Five Inspiring Hispanic Scientists

One of many inspiring Hispanic scientists: Dr. Helen
Rodriguez-Trias, physician, educator, and advocate
for women's health and equal access to medical.
care. Image Courtesy: National Library of Medicine

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the Hispanic population in the U.S. will reach 132.8 million (or 30 percent of the total U.S. population) by the year 2050.   But Hispanic students (as well as other minorities) continue to be underrepresented in the STEM disciplines and to receive STEM degrees at a lower rate than their White counterparts. In K-12 education, Hispanic students are more likely than Whites to be exposed to funding inequities and to have science teachers who did not major in science.

In the face of these disparities and in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we're highlighting five Hispanic scientists that have had a major and lasting impact on the world around them.   In many cases they overcame obstacles, including racism and sexism, poverty, cultural and family expectations, and lack of mathematics background, in order to work and excel in the fields that they love.  Our hats are off to all of them, and to anyone out there who is studying or working in a STEM field.  May these stories inspire you.

Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias (1929 - 2001)
"We cannot achieve a healthier us without achieving a healthier, more equitable health care system, and ultimately, a more equitable society."

Helen Rodiriguez-Trias combined the two things she loved most--science and people--by pursuing a career in medicine. Born in New York city in 1929, Rodiriguez-Trias moved back and forth between New York and her parents' native Puerto Rico during her childhood and early career.  She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico Medical School in 1960 and established the island's first center for the care of newborn babies, which dramatically lowered the death rate for newborns at the hospital where she completed her residency.

In 1970, she moved back to New York where she became head of the pediatrics department at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx.  In addition to her work as a physician, Rodiriguez-Trias fought to improve medical care for people who had limited access due to poverty, cultural and language barriers, and discrimination. Among her many leadership roles, Rodiriguez-Trias served as the (first Latina) president of the American Public Health Association and the medical director of the New York State AIDS Institute. She also became a tireless advocate and leader in the women's health movement, fighting for equal access to healthcare for poor women and children and fighting against the horrifying practice of forced sterilization. In 2001, less than a year after receiving the Presidential Citizen's Medal, Helen Rodriguez-Trias succumbed to cancer.

For more, visit the National Library of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health


Dr. Francisco Dallmeier (1953 - )
"In this century we will make the final decisions about how this sixth species extinction currently in progress will end… It is a tremendous responsibility."

At a very young age, Francisco Dallmeier knew that he wanted to follow in his great-grandfather's footsteps and make a career out of working with plants and animals.  At 14, he began volunteering at the La Salle Museum of Natural History in his hometown of Caracas, Venezuela.  He moved up the ranks with remarkable speed, and by age 20, he was appointed director of the museum.  At the same time, he was working toward a biology degree at the Central University of Venezuela, and he eventually moved to the United States to pursue a masters and then a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology at Colorado State University. 

From Colorado, Dallmeier went to Washington, DC to work at the Smithsonian Institution.  As the head of the Smithsonian's Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity (MAB) program, he has developed important and widely-recognized techniques for measuring and tracking changes in biodiversity. Dallmeier has worked all over the world in places as far reaching as Gabon and Peru focusing on ways to help environmental advocates and industry work together to reduce the impacts of human development.  MAB now has more than 300 research plots and trains scientists around the world in the tools and techniques of conservation biology.

For more, visit the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Friends of the National Zoo


Ynes Mexia (1870-1938)
Ynes Mexia found her true passions--botany and exploring--a bit later in life.  The daughter of a Mexican diplomat and an American socialite, Mexia was born in Washington, DC in 1870.  She made her first career as a social worker, and it wasn't until age 51 that she began taking classes in botany at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1925, she joined a botanical collecting expedition to Mexico sponsored by Stanford University but decided to break off from the group to collect on her own.  She returned with more than 1,500 plant specimens, but that was only the beginning.

Mexia went on to conduct collecting expeditions (often solo) in Alaska, the western U.S., Mexico, and South America, including a 4,800-kilometer canoe trip along the Amazon River. During her last expedition to Mexico, she became ill and was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died in 1938 shortly after her diagnosis.  Mexia's career in botany was short, but her contribution was large: in 13 years of work she collected nearly 150,000 specimens.  Among those, roughly 500 were new species, and two were new genera.

For more, visit JSTOR Plant Science and the UC Berkeley Jepson Herbaria


Dr. Ellen Ochoa (1958 - )
As a child growing up in La Mesa, CA, Ellen Ochoa loved math and music.  She earned her undergraduate degree in physics from San Diego State University, and was contemplating a career in business or as a classical flutist. In the end, she decided to go to graduate school for electrical engineering at Stanford University. In 1983, two years before Ochoa completed her Ph.D., Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, made her first shuttle mission.  Ochoa was inspired, in part by Ride, to apply for the astronaut program.  She was accepted and became an astronaut 1991.  She would soon become the first Latina to go to space.

