Star-Struck Scientists

THE REDWOOD COAST Volume 15, Number 1 REVIEW Winter 2013 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with the Independent Coast Observer ARCHITECTURE BY HER OWN DESIGN Zara Raab he young Wendy Bertrand was one of twelve pioneering Bay TArea women who gathered to share their experiences in a traditionally male-dominated field. The group, Orga- ATORY V nization of Women Architects (OWA), is still a place where women trade ideas and support in their professional and personal lives. It is hard to overestimate the role of such organizations in the burgeoning Women’s Movement of the 1970s, as witnessed in Bertrand’s inven- SOLAR OBSER HARESTUA tive, creatively designed memoir and Venus transiting the sun on June 8, 2004, as seen from Norway social history of the era, Enamored with Place: As Woman, As Architect (Eye on Place, 2012). The young Bertrand, recently gradu- Star-struck Scientists ated from Berkeley’s architectural degree program, soon begins a long career in government, overseeing architectural Astronomy and the human imagination projects for the Navy, while all the time single-handedly raising her daughter. Stephen Bakalyar So her daughter can attend the French- American Bilingual School in San Francisco, Bertrand buys a charming, he image seen by French Journals from the expeditions describe nail in the coffin of belief in an Earth- weathered “Workers’ Victorian” on a priest, philosopher and scien- harrowing conditions of travel. Astrono- centered cosmos. But his promotion of steep hill in San Francisco in 1975, tist Pierre Gassendi in 1631 mer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah heliocentrism cost him house arrest, the calling it her maisonette. Bertrand is got him worked up. “I have Dixon sailed for Sumatra on behalf of banning of his books, and anguish. In a passionate, throwing herself into both found him, I have seen him Great Britain’s Royal Society. Three letter to a friend: “Under the lying mask Twhere no one has ever seen him before!” days out of port they were attacked by a of religion, this war against me that con- her career and maisonette on 27th Street, with its vistas of the Bay and East Bay Gassendi wrote to a German colleague. 34-gun French frigate. With eleven dead tinually restrains and undercuts me in all hills. From the moment she moves in, The object of his excitement was Mer- from an hourlong battle, the astronomers’ directions, so that neither can help come this house becomes one of two true loves cury. He had made the first-ever observa- battered ship limped back to port. Mason to me from outside nor can I go forth to of her life. (The second is a cabin in tion of a planet transiting the Sun—the and Dixon resigned their commission, defend myself.” Over the centuries the Gasquet in remote Northern California.) orbit having brought it to a point directly but after the Society threatened a lawsuit Vatican’s position softened, and finally, in “I slowly engaged in a tenderly curious between the Earth and the Sun. The planet and destruction of their reputation, the 1992, it formally cleared Galileo of any acquaintance with my living space,” appeared as a small black dot moving two continued their mission. (Names wrongdoing. Bertrand writes, “exploring the limita- with imperceptible speed across the image sound familiar? They later surveyed the Edwin Hubble’s proclamation that the tions and opportunities” of the space, as of the Sun’s disk. Most of us have been disputed boundary between Pennsylvania several spiral nebulae he observed were “preening and nesting became an integral captivated occasionally by extraterres- and Maryland, which became infamously galaxies outside of our own Milky Way part” of her San Francisco life. Bertrand trial images, not reacting with Gassendi’s known as the Mason-Dixon Line, separat- changed our view of the universe, but the pays attention to her space as she might intensity, perhaps, but often with a sense ing the Northern states from the slave- idea was initially rejected by many as- to a lover or as a mother attends her of awe. Such was my experience while owning South.) The ocean was not the tronomers. He first published his findings child. Like any artist, she undertakes the watching the transit of Venus in June only hazardous location. Frenchman Jean- in The New York Times and then presented house in large part because she sees its 2012, an event that won’t happen again Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche encountered them in a paper at the 1925 meeting of the possibilities. “How could I hold on to for 105 years. many difficulties on his 4000-mile trip American Astronomical Society. By then the house’s century-old character while After Gassendi’s view of Mercury, from Paris to Tobolsk, Siberia, making the conflicts of ideas about the cosmos were still making the place contemporary? many astronomers observed its subsequent trek by horse-drawn