Joan Feynman, noted astrophysicist. She was 93.
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In 1971, Feynman accepted a job at the NASA Ames Research Center, where she developed a way to detect solar coronal mass ejections from the sun by searching for the presence of helium in solar wind. She would go on to hold positions at the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado; the National Science Foundation; and Boston College. In 1985, Feynman accepted a position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where she would conduct research until her retirement.
As part of her research at JPL, Feynman identified the mechanism that leads to the formation of auroras and developed a statistical model to determine the number of high-energy particles expelled from coronal mass injections that would hit a spacecraft during its lifetime. After her retirement from a senior scientist position in 2003, Feynman continued to conduct research on the impact of solar activity on the early climate of the Earth and the role of climate stabilization in the development of agriculture.
“Joan Feynman leaves a legacy of exemplary scientific research, having made important contributions to our understanding of the solar wind, the earth’s magnetosphere, and the origin of auroras,” said APS CEO Kate Kirby. “Despite being discouraged to pursue science by women in her family, she persevered, and her accomplishments serve as an inspiration to women who wish to pursue a career in science.”
For the record, she was Richard Feynman’s younger sister. There’s a story:
Her pioneering work on these processes led to an understanding of the mechanism responsible for auroras. She found this work wonderful, and her immediate reaction was to tell her brother, who’d first introduced her to these beautiful phenomena all those years before.
But then a second thought crossed her mind. “Richard is pretty smart, and if I tell him about an interesting problem, he’ll find the answer before I do and take all the fun out of it for me.” So Joan decided to strike a deal with him. “I said, Look, I don’t want us to compete, so let’s divide up physics between us. I’ll take auroras and you take the rest of the Universe. And he said OK!”
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Her brother Richard had kept his original promise to her not to work on auroras. Despite an impressive polymath career in which he applied his genius to a spectacular spectrum of problem-solving across the fields of maths, physics, chemistry, and biology, he had never turned his attention to Joan’s chosen field.
But then he traveled to Alaska, an important centre for aurora studies. On a tour of the facility, the head of the lab pointed out many of the interesting geophysical phenomena that were yet to be explained. “Would you be interested in working on it?” he enquired. Richard responded that he would, but added that he’d have to ask his sister’s permission. Joan remembers that he came back and told her the story. “I’m sorry Richard,” she replied, “but I’m not giving you permission.” Richard duly reported back that his sister had refused to allow him to study auroras!
Word of this story eventually got round, and people would come up to Joan at conferences and ask her if it was true. At one meeting, a colleague from UCLA told the gathering that he wanted “to publicly thank Richard Feynman for not studying aurora, so that we can all have some fun!”