Super conducting, super colliding, slip-sliding away

Don’t know much about geography.  Don’t know much trigonometry.  Don’t know much about algebra.  Don’t know what a slide rule is for, but I do know that one and one is two. And if this one could be with you, what a wonderful world this would be.

Sam Cooke

Geeks, nerds, eggheads, and other terms of endearment.

Jane and I both majored in mathematics while in college—and discovering this common link only served to further cement our friendship almost 25 years ago.

While attending the University of Maryland in the early 70’s I found pride in being one of at most four women in my advanced math classes.  My degreed education also included physics, statistics, biology, computer programming, and economics.  Were I going to college today, I’d probably have a different focus—one that includes environmental sciences, green technologies and bio-medical studies.

While women are choosing to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics in much greater numbers three-plus decades later, there is reason for all of us to be concerned about the state of our science education—starting in K-12 and continuing through college.

Consider these headlines (USA Today, National Academy of Sciences, and National Science Teachers Association, among others):

• The lack of certified science and math teachers is a growing quandary for schools around the nation, particularly those in poor neighborhoods. Of about 107,300 full-time math teachers and 92,000 full-time science teachers currently employed in public and private schools, about 60,000 have little or no training in those subjects.
• More than half the engineering degrees awarded by the nation’s universities are given to foreign-born students.
• The United States imports more "high-technology" products than it exports.
• High school students generally score below their international counterparts in math and science tests.
• Doctors, scientists and business executives are popular career choices but too few teens are going beyond schools’ minimum math requirements to prepare for these jobs.

Geez….I could go on and on with horrible statistics about the state of science in the United States. Intelligent Design anyone?

Add to those headlines: When scientists on the French-Swiss border recently fired up the world’s biggest particle collider, politicians and residents in Waxahachie, Texas wondered what went wrong. No, the earth didn’t implode into a black hole.

But consider this: in the 1980s and early ‘90s, scientists from around the world gathered in Texas at a Los Alamos-like facility to build a Superconducting Super Collider. After $2 billion and 15 miles of tunnel, Congress killed the project in 1993. As a result, the United States is not in the forefront as scientists look to solve many of mankind’s mysteries—or participate in “one of the great engineering milestones of mankind” as was declared after the successful test last week.

And while this recent event peaked my curiosity, my interest in writing about this topic now is because of two novelists, three movies, and, yes, even the current presidential race.

Let me explain.

Can you do division?  Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that? Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Steamboat Springs is home to an annual Literary Sojourn, jointly sponsored by our incredible library and one of the local bookstores. I started attending the Sojourn in 2001 and this day-long event—where five diverse authors talk about their works and the art of writing—has been a must-attend event for me ever since. Jane has joined me twice since that initial foray and one year we had the pleasure of hearing Alan Lightman.

Lightman was a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at Cornell, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard, and a research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

In 1981, he began publishing essays about the human side of science and the "mind of science," and in1989 he was appointed professor of science and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there, he headed the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT. I think that’s pretty amazing.

I’ve read a couple of Lightman’s books and currently have one sitting on my nightstand. Interestingly enough, while interviewing Leonard Nimoy for Changing Lanes, we learned that Leonard was interested in the concept of time and had investigated several artistic explorations of the subject. Immediately after the interview we sent him a thank-you note, along with a copy of Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman’s fictionalized accounting of Einstein’s views of time.

At the time, I thought that as both a distinguished physicist and an accomplished novelist, Lightman was the only person who straddled the sciences and the humanities. Yet I recently learned of another—and wouldn’t you know it, he’s another Literary Sojourn selection.

I first discovered Manil Suri a few years ago when I read The Death of Vishnu. Because he was coming to this year’s Sojourn, my local book club selected this book to discuss. It was during this meeting that I found out that Suri is also a mathematician.

He obtained his PhD in applied mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and is a tenured full professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. While Suri still does mathematical research in the field of numerical analysis, he’s also been spending more time devising ways to bring mathematics to the public at large.