coach on rutted roads fought with words—albeit acrimoniously What could be done to catch the country transits, including a young Edmond Hal- and by sleds on snow and frozen rivers, at times—in journals and conferences. feeling in the city—with modesty and ley. Years later, publishing in Proceedings the vehicles frequently breaking down. Occasionally laymen are simultaneous elegance?” of the Royal Society, he urged astronomers Some did not reach their destination in participants with astronomers in first-time Not only her architectural training, throughout the world to observe the next time, and cloudy skies thwarted many observations, as when fragments of the but also Bertrand’s youthful travels guide transit of Venus in 1761; he knew he observation attempts. But the successful disintegrating comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 her renovations as she recalls the domes- would likely be dead by then. His paper images were received by the scientific crashed into Jupiter in 1994. I remember tic arrangement in other cultures, where described how measurements would community with appreciation, and the the television broadcast that showed both “sleeping took place next to clay fire pits allow calculation of the Sun’s distance observers’ status was elevated. the image of Jupiter and the telescope’s for cooking, low tables for entertaining, from Earth—unknown at the time, and Sadly, many scientists throughout control room—and exclaiming along cribs for childcare, stools for repairing considered the most important astronomi- history faced skepticism or even crushing with scientists, “My god, the impact scar tools, and nooks for musical instruments cal fact to be determined. The method rejection after presenting new findings. is larger than the diameter of earth,” fol- or materials for crafts.” As the Mirabelle required observations from different loca- For example, Galileo’s 1610 sighting and lowed by thoughts of potential catastrophe plum tree in her yard blooms over the tions on the Earth. (Transits of Mercury description of Jupiter’s moons put another here. Jupiter’s massive size makes it a decades, putting forth its white petals are frequent, but its proximity to the sun powerful vacuum cleaner of its neighbor- and then its tiny, delicate golden plums, precludes useful calculations.) Point the Hubble at hood; Earth’s warp of space is relatively Bertrand extends and reshapes the spaces Astronomers responded to Halley’s puny, but sooner or later we will beckon of the maisonette, thinking of the bed- call, petitioning their kings and parlia- a small spot in the something large that intersects our orbit. rooms as not simply “nighttime caves” ments for funds. Not only would the infor- sky that appears Congress has tasked NASA to find, by or “master bedrooms” (that “rudely mation be a great scientific achievement, 2020, 90 percent of near-earth objects ringing title”) but as spaces for enrich- they claimed, but their participation would largely empty to larger than 140 meters in diameter. To ing active daily life. Like every artist, also redound positively to the reputation date several programs have identified Bertrand revises, adding a small balcony of their countries. Nearly 250 cooperating ground-based tele- thousands of qualifying objects. here, an office nook there, first painting scientists from England, France, Germany, scopes, take many the ceiling of her the lean-to bathroom Sweden and Russia, among others, set ess dramatic but nonetheless iconic a disastrous salmon, then repainting it a out to observe the 1761 Venus transit. exposures over a pe- Limages of these spacefaring times are softer yellow. It was the first international scientific pictures from the Mars Reconnaissance These are the “socially more pro- project. Remarkably, it took place during riod of several days, Orbiter circling above the planet. The lat- gressive years” of the 1970s, when the Seven Years’ War, the first global war, and an astounding est shows the SUV-sized Curiosity and the workplaces celebrated International engaging the great powers of the era, with tracks it made in the Martian soil during Women’s Years, as well as the history of theaters in Europe, India, North America, number of galaxies its initial wanderings. There is something and on the high seas. uncanny about a picture of one extrater- African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian appear. See BERTRAND page 10 See STAR page 6 Page 2 THE REDWOOD COAST REVIEW Winter 2013 EDITOR’s noTE What Hath Roth Wrought? Stephen Kessler hilip Roth’s recent announce- and Roth’s friend and role model Saul Bel- nd yet there is an unusual integrity ment that he is done with writ- low. The first Zuckerman trilogy alone (The Ain having the courage to say Enough ing novels must have come as Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The already.

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