Gazette: Gazetteer index (July/August 2002)

HEARD ON CAMPUS

Feminism: Spelled Without a Dubya

How does one define “Feminism in the Age of Dubya?” It was many months ago, “when a George W. Bush Presidency was barely more than a gleam in Chief Justice Rehnquist’s eye,” that feminist writer Katha Pollitt, known for her provocative column in The Nation, chose her title for the Jane Pollack Memorial Lecture, which was sponsored by Penn’s Women’s Studies Program and held on April 4. In that talk, she described how the September 11 terrorist attacks had changed many things, including public—and news-media—attitudes:

“War always sees a resurgence of patriarchal values. Heroic firefighters and police officers involved in the World Trade Center rescue efforts, many of them at the cost of their lives, can serve as emblems, heralding the return of manliness as physical strength and courage, toughness, resolve and protection of the police.

“Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd have written columns that I know will embarrass them [later] all about being weak-kneed at these wonderful men, these hunks. Oh isn’t it great to be so protected by a man. I wish I was married to a man like that. On and on.

“Although Condoleeza Rice was prominently on display, for the most part, as always, the war is being won and war policy being made by men, who control the Army, the White House, and Congress. The vast majority of public voices discussing war in the media are tenors, baritones, and basses.”

Photo by Jean-Jacgues Tiziou

A W A R D S

The “Father of Neutrino Research” Honored

More than three decades ago, Dr. Raymond Davis Jr. Hon’90 built a tank deep inside a South Dakota gold mine and filled it with perchloroethylene, a dry-cleaning fluid containing chlorine atoms, in the hopes that some of those atoms would react with some of the billions of solar neutrinos that quietly bombard the earth every second. Last month, the research professor of physics and astronomy was honored with the 2001 National Medal of Science for his experiment, the first to confirm the existence of these elusive subatomic particles that continue to intrigue physicists for what they tell us about our sun—and the nature of matter itself.

“I had heard of the award,” said the 86-year-old Davis, when reached by phone at his home in Blue Point, N.Y., “but I didn’t think I would ever get it, so I was quite surprised.” The National Medal of Science honors pioneering scientific research that has enhanced our basic understanding of life and the world around us. (Last year, another Penn scientist—Dr. Ralph Hirschmann, the Rao Makineni Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry—won the 2000 National Medal of Science.) In 2000, Davis won the Wolf Foundation prize in physics, half of whose recipients go on to receive Nobel prizes.

In his 1960s experiment—performed while working for Brookhaven National Laboratory, and before he joined Penn’s faculty in 1985—Davis detected only a third of the number of neutrinos predicted by the standard solar model. His findings have been confirmed and elucidated by later experiments in which Penn has played a major role. [“The Particle Sleuths,” September/October 2001.]

Penn President Judith Rodin hailed Davis as a “pioneering scientist whose extraordinary research in physics has earned him the nation’s highest award for lifetime achievement in science.”