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Under the Radar Astrophysics and Space Science Library EDITORIAL BOARD Chairman W. B. BURTON, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A. (bburton@nrao.edu); University of Leiden, The Netherlands (burton@strw.leidenuniv.nl) F. BERTOLA, University of Padua, Italy J. P. CASSINELLI, University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A. C. J. CESARSKY, European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany P. EHRENFREUND, Leiden University, The Netherlands O. ENGVOLD, University of Oslo, Norway A. HECK, Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, France E. P. J. VAN DEN HEUVEL, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands V. M. KASPI, McGill University, Montreal, Canada J. M. E. KUIJPERS, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands H. VAN DER LAAN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands P. G. MURDIN, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK F. PACINI, Istituto Astronomia Arcetri, Firenze, Italy V. RADHAKRISHNAN, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India B. V. SOMOV, Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Russia R. A. SUNYAEV, Space Research Institute, Moscow, Russia W.M. Goss l Richard X. McGee Under the Radar The First Woman in Radio Astronomy: Ruby Payne-Scott Prof. W. M. Goss National Radio Astronomy Observatory 1003 Lopezville Road P.O.Box O Socorro NM 87801 USA mgoss@aoc.nrao.edu Dr. Richard X. McGee Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Radiophysics Laboratory Epping NSW 1710 Australia ISSN 0067-0057 ISBN 978-3-642-03140-3 e-ISBN 978-3-642-03141-0 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-03141-0 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009931715 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover illustration: Starry Night, after Van Gogh 0 by Fiona Hall the daughter of Ruby Payne-Scott and Bill Hall. This ‘Reconstructed painting’ from 1981 shows electrical power cords as they swirl in the night sky. From page 43, Fiona Hall by Julie Ewington (2005). ‘The Reconstructed paintings are also notable for the obvious pleasure Hall took in multiple slippages of meaning between historical templates and contemporary life.’ Used by permission of Fiona Hall. Cover design: eStudio Calamar, Spain Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) To Libby, Lyn Foreword It is rare for a complete biography of an Australian scientist, particularly of an Australian woman scientist, to be published. It is rarer for such a book to be co-authored by an American. Although scientists have written discourses on the history of their discipline, it is most unusual for a scientist to write a full length biography of a colleague in his field. It is also uncommon for a man to write about an Australian woman scientist; most of the work on Australian women scientists has been done by other women. However, these authors, both distinguished researchers in the field of radio astronomy, became so interested in the history of their discipline and in the career of the pioneer radio astronomer Ruby Payne-Scott that they spent some years bringing this book to fruition. Until relatively recently, Ruby Payne-Scott had been the only woman scientist mentioned briefly in histories of Australian science or of Australian radio astronomy. This book will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in these disciplines. Being scientists themselves, the authors explain Payne-Scott’s scientific work in detail; therefore, the value and importance of her contributions can, for the first time, be recognised, not only by historians but also by scientists. After a brilliant academic career, with an M.Sc. in physics (the highest qualification then available at any Australian university), Ruby Payne-Scott worked as a science teacher, one of the few professional positions available to Australian women in the 1930s, and especially in depression. However, the Second World War opened up opportunities for women science graduates. She was one of the first of the scientific staff members appointed to the new Radiophysics Laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) from which radio astronomy developed, and notably the first woman scientist in the Laboratory. She was part of a pioneering group of radar scientists during the Second World War, led by J.L. Pawsey, whose scientific distinction and leadership qualities have been referred to by all writers in the field. Although it was mainly due to him that radio astronomy developed in Australia from 1944, she was one of the key people contributing to Australia’s pre-eminence in the world in radio astronomy for many vii viii Foreword decades. Pawsey valued her judgment and experience so highly that when she was absent from a meeting, he would often not make a final decision until she had been consulted. She became the overall advisor to the group on scientific issues, engineering planning, and mathematics, and she also made major contributions to the development of radio astronomical techniques. By 1951, when she left the discipline, she had been promoted to the highest research category short of the leader and was being paid the second highest salary on the scientific staff. Her standing was confirmed later by a member of this distinguished group who himself became an important radio astronomer but who disliked Payne-Scott; nevertheless, he considered her, as the authors record, to have been ‘‘one of the best physicists at Radiophysics – no, one of the best physicists in Australia’’. In telling Payne-Scott’s story, the authors highlight the inferior position of women in the work force at that time. Married women could not become permanent employees in the public service. The practice of requiring women to choose between marriage and their careers inevitably deprived Australia of unknown talent. Payne-Scott had to suffer the indignity of keeping her marriage secret from CSIR for some five years. When the marriage was discovered, she fought vehemently against the injustice of this regulation but was forced to become a temporary employee, losing all her superannuation entitlements in the process. She finally resigned in 1951 when pregnant with her first child, as there was no maternity leave at that time. The War years provided some measure of equal pay for women. After the War, the old discriminatory practices returned. Payne-Scott, together with other colleagues, campaigned unsuccessfully for the recognition of the principle of equal pay. ‘‘Women’s rights’’ was not the only issue about which she felt strongly and for which she argued publicly and vigorously. During the War, it was natural that the type of work which the group was engaged in was classified; but after the War, she was bitterly opposed to secret research in the CSIR. She believed that it was impossible to do good research in the atmosphere of limitations imposed by a sponsoring body, particularly when that body was the military. She wrote to CSIR: ‘‘Frightened men do not produce great research’’. