
undergraduate at the University of Pavia, and I was admitted
in a very prestigious college we called College of Vizieri,
which was Standard in fifteen sixty seven by pop Pus,
the fifth to accommodate a very promising student men. You know,
it was really you know, it was only for men,
and women were admitted starting in nineteen sixty five, and
(09:59):
so it it was really you know, you can take
this experience and take it negatively, because honestly, I was
coming from the high school in a very small town
and I had to deal with a lot of classmates
that were better propelled than I was. But again, I
never find that, you know, some I always find this
(10:22):
enormous appetite for learning, you know, and so for me,
it was just very motivated. I just said, oh gosh,
I have to study more, you know, I just had
to work more. Then in my third year of university,
I was admitted to the CERN Summer student program and
I spent you know, the old summer at CERN, and
I just loved it. And there I really decided that
(10:44):
I wanted to be a particle physics. You know, I
had like amazing lecturer. I think that one of my
lecturers was Martinez Beltman, the Nobel Prize of physics, you know,
teaching me the Standard model. I mean, you know, I
was like it was unbelievable. It was and you know,
you were doing research and you were really in this
(11:06):
very international environment, which I love these ideas that you know,
part of the feelings that I have, you know, and
I always wanted to be at a university is that really,
you know, it is universal. It brings everybody together, you know.
I always felt like CERN was another place that brought
(11:27):
everybody together. And I just find this international aspect of
CERN where everybody is working together to get their experiment
working completely, you know, amazing and completely you know, very
motivating for me.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I mean, I love it too. That's the best thing
in the entire universe health that we could all be
working together. And it's so exciting that you had all
these helping hands. I've always had that too. And like Mark,
he was just a deny when I called him with
my crazy question. So I have a theory that because
(12:05):
you were his mentor perdue that. I mean, Mark is
already awesome and so creative and talented and patient. But
how was he as a student.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, Mark actually was my first student, so he deserved
a special a special place, I think, you know, and
it was not only my student, it was a share
student because I was starting up, and you know, I
was learning. Until then, I mainly worked in any plus
minus machine at lower energy, and for me, it was
(12:36):
a very big step to go to CDF, which was
an amazing experiment at the Tabathron, a proton anti proton
collider reaching the highest energy in the world. So I
was learning with Marc actually, so it was a fantastic experience.
And I remember Mark, you know, as I said, this
is special. Your first student is always special. And he
(12:57):
spent also a lot of time also called laborating with
people at the University of Chicago, et cetera. Because you know,
in this big collaboration, we are always working together. You know,
it's not you know, it's not one person that does
all analysis at times. There is always it's always a
collaborative work, you know. And so it was it was amazing,
(13:20):
and I was learning at the time with Mark in
some sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Mark, Danielle was saying, how you were her first student,
and that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, it's a long time ago now, but you you.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Were a joint student with with think or you remember,
and you work you worked a lot also with the
University of Chicago, was saying, you know, so it was
really amazing, Yeah, amazing times and it was so it
was so exciting. You know, we discovered the top work
and marquis is you know, it's one of the elements
(13:55):
that led, you know, to the discovery of the top quark.
So so it was really fantastic. And what is that excite?
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Tell us a little bit about the top quark and
mark about your thesis.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, sure, so this was you know, it was it
was fortuitous in the timing sense because this was in
the early nineteen nineties and you know, we believe that
the top quark existed, so the top quark just to
you know, to step back on it a little bit,
you know, everything that we observe, you know, is made
(14:28):
up of what's what we call the first generation of
fundamental particles, so upquarks, down quarks, and electrons. But there
are another two sort of generations of fundamental particles. We
don't we have no idea why why there's three? Why
aren't there seventeen or two or whatever, So we have
no idea why. But the top quark is the sort
(14:51):
of third generation partner to the up quark, which is
one of the fundamental constituents of protons and neutrons and
things that you know, we are made of, but it's
it's something that you know, lasts very ephemerally. I mean
you you you create them and then they decay almost instantaneously.