Since then, Ochoa has logged 978 hours in space, earned three patents, and held a slew of leadership posts at NASA that include assignments on four space missions (at least one of which involved a flute recital in space).  Ochoa now serves as Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center and has received many awards for her work as an engineer, physicist, astronaut, and leader.  She has also traveled around the country sharing her experiences with students in the hopes that they will be inspired to dream big and follow their passions.

For more, visit Latina Women of NASA, the Lemelson-MIT Inventor Archive, and NASA News


Dr. Mario Molina (1943 - )
"I am heartened and humbled that I was able to do something that not only contributed to our understanding of atmospheric chemistry, but also had a profound impact on the global environment."

By age 11, Mario Molina had already decided that he wanted to be a research chemist.  Born in Mexico City in 1943, Molina was hooked on science the first time he peered through a microscope and saw tiny amoebas swimming around. He converted a little-used bathroom in his family's home to a chemistry lab, and, with the help of an aunt who was a chemist, began conducting chemistry experiments appropriate for college freshmen. After attending boarding school in Germany, Molina returned to Mexico to study chemical engineering at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).  When he graduated, Molina knew he wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, but he also knew his math and physics skills would be behind other students who had majored in physical chemistry.  He did some graduate coursework in Germany, spent several months studying math on his own, and taught at UNAM before eventually applying to get his doctorate at University of California at Berkeley.

With his Ph.D. in hand, Molina went to work in the lab of F. Sherwood Rowland at the University of California at Irvine. There, he began studying what happens to a class of nonreactive chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC's, when they are released into the air.  Molina and Rowland quickly realized that when the sun breaks down CFC's in the upper atmosphere, the chlorine atoms released catalyze a reaction that destroys ozone molecules. That reaction, repeated over and over again, would eventually deplete and lead to thin spots in the Earth's protective layer of ozone.  This realization, combined with work by another scientist named Paul J. Crutzen who was studying the ozone layer over Antarctica, eventually led to a global ban on CFC's--and to the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the three researchers.

For more, visit the Nobel Prize Foundation


These are just a handful of the many, many inspiring stories out there, and it was extremely difficult to pick five.  Please share your thoughts with us: which Hispanic scientist(s) do you find most inspiring?


LEARN MORE
If you are interested in learning more about these and other Hispanic leaders in science, check out these resources.

Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science

SACNAS Biography Project

The Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists (MAES)

SHPE Foundation (Advancing Hispanic Excellence in Technology, Engineering, Math, and Science)

Latinos in Science, Math, and Professions by David E. Newton (book)

Tragedies in Science: The Crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter

In science, as in the rest of life, things don't always go as planned. From time to time, accidents, mistakes, and tragedies happen. In the worst cases, these experiences result in serious losses or even catastrophes that can affect many people. In less severe cases they are the painful (and sometimes expensive) blunders that we can eventually look back and laugh about.

But in almost every case--whether caused by bad luck, bad planning, lack of understanding, simple human error, or systemic problems in a research team or a society--there is something to be learned from these experiences. Always double check your unit conversions. Train your field crew for the harshest possible conditions and the worst case scenario. Recognize your colleagues and their contributions before it's too late.

The tragedies of science often don't appear in text books or journal articles, but they are just as much a part of science as any discovery or triumph. And, as you'll see in the first installment of our new Tragedies in Science blog series, even "rocket scientists" make mistakes. By taking a closer look at some of the accidents and tragedies of the past, we can find both practical lessons for the future and inspiration for how to persevere and learn from tragedy.


The Crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter 

An artist's concept showing NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter, which was
lost due to a unit conversion error 13 years ago. Image courtesy: NASA/JPL

September 23, 1999 should have been a day of excitement and celebration for researchers and science enthusiasts everywhere. That was the date--13 years ago this Sunday--that NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was supposed to claim its spot in orbit around the Red Planet, roughly 180 km above the Martian surface. From that vantage point, the Orbiter would monitor conditions and send information back to Earth as part of the Mars Surveyor Program, which launched a series of missions in the 1990's and 2000's to study one of our closest neighbors in the solar system.

But the $125 million Orbiter was doomed.

As the spacecraft neared its destination, the engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who were guiding the Orbiter thought everything was on target. Then, when the craft made it's final maneuvers to enter orbit, they lost communications. Something was wrong.