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation kept files on her that have only recently been made available to researchers. A subsequent media release by the National Archives of Australia, headed ‘‘The Secret Life of Ruby Payne-Scott’’, states that she was ‘‘passionate about both the independence of scientific research and human rights. These sentiments were deemed a security risk.’’ The work of pioneering Australian women scientists is gradually being recognised. CSIRO offers OCE Science Team Career Awards. One of these is the OCE Payne-Scott Career Award for researchers returning from family-related career breaks. The life and work of a feisty, brilliant woman is finally being recognised. Nessy Allen Preface Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–1981): Remarkable Scientist and Champion for Women’s Rights Almost 60 years after her retirement in 1951, why is the life of Ruby Payne-Scott of significance to us? She was a unique scientist working in one of the first major solar radio astronomy groups after the end of World War II. This fortunate circumstance was due to the experience she gained working on radar at the major Australian laboratory during World War II. Payne-Scott was a pioneer Australian scientist leading the charge for equality of women in the work place. In 1997, Dick McGee and I began a discussion about the possibility of writing a short biography of Ruby Payne-Scott. Dick had known her for a brief period in the early 1950s when he joined the radio astronomy group in Sydney, Australia. We first envisaged an article for the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, similar in scope to our previous collaboration published in a conference proceedings in 1996, The Discovery of the Radio Source Sagittarius A (Sgr A). As we collected material and carried out initial interviews in Australia, the complex nature of this study of Payne-Scott’s life became evident. A year after a trip of several weeks’ duration to Australia that I made in early 1999,1 McGee began to write the first draft. He reported to me at that time that he had been increasingly impressed with the scope of Payne-Scott’s contributions to solar radio astronomy. Gradually over the next few years, we both became convinced that a longer version of the Payne-Scott story was required. New themes developed as Dick and I learned more about her remarkable life: her battles over discrimination against women, her success as a scientist and educator, her membership in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), her remarkable family and her passion for bush-walking. In particular, her pioneering work in the new field 1 I gave the SAFA (Sydney Association for Astrophysics) lecture on 9 February 1999, on the topic of Ruby Payne-Scott; a number of her former colleagues were in the audience, who provided helpful comments after the lecture. ix x Preface of solar radio astronomy (including a major role in the invention of radio aperture synthesis) had not been fully appreciated. Also we met many of her friends and colleagues, who opened up new facets of her life. Payne-Scott’s children, Peter and Fiona Hall, were especially helpful in revealing the character of their mother in numerous interviews and visits in both the US and Australia. We also discovered that Payne-Scott had largely been neglected in treatments of the early years of radio astronomy. Numerous accounts of the history of post World War II science in Australia did provide a cursory glance at her career, often with some distortion. An example is the mistaken assertion by Collis in his history of CSIRO (Fields of Discovery, 2002) that: ‘‘. . . in 1951 [Payne-Scott] was forced by public service rules to leave her job when it was discovered she had been secretly married since 1944. Married women were not allowed to hold permanent staff position.’’ Dick and I correct this common misconception in Chap. 4. An example of neglect can be found in the comprehensive and influential, popular book The Changing Universe published in 1956 by the Scientific American author John Pfeiffer. He did an admirable job of visiting radio astronomers in the US, the UK, France, and the Netherlands. He corresponded with a number of prominent radio astronomers in Australia. Many of the pioneering results from the Australian group were summarised in the chapter ‘‘The Sun in Action’’, including a description of the remarkable Type II outburst of 8 March 1947, with a whimsical cartoon of the effects of solar outbursts on terrestrial communication. This result was published by Payne-Scott, Yabsley, and Bolton (see Chap. 7). No mention of Payne-Scott appears in the Pfeiffer volume, even though most of her Australian colleagues are named. Finally, there is an example of neglect in the modern era, the plaque shown in Fig. P.1; this comprehensive display at Dover Heights in Sydney (Rodney Reserve) is the site of the major astronomical discoveries made in the era 1946–1948 by the Radiophysics Laboratory (RPL) group. This plaque and a replica of the 100 MHz Yagii antenna were unveiled on 20 July 2003 by Her Excellency, the Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir.2 Although there is a brief description of the solar radio work at this site on the plaque, the text describes the work done by the men at Dover Heights: Bolton, Pawsey,3 Stanley, Slee (at the ceremony), and McGee, with an emphasis on the radio sources discovered at this site (Taurus A, Virgo A, and Centaurus A). The absence of any mention of Payne-Scott on the plaque is surprising. A number of visitors to the Dover Heights monument since 2 I was the master of ceremonies, and talks were given by Paul Pierce, Mayor of Waverley Council, Woody Sullivan of the University of Washington in Seattle, and Ron Ekers of the CSIRO Australia National Telescope Facility. 3 Pawsey was appointed to the CSIR RPL in London in October 1939 and started work in Sydney on 2 February 1940. During the War, he was a major leader in the development of radar in Australia. After the War, he was the Deputy Chief of RPL after E.G. (‘‘Taffy’’) Bowen became Chief in May 1946. When Pawsey began radio astronomy in 1944 at RPL, Payne-Scott became the leader of the first scientific efforts, while Lindsay McCready was the leader of the engineering efforts. Pawsey was one of the inventors of the new phrase ‘‘radio astronomy’’ in early 1948.