Fay Ajzenberg-Selove | |
|---|---|
 Fay Ajzenberg-Selove receiving the National Medal of Science in 2008 | |
| Born | (1926-02-13)February 13, 1926 |
| Died | August 8, 2012(2012-08-08) (aged 86) Haverford, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Nuclear spectroscopy |
| Spouse | Walter Selove m. 1955 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Nuclear physics |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | Hugh Richards |
| Notable students | Gloria Lubkin (MA, Boston University, 1957) |
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove (February 13, 1926 – August 8, 2012) was an Americannuclear physicist. She was known for her experimental work innuclear spectroscopy of light elements, and for her annual reviews of the energy levels of light atomic nuclei. She was a recipient of the 2007National Medal of Science.[1][2]
She was bornFay Ajzenberg on 13 February 1926 inBerlin, Germany to aPolish Jewish family fromRussian Empire. Her father, Moisei Abramovich Aisenberg (Polish: Mojzesz Ajzenberg), was a mining engineer who studied at theSt. Petersburg School of Mines and her mother, Olga Ajzenbergnée Naiditch, was a pianist andmezzo-soprano who studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Music.[3] In 1919, they fled theRussian Revolution and settled in Germany, where her father became a wealthy investment banker.[4]
They were bankrupted by theGreat Depression, so the family moved toFrance in 1930. Her father worked as a chemical engineer in asugar beet factory owned by her uncle Isaac Naiditch inLieusaint, Seine-et-Marne, France. Ajzenberg attended theLycée Victor Duruy inParis and LeCollège Sévigné. In 1940, the family fled Paris prior to theNazi invasion of France. They took a tortuous route throughSpain,Portugal, theDominican Republic, andCuba before they settled inNew York City in April 1941.[4][5]
Ajzenberg graduated fromJulia Richman High School in 1943. Her father had encouraged her interest in engineering.[6] She attended theUniversity of Michigan, where she was friends with Haitian president"Papa Doc" Duvalier.[7] She graduated in 1946 with a BS in engineering, the only woman in a class of 100. After briefly doing graduate work atColumbia University and teaching at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier, she began doctoral studies at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison.
At Wisconsin she worked with nuclear physicist Hugh Richards who was studying nuclear reaction energies and classifying the energy levels of light atoms.[8] She found a method of creating6Li targets by converting thesulphate to achloride andelectroplating it to the target. She also demonstrated that theexcited states of the10Bnucleus were not evenly spaced as previously thought.[4] She received her MS in 1949 and her PhD in physics in 1952 with a dissertation titled "Energy levels of some light nuclei and their classification."[6] She was an atheist.[9]
She didpostdoctoral work withThomas Lauritsen at theCalifornia Institute of Technology. Together they would publishEnergy Levels of Light Nuclei, a compilation of the field's best yearly research regarding nuclear structure and decay of nuclei with anatomic mass number A from 5 to 20. Since 1973 Ajzenberg published them herself.[4] Eventually Ajzenberg would publish 26 of these papers, primarily in the journalNuclear Physics, until 1990. They have been called "the nuclear scientists' bible."[5]
Following graduation, Ajzenberg was a lecturer atSmith College and a visiting fellow at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology. She was hired as an assistant professor of physics atBoston University, but the dean lowered her salary 15 percent when he learned Ajzenberg was a woman. Ajzenberg refused the position until the initial salary was restored.[4]
While at Boston University, she metHarvard University physicist Walter Selove and they married in December 1955.[4] One of her graduate students wasGloria Lubkin, who graduated in 1957 with an MA in Nuclear Physics, and would later become the first female editor in chief ofPhysics Today. In 2013, Lubkin wrote Ajzenberg's obituary as her final story for the magazine.[10] In 1962, using thebubble chamber at theBrookhaven National Laboratory, Selove discovered ameson he named thefayon (f2) after her.[11] Ajzenberg-Selove and her husband were honored with a symposium about their work at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005.[12] Selove died in 2010.[11]
In the 1960s, she worked atHaverford College, where she was the first full-time female faculty member.[5] In 1970, Ajzenberg-Selove began teaching at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, where Selove had taught since 1957. In 1972, she applied for one of threetenured positions there.[4][5] She was not hired; the reasons cited were age and "inadequate research publications".[4][5] Ajzenberg-Selove was only 46, had acitation count higher than everyone in the physics department except forNobel laureateJ. Robert Schrieffer, and was Nuclear Physics Section chair of theAmerican Physical Society.[4][5] She filed complaints with theEqual Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and in 1973 the University of Pennsylvania was ordered to give her a tenured professorship.[4][5] She became only the second female professor in the university's School of Arts and Sciences.[4][5]
In 1994, she published a memoir,A Matter of Choices: Memoirs of a Female Physicist.[12]