So what we have to detect is, you know, the
(15:12):
remnants of the decay products when when as soon as
they decay. And so the top quark was theorized it
to exist, and so we didn't know how heavy it
would be, and so that this is one of this
is one of the complications in finding it because we
don't know, we didn't know exactly where to look. We
had some ideas and so there's but there's a lot
(15:34):
of different ways that can actually decay. So it can
decay into other particles that we then detect, and so
it can do that in a number of different ways.
And so my thesis was on one of those possibilities,
you know, one of those ways it can decay. It
wasn't considered at the time a very fruitful sort of
decay channel, but it worked. It worked, I mean, it
(15:54):
was amazing that that it worked, and so it was
actually it ended up being quite an important contribution to
the entire discovery. So that was really exciting. And a
very stressful time because as a graduate student, you know,
we had to show updates every week and it was
really quite incredibly stressful to get all that time. I
(16:14):
was quite quite glad when it was all over, but
that was extremely exciting time when we could have actually
announced that Okay, we've now seen evidence for the signals
for these top quark decades. Huh.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
And it's an amazing particle in a sense. It's extremely heavy.
Its mass is like two hundred times the mass of
the proton, I mean, you know, and it decays instantaneously.
As Mark said, it's a very interesting particle because now
that we have discovered a Higgs bosone, for example, we
explain the mass of the particle in terms of its
(16:49):
interaction with the field of the Higgs bosone and the
top quark as what we call these interactions, we call
it coupling, as a coupling that is equal to one,
but for example, the electron, as a very small coupling,
tend to the minor six something like that. Okay, So
it's really and as Mark said, you know, we don't
(17:11):
know why we add this different generation of particles and
perhaps you know understanding bat as the couplings and understanding
beat as the Higgs boson can solve, help us solve
the mystery of We call it the mystery of flavor.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, and I think the top quake is still the
heaviest fundamental particle. We know, it's heavier than the Higgs boson.
Even so the fundamental particles couplings to this Higgs field
which give them their mass. We don't know why or
what fundamentally generates these different couplings, and so understanding the
(17:46):
Higgs boson more. And so this is one of the
goals in the next you know, several years at the
LC is to understand the Higgs boson better. Now that
we've discovered it, you know, there's still a lot we
need to measure about it and just understand. And so
it is one of our big mysteries. And it's always
I always think that, you know, whenever we discover something,
it just opens up another whole set of you know,
(18:08):
fundamental questions that we don't know. So the more we discover,
the less we know in some sense, which is you know,
which makes it feel extremely exciting. I Mean, we're really probing,
you know, the fundamental nature of the universe and I think,
you know, the more questions we have, you know, I
almost believe you know, the more questions you have, the
closer you sort of get into it.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, and it's almost like, you know, we say that
we understand mass, but in a sense, now we just
translated the problem of why the masses of this particle
are so different in the problem of why is the
coupling of this particle with the Higgs fields are so different?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
What are your experiments now we are on the.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Same experiment, we don't say Atlas experiment. Yes, yeah, we
are collaborators.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Collaborators again, that's right.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Collaboration is so important because a lot of times we
science is solitary, and that is definitely so exciting about
international collaboration. Can you tell me what just so we
can add a little tiny glamor what was the beauty experiment?
Was that adcern? Was that your mentor?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah? My advisor, Sheldon Stone, who passed away actually recently,
is one of was one of the experts in UH
in the beauty in the Physics of the Peak work,
which is also called the beauty work, and so it
was especially influential in LHCb. I worked with him in
(19:36):
another experiment which was called Cleo that was at Cornell University.
And again you know, it's he was fundamental in, uh,
in my development as a scientist. I mean, it was
so odd nosed. I mean, you know, it was really phenomenal,
you know, this kind of going back to the basics,
(19:56):
and you know, don't tell me something that is not true.
I mean, you know, very very amazing scientist, really, you know,
and you know, so I really work very closely with
him on B physics. So my teasis was on B physics.
And and it's strange now that you know, I'm back
doing in a sense you know, H T B B.