By examining data from the previous eight hours of the Orbiter's journey, NASA realized that the craft's approach had been much lower than intended--about 60 km above the planet's surface instead of 150 to 180 km. The altered course meant a rough ride through the Martian atmosphere that the Orbiter was not designed to withstand. The following day, the engineers concluded that the spacecraft had not survived the miscalculation, and the search for the Orbiter was abandoned.

Within a week of the accident, two committees (one internal and one composed of outside experts) had been formed to investigate what had gone wrong. They concluded that a simple mathematical and communications error was at the heart of the problem: one part of the mission team had used English units while the another part of the team had used metric units when making calculations related to the jet thrusters used to correct the Orbiter's trajectory during it's journey. A flubbed unit conversion had cost them a $125 million spacecraft, years of work, and untold scientific knowledge.

Luckily, unit conversion errors are an easy problem to fix, and you can bet NASA won't be repeating that mistake. In a statement released shortly after the crash, Dr. Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, said: "The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."
 

LEARN MORE 
Check out our Unit Conversion module for more about the Orbiter's demise and a primer on how to avoid a mistake like NASA's.

See Time's picks for the "Top 10 NASA Flubs."
 
And please let us know what you think of the first installment and the series as a whole! We are also always on the lookout for other tragic stories in science, so please share your ideas.

Video of the Week: NASA's Perpetual Ocean Proves Data can be Art

Video courtesy: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Who says data have to come in a dry table? The scientists and animators at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) have made a career out of doing just the opposite. Using some of the same software tools employed by Pixar, they create images and animations that bring data sets to life and make them easier to understand--for both the public and the scientific community. Our video of the week, Perpetual Ocean, is one artful example of their work that recently became popular on social media. By synthesizing a numerical model and a slew of different types of data collected between 2005 and 2007, the SVS team has created a beautiful visualization of the "swirling flows of tens of thousands of ocean currents."

Enjoy.  Happy Friday.


LEARN MORE
Read a Q&A with Dr. Horace Mitchell, Director of NASA Scientific Visualization Studio from Mashable

Learn how the process of visualizing data can help scientists interpret it more easily in our module Data: Using Graphs and Visual Data

Unmanned Aircraft Gathers Magnetic Data to Map Underground Faults

SIERRA, or the Sensor Integrated Environmental Remote Research
Aircraft, waits at the airport for her first flight of the season in
Surprise Valley, California. Image courtesy: Melissa Pandika.

Meet SIERRA, or the Sensor Integrated Environmental Remote Research Aircraft, if you want to be formal about it.  She's an independent little aircraft that flies without a pilot, collecting magnetic data to map underground faults and other geophysical features beneath the surface.

Starting this week, a team of scientists and engineers will be working with SIERRA in Surprise Valley, California. The team includes Visionlearning's own Anne Egger, assistant professor of geological sciences and science education at Central Washington University, as well as researchers from the USGS and NASA. The data they gather in Surprise Valley will help them create a three-dimensional map showing the locations of various faults and fissures, revealing how the water that boils up in local hot springs circulates underground, and offering clues about potential earthquake hazards in the area.

Melissa Pandika, a science journalism masters student at Stanford University, is chronicling the field expedition.  You can follow along on the USGS, NASA, or Scientific American Expeditions blogs or on Twitter.  Or browse photos from the field on Flickr.


LEARN MORE
For more about what lies beneath our planet's surface, check out our module Earth Structure: A Virtual Journey to the Center of the Earth

Image of the Week: NASA's Curiosity to Land on Mars Sunday

An artist's rendering of Curiosity in the Gale Crater on Mars. Image Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech

You can bet that scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be at work late this Sunday.  In fact, they'll likely be at the edge of their seats until at least 10:31 pm local (Pacific) time--that's when the new Mars rover Curiosity is scheduled to touch down and begin its search for evidence of life on  the Red Planet. Just landing the car-sized rover safely in Mars' Gale Crater will be a feat of physics. (Among other things, it requires a maneuver engineers call a sky crane, which involves lowering the rover on a cable from a hovering rocket stage released by a passing spacecraft.)

Once Curiosity has its wheels under it, it will be a rolling geology and chemistry lab. It's equipped with cameras, a drill, a sieve, analytical tools for assessing the chemical composition of air and soil samples, and laser called the "ChemCam" that can vaporize bits of rock from roughly nine meters (30 feet) away and test their composition. Our image of the week shows an artist's rendering of the Curiosity examining Martian rocks with a set of tools at the end of its two-meter (seven-foot) arm.


LEARN MORE
Visit NASA's "Follow Your Curiosity" page to see more images, watch a video simulation of the Curiosity's landing, download fact sheets about the rover, or find a landing party in your state.

TELL US
Will you be watching?  If you're an educator, are you using the landing as a teaching opportunity?