Happy 100th Birthday Margaret Burbidge!

AP Photo | Annie Gracy [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia Commons

August 12 is the 100th birthday of Dr. Margaret Burbidge. Her contributions to the field of astronomy include verifying nucleosynthesis in stars, measuring redshifts to some of the first quasars, and helping develop the Faint Object Spectrograph onboard the Hubble Space Telescope &emdash among many others. In 1971, Margaret Burbidge refused to accept the AAS Council's Cannon Prize because "the prize, available only to women, was in itself discriminatory." The Council's response was to set up a committee, the "Special Committee on the Cannon Prize," which not only dealt with this issue but also recommended that the AAS review the status of women in astronomy. These events were the catalyst that started the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA).

Dr. Burbidge impacted astronomy in so many ways. She is not only a brilliant researcher but also an inspiration to future astronomers. Today, the CSWA is honoring Dr. Burbidge by sharing stories that show her impact in advancing both discovery and community in the field of astronomy.

AASWomen Newsletter for August 09, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of August 09, 2019
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride

Rose O'Halloran, from item 2

This week's issues:

1. Summary of the Symposium Honoring Vera Rubin

2. 'Can teach men' - The story of Irish astronomer Rose O'Halloran

3. UW professor Ann Nelson remembered as brilliant physicist, advocate for diversity in science

4. Distinguished chemist Polly Arnold appointed as chemical sciences director at Berkeley Lab

5. How gender bias excludes women from international scientific collaboration

6. After Investigation, Neil deGrasse Tyson Will Keep His Job

7. Student evaluations of teaching are not only unreliable, they are significantly biased against female instructors

8. Why we need to keep talking about equality in physics

9. Study suggests use of gender-neutral terms to describe people leads to gender equality

10. Job Opportunities

11. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Summary of the Symposium Honoring Vera Rubin

By Jessica L. Rosenberg

A symposium honoring the legacy of Vera Rubin was held at Georgetown University June 24-26, 2019. Rubin, who passed away in 2016, was a pioneer in astronomy who used measurements of the rotation curves of galaxies to infer the presence of large amounts of matter out to their observed edges. She found that her measurements of the motion of stars around the centers of the galaxies implied the existence of an unknown type of matter, now called dark matter, in amounts exceeding that of the observed matter.

AASWomen Newsletter for August 2, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of August 02, 2019

eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, JoEllen McBride, and Alessandra Aloisi
< br />[AAS has migrated their email system to Microsoft Exchange, so please check your spam folder if you did not receive the newsletter this week. It is no longer possible to subscribe or unsubscribe to the AASWomen newsletter by means of Google Groups. We have updated our subscribe and unsubscribe instructions below. Please follow us on social media for updates and thank you for bearing with us as we work out all the kinks.
Twitter @AAS_Women Facebook https://bit.ly/2PkU9of

From item #5

This week's issues:

1. Astro2020 Decadal Survey White Papers

2. Still Soliciting Memories of Margaret Burbidge

3. Working Scientist podcast: Why physics is still a man’s world, and how to change it

4. What not to do in graduate school

5. Tales of the 28 lunar craters named for women offer a chance to reflect on women’s struggle for scientific recognition

6. In science, questions matter a lot. Men are more likely than women to ask them

7. Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy awarded for gender advancement

8. Women In Optics events at SPIE Optics + Photonics 2019

9. NASA analyst crowned Miss Universe Ireland

10. Wikipedia bios for women scientists are more likely to be flagged for removal

11. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Astro2020 Decadal Survey White Papers

The National Academies for Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently solicited white papers for the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics (Astro2020). The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy submitted two white papers to the call for the state of the profession consideration. Our papers were written based on preliminary results from our climate survey conducted this past spring. We want to thank the community members that took the time to provide such crucial and detailed feedback. Your contributions allowed us to provide clear, actionable recommendations that federal agencies can implement to address sexual harassment and career development for women and underserved minorities in the field of astronomy. You can access our papers at the links provided below.

• Towards Eliminating Harassment in Astronomy
• Advancing the Career Development of Women in Astronomy

AASWOMEN Newsletter for July 26, 2019

At the Mojave Desert in California on Thursday, July 18, 2019 over 107,000 solar mirrors reflected the moonlight to create a portrait of Margaret Hamilton. She led the team that developed the onboard flight software of Apollo 11. (Credit: Google)

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of July 26, 2019
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, JoEllen McBride, and Alessandra Aloisi

[AAS has migrated their email system to Microsoft Exchange, so please check your spam folder if you did not receive the newsletter this week. It is no longer possible to subscribe or unsubscribe to the AASWomen newsletter by means of Google Groups. We have updated our subscribe and unsubscribe instructions below. Please follow us on social media for updates and thank you for bearing with us as we work out all the kinks.
Twitter @AAS_Women Facebook https://bit.ly/2PkU9of]

This week's issues:

1. Celebrating the Women of Apollo

2. A moonlit tribute to a moon landing icon

3. Still Soliciting Memories of Margaret Burbidge

4. Imaging Women in the Space Age

5. The Woman Who Discovered the Cause of Global Warming Was Long Overlooked

6. Women in science: Smashing glass ceilings and glass walls

7. Does Gender Bias Still Affect Women in Science?

8. Inclusion is what makes diversity stick

9. Developing Skills for Leadership Roles

10. The reward and risk of social media for academics

11. Job Opportunities

12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

14. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Celebrating the Women of Apollo

Splashdown! Today marks the 50th anniversary of the return of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, after a historic mission that saw Neil and Buzz on the lunar surface for about 3 hours. In mid-1969, there were about 100 women, including 16 engineers, serving in top positions at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But thousands of other women around the country also supported the Apollo program, before, during, and after 1969. Many of them have recently been interviewed as part of the 50th anniversary, and their stories have appeared in various news outlets. For easy reference, we list many here and you can find more here and here. If you find even more (and we hope you do!), please let us know in the comments section. As we go forward to the Moon with Artemis, including the first women landing on the lunar surface by 2024 and onward to Mars, women around the world will continue to leave indelible marks on the Moon and throughout the solar system.