(20:18):
So the higgs they came into two beauty quarks.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
So that's what the H two B B stands.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, so it's going to beauty. We
called the B quark is a beauty worker.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And how do you come up with that name? It's
like a T shirt top quark and beauty cork. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
But the top and bottom clarks quite often called the
truth and beauty clerks said they mean the same thing,
but truth and beauty I think a little too poetic
for physicists top and bottom unfortunately. I think true truth
and beauty. I think a much more descriptive names.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
We're going to have the sellers T shirts along with
the pet God particle, which is basically a box of air.
You guys are just awesome, and I just hope we
can get the message out how wonderful and amazing and
supportive and collaborative you know this field is, and that
we can hope to build the confidence, especially women and
(21:20):
girls and everyone in between well need yeah, well, so
they'll believe in their visions and to follow it through
the experimentations. Was that true that Cecilia paying Kabushkin She
took like maybe it's an exaggeration, three million, you know,
recordings of stars, and just that persistence, which is just
so important in thesistence.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Is extremely important in science, and I think that it's
really one of the reasons that makes break a scientist,
you know, and.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Anybody in any field. Yeah, especially Yeah, but again.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It's the same things. Actually, you know here in Oxford,
we are justly in Belbono. And again you know, she
was able to see pulses, I mean really by looking
at meters and meeters and meters of recording, and again
she was extremely persistent, and I do think that it's
some also characteristic. You know that women often have this
(22:20):
impostal syndrome.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yes I have it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah so, but and again not only women. But I
do think that sometimes having a little bit of the
impostal syndrome helps you to achieve almost this persistence. I
don't know to say, because you really want, you know,
to do everything, to think that you have not left
any stone unt terms, that you really have been systematic.
(22:46):
And I do think that a lot of women who
have done, you know, important contributions of science tend to
have that. You know, this persistence is commitments.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Is so important.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, I think I completely agree with that. I think
imposter syndrome is a real thing, and I think it
does motivate you to in some sense have a deeper
understanding of things. I mean, you sort of see it
if you don't feel that you belong or you feel
that someone else understands something better than you, although they
probably don't. They're just better at, you know, making you
(23:22):
believe they understand something better. It's quite quite often they
simply don't. But in some sense it sort of motivates
you to have a deeper understanding. I mean, it's a
I completely sort of empathize with you know, where Danieller
came from. It's the same in my case. You know,
neither of my parents even graduated high school. So I
never really believe that, you know, I deserve to be
(23:43):
you know where I am. But I think that really
is a motivating factor. And if you've got a sense
of sort of competition that you want to you know,
learn more than you know or know more than someone else,
it really does sort of motivate you to do that.
So I think that is a really important components. It's
sort of interesting, as Danielle mentioned that quite a few
(24:03):
people in very high positions, you know, in the in
the physics community, you know, did not come from very
privileged or you know, academic backgrounds. It's necessarily so you know,
they came from environments that I believe sort of allowed
them to sort of interact better with other people and
(24:24):
tell you know, you know, Danielle is extremely good at
interacting with people, getting amazing people, you know, groups around her,
and I think that's that's almost you know, a very
key component as well.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
And also Florencia Connelly had said her father was a
car mechanic exactly. She said she never noticed she was
the only woman until your weddings.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So it's really interesting. It's really yeah, if you look
at where where people actually came from, it's it's quite interesting.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
And the challenge though, so as Florencia was so clearly explained,
was it was in her post doc where she started
to feel a little bit uncomfortable and you Mark were
saying that it was because the structures of the universities
and the research teams were mostly.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Men.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
But the it's just going to take time, right, because
doesn't it take eight to twelve years to get through
the physics.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yes, So I think the although there are you know,
more and more women, you know, becoming physicists, I think
the institution itself is still very male like, and so
you know, if you're in meetings, it's you know, the
person with the highest, you know, the loudest voice, or
the person who's you know, in some almost the rudest,
who can interrupt someone and you know, give their own opinion.