What I like about Suri is that he’s certain that all of us have some innate wiring for mathematics. If that’s the case, it’s too bad the most people don’t know it. His guess is that “a bad experience early on can often short-circuit this wiring, but even then, there’s something within us that will respond to mathematics when presented in a user-friendly, unpressured way.” So, Suri has been giving talks about math in unlikely situations: writers’ and artists’ colonies, retirement communities…even literary conferences. I’m anxious to see what he says when he’s here later this month.

In an effort to popularize mathematics, he’s been giving a presentation called Taming Infinity. Check it out.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. Gottfried Leibniz

I have many friends who are engineers and musicians. Indeed, you may have heard that there are proven links between mathematics and music. When you think about it, mathematics is the study of numbers using numbers—unlike, say, physics, which is the scientific study of matter, energy, space, and time, and of the relationships between them. People kind of get that physics has a practical scientific application whereas they’re not sure about math beyond balancing their checkbooks.

Similarly, music is valuable in and of itself. So it goes to follow that there is a natural connection between mathematics and music: both are experienced as pure perceptions of the brain.

And phooey to those who say mathematics contains no emotional content. Maybe this is the reason that movie studios are attracted to stories about mathematicians who, in the end, go nuts. Talk about emotion. Remember A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe? Another movie, first staged as a play and later turned into a screenplay, is Proof. I saw it on Broadway at Jane’s recommendation. Recently, Rick and I watched it at home—and I was hooked on writing this blog.

Another movie I recommend, but only if you’re science minded is Pi. Yes, it’s about the number Pi (π) you learned about in school. And of course, the main character in the movie goes crazy.

So what’s the point here? 

The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization. John Kemeny

The United States is slipping and politicians and business leaders say it isn’t just about education—it’s about global competition. We need competent and engaged teachers to inspire American children to pursue a career in math or science. If it doesn’t happen, it’s easy to conclude that the United States’ role as leader in technology development and scientific research will wither.

It’s a shame that while we still lead the world in nearly every way one can measure, but the foundation on which this lead was built is eroding. (A couple embarrassing exclusions: health care costs and health statistics such expected life span.)

I recently heard an analogy that described our country as the proverbial frog in the pot of water, oblivious to the slowly rising temperature. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, it was like being thrown into a pot of boiling water---and we reacted. September 11 was a similar pot of boiling water and it should have been the impetus for inspired energy independence technology programs. Instead our current administration chose not to act. We still have time to act—but without the kick in the but an overarching, mobilizing event provides. Just because the threat doesn’t feel imminent, doesn’t make it any less real.

And so we’ve lost ground to China and India, in part because of our dwindling emphasis on the sciences.

We live in a time that evolution is as firmly established a scientific fact as the roundness of the Earth, yet the acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, partially due to the politicization of science in the United States.

The Center for the Study of the Presidency, a non-partisan organization, published a report earlier this month that listed several pressing issues facing America’s next president. They run the gambit from energy, healthcare and environment to national security and economic competitiveness. At the heart of each is science and technology. According to one of its co-authors, Anne Solomon: "We do not have in the White House and throughout the executive branch the kind of analytical capabilities and broad expertise that’s needed to understand and develop sound policy across these and many other issues.”

So consider carefully when you pull that lever in November. Will it be Obama-Biden or McCain-Palin? My bet’s on the former.

While educational reform is important to our long-term survivability, where and how much the federal government directs research monies is just as important. Bill Gates recently spoke on the decline in federal government funding for research in computer science: "Its kind of a crime that as computer science is about to solve some of the most interesting problems…and is becoming the toolkit for all the sciences, the government should pull back on some of its funding.”

Since the Apollo program of the 60’s, funding for research across the United States has faltered. Research and Development (also known as R&D) funding is vital in supporting innovation because it invests in the technologies that will advance society in the future.

So what can each of us do? 

Pick the right next leader for the United States, for sure. Encourage your kids and grand-kids to study the sciences—better yet, why not send the teens in your family to a science camp? There are lots of resources: SME Education Foundation, National Youth Science Foundation, and KidsCamps to name a few. 

Give money to these foundations or volunteer to be a judge for the local high school’s science fair.  Be creative. After all, kids need the math and science skills necessary to compete in the 21st century workforce. 

I’ll leave you with a quote from Robert Heinlein, the famous science fiction writer:  

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. 

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