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31 Dec 21, 13 tweets, 3 min read
Some threads I did this year that I liked:
Vera Rubin
Emmy Noether
Voyager 2
Stephen Hawking
Olber’s Paradox
Weierstrass and his monster.
Maria Goeppert Mayer
Paul Dirac
Margaret Hamilton
Marie Tharp
And one somewhat disjointed thread that I wish hadn’t been necessary.
Ah, one more. Yesterday’s thread about Yvonne Madelaine Brill.

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More from @mcnees

Robert McNees Profile picture
1 Jan
Ninety seven years ago, #OTD in 1925, Edwin Hubble announced that our Milky Way was just one of many lonely little islands of stars sprinkled throughout the Universe. Andromeda and all the other “spiral nebulae” were in fact separate galaxies, outside the Milky Way. Image
Hubble’s announcement — other galaxies exist! — was made on the third day of the 33rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in a paper read by H.N. Russell. The meeting started on December 30th; I don’t know if Hubble waited for New Year’s Day to be dramatic.
Hubble’s work, conducted with the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson observatory, relied on earlier measurements by Vesto Slipher and Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s results on Cepheid variable stars.
Image: Huntington Library ImageImage
Read 13 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
31 Dec 21
So my mom, the world’s fastest knitter, just sent me a great and much-needed hat! And it comes with a neat story. Image
The yarn is “Kumlien’s Gull” by @quinceandco. Image
Kumlien’s Gull is a sub-species of the Iceland Gull. I’m not a bird person, but I understand there’s some controversy. Anyway, it’s named after Ludwig Kumlien.
Read 5 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
30 Dec 21
Yvonne Madelaine Brill was born #OTD in 1924. She was a rocket scientist who invented the hydrazine resistojet, which increased the payload capacity of satellites by reducing the weight of propellant they require. JWST (@NASAWebb) uses hydrazine thrusters!
Photo: W. McNamee/Getty Image
Here is the JWST propulsion page describing its SCAT and MRE-1 thrusters which use hydrazine as a fuel and propellant, respectively.
jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observato…
Yvonne Madelaine Brill studied Chemistry and Math at the University of Manitoba. She wanted to study engineering, but women weren't allowed at the time.
Read 13 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
22 Dec 21
Read 19 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
21 Dec 21
Mathematical physicist Cécile DeWitt-Morette, who made foundational contributions to the study of Feynman functional integrals, organized the first American conference on general relativity, and founded the Les Houches Summer School, was born #OTD in 1922.
Images: UT-Austin
Cécile Morette grew up in Normandy, studying math and physics at the University of Caen. Her graduate work, on quantum mechanics, took place at the University of Paris. Much of her education took place during the German occupation of WWII.
While in Paris, she worked with Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. After finishing her doctorate in 1947, she moved to Copenhagen to work with Neils Bohr. Her next stop was the Institute for Advanced Study, where she worked with Robert Oppenheimer.
Read 24 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
20 Dec 21
Physicist David Bohm, who developed a non-local formulation of quantum mechanics that he hoped would evade some of the conceptually thorny aspects of the Copenhagen Interpretation, and would later inspire the work of John Bell, was born #OTD in 1917. David Bohm, in his early 20...
Bohm’s quantum mechanics textbook was published in 1951. It was very successful, and is still available from Dover as an inexpensive reprint. Here’s my copy: The Dover edition of "...
(Well, it's $25 now. But that is pretty inexpensive as academic textbooks go. I think my copy was $14 back in the day.)
store.doverpublications.com/0486659690.html
Read 31 tweets

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