(25:37):
Those are the ones whose voices are typically heard. So
it's still you know, male dominated in that sense. And
so I think there are sort of institutional changes I
think that you know, would also be good for the field.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Of general and what can we do Danielle and make it,
you know, more a better environment for women.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, I think that, you know, you should all always
think to make it a better environment for everyone. Yes,
you know, I think that whenever you achieve something for
women and it's better for everybody. And again I think
that everybody has a different experience or for example, for me,
(26:18):
my post doc was the time of my life. I was.
I stayed in Cleo. I had a lot of freedom,
you know. I felt like I was maturing very fast.
I was only a postoc for two and a half year.
I got to a faculty position in my third year
of the postoc, which is quite amenius. No, No, it
was just a coincidence. Sometimes you're lucky also a little bit,
(26:40):
you know. So so I've had a very quick postoc
for me, It's a difficult part was more like when
I was at Purdue, you know, because I was really
the only woman in the old faculty fifty men. I
had a daughter before getting tenure. That nobody does it,
you know, So I've not done things according to what
(27:01):
you should do, perhaps you honestly. My daughter was born
December twenty, I was back at work January seventh, and
I if you ask me now, Daniella, why did you
do it? And Daniella, why how did you do it?
I probably will say that I don't know. I will
go with my you know, I will go and shift
(27:23):
with my daughter. We will will drive together, you know,
from Purdue to Fermila, and I will stay in the
Fermina village. My husband will ask, tell me why don't
you ask to don't give you shift because you're you know,
you have a small child. And I would say, well,
I feel like if if I ask, then I'm treated differently.
I was silly almost, you know, I don't know why
(27:45):
I did something, you know, but again, you know, I
did them, and sometimes I regret a little bit that
I've done them because I didn't spend as much time
with my daughter as maybe I should have done. But
in any case, I think that again, you know, don't
make women choose, you know, all men to have more flexibility,
(28:06):
so that you know, you understand that, you know, if
you have a child, you have to take some time
off and this shouldn't count against you. Making the environment
more open and make it more clear what as a
requirement for promotion for every step of the career. And
(28:26):
I think that these steps are really important for everybody.
And again, you know, having classes for every body against
people who bully you, people who interrupt you, you know,
avoiding these things that Mark was saying that they happen
in faculty meetings. That is always like the man with
the loudest voice. That as the final world, you know.
(28:49):
And I think that you know, letting everybody knows that
it's okay to say stop it, you shouldn't do this,
you know, being being more able to talk and more
able to express our thoughts and when things are are
not right, when I'm wrong, and trying to give a
(29:09):
lot of encouragement and our knowledge the work that's done
by everybody at their career stage. You know. I think
that it's a long list of things that we have
to do and the.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Whole planet where you have to fix. And what a
field did your daughter go into? Did she run screaming
from physics?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, she runs screaming from physics. Yes. She never wanted
to come to a physics department, you know, you know,
she doesn't even enter them, you know. And she she
studied actually boys performance at Oberlin College, which is a
fantastic music school a fantastic environment.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, that's wonderful. That's what I especially interested in the
art set zarn And that's why I'm so grateful to
Mark that he embraced my theater project and he never
made me feel I asked a dumb question. And look,
we've actually made progress here. Hopefully we're gonna have a
lot of listeners who really excited about this. And yesterday
(30:09):
I was talking to a friend of mine, a Fulbright
scholar from a program that I am involved with, Vital Voices,
and I was telling her about you, Danielle and Samantha
Christopherretti up there at the space station, and she said
to me, why do I not know about these women.
I'm so in awe of, you know how, the women
(30:31):
who've done great work in science and incredible men too,
like Mark, who are supporting us and also have their
own discoveries. And I'm really hoping that, yes, since if
we're all made of the same God particles, we're gonna
all get along, We're all gonna collaborate, We're just gonna
keep moving forward. And yeah, this fact of the you know,
(30:52):
flexibility and being allowed to make a mistake, that's also
really important. And that's especially I appreciate more. Never maybe
not to my face, laughed at me, or I mean,
I would ask Mark some real doozies, because I used
to be a lot more interested in vibrations and spirituality
and where art and science meet. But what do you
(31:15):
do when someone's condescending or they laugh at your research,
or they tell you, oh, you must be nuts. I
noticed a lot of these women's scientists. They were told
they were kind of nuts, right, but they kept going.
