Famous female scientists

So when it was my turn to set the question I showed them this photo (below) which I found on the Internet, even displaying the names, and asked what each of these ladies - famous scientists all - were famous for? I must confess to only knowing three myself, they were Meitner, Burnell and Franklin (see bottom row). How many do you know what they did?

So, to give credit to these ladies, I'm providing Wikipedia links for you, so that you can go read about their achievements. Please do so!

• Mary Somerville, 1780-1872, mathematician and astronomer, whom I only remembered as being Ada Lovelace's (world's first programmer) tutor.
• Caroline Herschel, 1750-1848, astronomer, almost overshadowed by her brother, William.
• Mary Anning, 1799-1847, paleontologist and fossil collector. Charles Dickens wrote about her.
• Emmy Noether, 1882-1935, german jewish mathematician, much praised by Einstein et al.
• Henrietta Leavitt, 1868-1921, astronomer who first measured the distance to galaxies.
• Alice Catherine Evans, 1881-1975, microbiologist who investigated Brucella.
• Annie Maunder, 1868-1947, astronomer who first tracked sunspot cycles.
• Dorothy Hodgkin, 1910-1994, Nobel Prize chemist, discovered 3D biomolecular structures.
• Lise Meitner, 1878-1968, physicist who discovered nuclear fission.
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell, 1943-alive, astrophysicist who discovered pulsars.
• Mildred_Dresselhaus, 1930-2017, nanotechnologist specialising in graphite.
• Rosalind Franklin, 1920-1958, chemist. The ExoMars Rover was named after her.
• Finally, from the previous photo, Marie Curie, 1867-1934, physicist. First woman to win a Nobel Prize, of which she won two!

Comments (1)
Derek (Canada) wrote " Hi Stu.......on your current topic of "Talented Ladies"........ I should like to mention Jennifer Doudna...2020 Nobel prize winner for her work in helping to discover CRISPR....i.e. messing around with the coding of DNA and RNA genes. Just learning about her in a book fresh out: "The Code Breaker" Gene editing and the Future of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson. Codes.....right up your street, except I guess you deal in 1's and 0's and she into As,Ts, Gs & Cs ??? !!!! Cheers...Derek.......with our snowy landscape here rapidly dissolving.... so time to put the x-c skis away, and dig out the bikes! " Yup, she qualifies well. Here is her Wikipedia page :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 26, 2021 permalink Comments Email

Mike the Bike : gone but not forgotten.

Forty years ago on this very day in 1981, one of my eternal heroes, motorcycle racing star Mike Hailwood was killed in a road traffic car accident, no fault of his own.

He is regarded by many (including me) as one of the greatest racers of all time.

He competed in the Grand Prix motorcycle world championships from 1958 to 1967, winning i.a. 14 TT races. During his last TT for Honda in 1967, I was on race-marshall duty at the Bungalow. Seeing and hearing him and Agostini (on the MV) battling - head to head - lap after lap, was something I shall never forget, especially the sound of them accelerating under the bridge and up along what is now called Hailwood's rise, towards Windy Corner.

I'll leave you to follow the link above please to Wikipedia for all the details of his career.

Comments (1)
Pergelator wrote " I remember the name and I remember he raced motorcycles, but the details escape me." Hence the Wikipedia link, Chuck :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 23, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Thursday, March 18, 2021

RIP Sabine Schmitz :-(

Sadly, I report the death (at age 51) from cancer of racing driver Sabine Schmitz, Queen of the Nürburgring, on tuesday.

Up until a decade ago, Sabine drove a BMW M5, a fast but road-legal limo as the Ring-Taxi. About 18 years ago I paid for a lap with her as I was scared of wrecking my own car when trying to lap in under 10 minutes. She was easily lapping faster than that; she has done about 20,000 laps of the Ring and so knew it like the back of her hand :-) She was also known as "The fastest taxi driver in the world!" Even as a passenger, I found it quite scary; she lapped almost a whole minute faster than me in my Golf GTI!

In 2004 she coached the insufferable Jeremy Clarkson around the Ring in a Jaguar until he managed a 9 minute 59 second lap. He was chuffed with himself until she said " I tell you something, I [could] do that lap time in a van!"

And she damn near did, 10' 8" in a Ford Transit!

She was the overall winner of the 24-hour Nürburgring race in 1996 and 1997 (BMW), third in 2008 (Porsche), ninth in 2011 (Porsche), sixth in 2012 (Porsche). One fast lady!

But unfortunately not fast enough to escape the cancer :-( Rest in Peace, Sabine.

Comments (1)
Schorsch (D) notes "Here is a nice tribute video ." Indeed it is; thanks.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 18, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

On St. Patrick's Day

The last time I was in Ireland was in 2016, as usual on a motorcycle tour with friend Frank. One of the things we went to see was the Rock of Cashel, so here are three of my photos of the medieval ruins. It is also known as St. Patrick's Rock, located at Cashel, County Tipperary, Ireland.

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland, who allegedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. Actually there have been no snakes there since the glacial era. The word "snakes" used here is a libellious euphemism for the druids, i.e. the pre-christian priests.

But don't think that St.Patrick lived or preached here, the majority of buildings on the current site date from the 12th and 13th centuries.

Cormac's Chapel, the chapel of King Cormac Mac Carthaigh, was begun in 1127 and consecrated in 1134, over 600 years AFTER St. Patrick.

The Cathedral was built a century later, between 1235 and 1270. The Hall of the Vicars Choral shown above was not built until the 15th century.