So I just wish for myself also and to inspire
other people. When people are condescending in a group setting,
(31:35):
or disrespecting your discoveries or your intuitions, your hunches, how
do you keep going with them?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I don't know at the moment. I'm ahead of the subdepartment.
So I put in as a grant, and I put together,
you know, the big grunt that pays everybody. Everybody is
nice to you. Yes, it's okay, yeah we did well,
and you know so, so in the thanks. I don't
feel that at the moment, but I feel it a
lot for the students. Actually, you know, it's very competitive
(32:08):
to enter in Oxford, and I hear that a lot
of the students. Male students tell to the female students
that they are there only because they are women. And yeah,
so I do think that you know, what you're saying
is you're spot on in some respect. You still have
(32:29):
to fight against that. And again the only thing that
you can do is is to train people. You know,
we're planning, for example, to have classes that the students
who are in you know, like in the practicals, and
they are sort of teaching and interacting with the undergrad
with students. We are trying to teach them and to
(32:51):
explain that actually the way that we select women and
men to enter in Oxford is exactly the same. There
is no bias. And again, so we try as much
as possible to go over and to teach people to
talk about it and to you know, dispel this kind
of preposterous idea. Yeah again, but you're right. You know,
(33:13):
in some when I'm not in Oxford and when I
go somewhere else, you know, obviously you know there might
be somebody that you know that listen, what I find
strange sometimes, but it happens to me more in social situation,
Like my husband is also a physicist, and you know,
(33:34):
if my husband and I go together, you know, to
another college where, for example, they might not know us,
et cetera. They will tend to listen more to hymn
than to me. So I do notice when the two
of us are together.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, wow, Okay, we're gonna keep moving forward. It's gonna
take time to write what was reading Cecilia Capushkin Chip.
They didn't even give her a degree right at Cambridge,
not until nineteen forty eight. I don't know the year
that Oxford started giving women degrees. But this is going
to all take time until we all figure it out
(34:08):
and dismantle the old structure.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
So yeah, but I can tell you that, you know,
in the last faculty search that we had around a
year ago, not two years ago now, of the six
candidate fire by women that we hire, you know, in
different subdepartments, there is a lot of fantastic women coming along.
You know, there are more women entering the field, There
are more women you know, postal, more women applying for
(34:35):
faculty position, and their quality is fabulous.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to come back to school and
have you and Mark as my teachers. We're gonna have
to go have a party at CERN. I thank you both,
for all your enthusiasm and patience and creativity. And thank
you for all your time and brilliant thoughts.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Thanks Dan Okay, fantastic talking to you. Danielle.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Oh it was so nice. I can't believe it. Real nice.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Hopefully ill Yes.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Bye bye, Thank you glad truth and beauty quarks, wow,
and and God particles. I mean it's so poetic and
so elegant. Thank you doctor Mark and doctor Daniella.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You guys really rock.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I'm truly inspired. Monumental mentors and mentors of mentors and
mentors of mentors of mentors, mentors really rule. Join us
next week when we have doctor Mark Cruz, our amazing
mentor from CERN and his colleague, the amazing Florencia Canelly
from the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Remember
(35:44):
keep looking up, stay positively charged. We are the stars.
Goodbye for now, Adios a rivederci afeedersen abientos. Claimer we
want to be as it's not responsible for loss of
this podcast. It's subsidiary words Listenawers disappear into a wormhole.
The Oh My God Particle Show is part of Cenical
Women podcast Network and is produced by Dahlia Wilde and
(36:06):
iHeartRadio with sound designed by Paul Mercy, a
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
Today’s Latest News In 4 Minutes. Updated Hourly.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.