In 1749, the main cathedral roof was removed (see photo above) by Arthur Price, the Anglican Archbishop of Cashel. Today, what remains of the Rock of Cashel has become a tourist attraction. Which is why we went there and why I'm showing you my photos today. Saint Patrick's Day is observed on 17 March, the supposed date of his death, just as arbitrarily chosen by the One True Church^® as Xmas or Easter etc.

This year we have a miserable celebration of St. Patrick's Day here in Germany. Due to Covid-Lockdown all the (Irish) pubs are shut, so there's no draught Guinness available and the Guinness Brewery didn't think to ramp up the export of canned Guinness either, so what there was is now out of stock :-( The local florist doesn't have any Shamrock either :-( So I'm reduced to just blogging in green today :-(

Mar sin féin, bíodh lá maith Naomh Pádraig agat!

Comments (2)
Doug (Canada) sent this cartoon for today :-

Jenny (Ibiza) asks "So why were the druids called snakes then?" Because Druids had snake tattoos on their arms; not many people know that.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 17, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Roadkill

Having narrowly missed a feral pig whilst driving through the twilight forest yesterday, which scared the **** out of me, I've researched the recently reported roadkill statistics for our country.

• 49% of reported roadkills were deer (15,315 since april 2018).
• 12% were small mammals like hedgehogs.
• 10% hares and rabbits
• 7% foxes
• 5% feral pigs
• 4% badgers
• 3% racoons
• 0.2% (=6) wolves

Making for a total of 31338 roadkills since april 2018. Then there are the cases of animals/birds hit who recovered after care. A nearby friend of mine cares for wounded owls, falcons etc. which are not in the kill statistic. Nor are frogs & other amphibians, although one sees them squashed along the roads too.

Don't swerve as that could kill you and/or damage your car. Just brake in a straight line as hard as possible; that's safer. Report the accident asap, especially if the animal was NOT killed, merely wounded. Then the area hunter responsible can go finish it off. Even if it is Pie-day (3.14) today, we don't get to eat our roadkill here in Germany. Some animals (e.g. the feral pigs) are still seriously radioactive since Chernobyl :-(

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 14, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Thursday, March 11, 2021

To the barber at last :-)

It has been nigh on three months now that the barber shops have been closed due to the Covid-19 lockdown. But now the rules have been softened and the village barber has opened up again. No haircuts-on-demand anymore, one needs to set up an appointment to ensure there is only one customer there at a time. My appointment was yesterday morning.

Here are my before and after selfies :-)

I can't tell you what a relief it was to be able to visit the (overworked!) barber shop again :-) I'm a new man now, at least psychologically speaking :-)

Comments (3)
Jenny (Ibiza) wrote sarcastically "A new man? The left photo reminds me of Gabby Hayes". He died the year we first met (1969), milady.
Schorsch (D) tells me that TikTok now has a no-beard filter. Oh dear :-(
Derek (Canada) wrote " Hi the newly cropped Stu.......see attached to see how we combat pandemic boredom.....indulging in Ski-Orienteering......or simply put, skiing with a map in hand! Still sub zero over here, plus throw in some wind chill. Booked on line for our vaccine shots, due to get then at months end. We are still "in the Red"...complete with an 8 pm to 5 am curfew.... which is pretty easy to handle for us dozy seniors!" You are far more active than I.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 11, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Earth is flat : proof photo ;-)

You know, a lot of people insist the Earth is round. But if that were so, a rain-beau would form a bow across the sky and people would have renamed it "rain-bow", losing the BEAUty from its name.

As it is, we have photographic proof that the rain-beau is flat, see picture below, and so the Earth must be flat too :-)

Comments(1)
Cop Car objected " You may recall from your State-side stays, Stu, that we in the States have "rainbows". It isn't a rainbow if it's flat, so that photo proves nothing except that one must take care in figuring incident angles." The whole article and the photo are merely clickbait ;-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 7, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Easy Covid Math

Here are some Coronavirus numbers for you to think about.

The current population of Germany is 83,960,923 as of Sunday, February 28, 2021, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.

The number of Covid tests made daily in Germany is around 342,000. These are for economic reasons the cheapest tests available.

Positive accuracy of these tests is given as 98%. So 2% are false positives. Now 2% of 342,000 is 6,840 daily false positives.

Incidence is defined as number of new cases per week per 100,000 of the population. Statistically uneducated politicians arbitrarily defined an incidence of maximal 50 to end lockdown last year. This year they lowered this limit to 35 before lockdown is to be ended, they (Merkel) defined.

Now 6840 * 7 days / 83,960,923 population * 100,000 = 57.026, so the 2% positive test inaccuracy itself leads to an incidence of over 57 on average. Therefore an incidence of below 35 to end lockdown cannot be achieved due to testing inaccuracy alone. To get around this, all those testing positive on the cheapest test are re-tested with a better (and independent) test method. This is good. But now the politicians have decided to increase the rate of testing (with the cheapest test); this alone will increase the incidence as shown above; to what I can only guess.

As it is, 83,960,923 / 342,000 implies that you only get tested every 245 days. Incubation time is on average 5-6 days, but can be as long as 14 days. Not 245. Now 245 / 5 = 49, so the increase in the rate of testing has to be at least a factor of 50. We shall see.

New lockdown rules require that you wear a KN95 or FFP2 or a bluish medical mask on public transport, so this guy, who is already wearing a military-style gas-mask, has added a medical mask just to comply with this specific rule. Ridiculous ;-)

And if you thought those numbers were worrying to you, I'll point out that they don't give a percentage for the number of false negatives of that cheapest test. A false negative result means that you are tested as NOT having Covid but have it anyway, so falling through the "safety" net :-(

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 2, 2021 permalink Comments Email

---

Link to the previous month's blog.

---