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Female Scientists Whom Nobuo Yamada Encountered：Early Years

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Female Scientists Whom Nobuo Yamada Encountered：Early Years International Workshop on the History of Chemistry 2015 Tokyo Female Scientists Whom Nobuo Yamada Encountered：Early Years of Radio Chemistry and the Radium Institute Keiko KAWASHIMA Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan Introduction “Recently, I’ve been attending Professor Curie’s lecture once a week. She seems quite smart, though aged.” 1 Nobuo Yamada (1898–1927), a 27-year-old chemist, wrote this in 1923 to his wife in Tokyo, soon after going to Paris to study. He was the first Japanese scientist to join the Radium Institute and receive the guidance of Marie Curie (1867–1934). He jointly conducted research with Irène Curie (Mme Joliot, 1897–1956), Marie’s eldest daughter, and published five articles on this collaborative research. Yamada was one of the few Japanese scientists working in the early field of radio chemistry, and his experience was even more unique, as he was the first Japanese male scientist to have a female teacher and female colleagues. Unfortunately, since Yamada died young due to radiation injury, the above-mentioned letter is the only description that he provided of his teacher.2 Shocked by the news of Yamada’s death just two years after his return to Japan, Marie and Irène, respectively, wrote condolatory letters to Yamada’s supervisor and his wife. The Curie Museum in Paris houses copies of those letters. These were the first such letters sent to Japanese recipients by female scientists, as opposed to the wives or daughters of male scientists. Yet Marie and Irène Curie were not the only female scientists that Yamada met in Paris. In the 1920s, the Radium Institute employed many female scientists, including Catherine Chamié (1888–1950), Sonia Słobodkine (Mme Cotelle, 1896–1945). This paper discusses women of the Radium Institute, with a focus on the period when Yamada was in Paris (1923–1925). In the world, it was the only institute where male and female scientists, who came from various countries, working together under a female leader. The fame of Marie Curie—the first two time Nobel Prize winner (1903 in physics; 1911 in chemistry)—attracted disciples from across the world and stimulated a dramatic increase in the number of women conducting scientific research, especially in radio chemistry. In fact, the fields of atomic science, besides astronomy and crystallography, had a higher ratio of female scientists’ involvement. Moreover, as Marie Curie’s two Nobel Prizes indicate, this field enabled chemists and physicists to work together closely. 1 Post card of Nobuo Yamada, dated November ? 1923. By courtesy of Mr. Mitsuo Yamada. 2 On Nobuo Yamada, see Keiko Kawashima, “Deux savants japonais et la famille Curie, Nobuo Yamada et Toshiko Yuasa,” Actualité chimique, mai 2012, n.363 (2012): 51-55. 56 International Workshop on the History of Chemistry 2015 Tokyo How did the female disciples work in Marie Curie’s laboratory? And what did Marie’s existence and role mean for those female scientists? This paper analyses these points from the gender perspective. 1. Curie’s First Laboratory and the Radium Institute From the time when she opened her first laboratory in 1906 to her death in 1934, Marie accepted more than 40 female researchers. This period can be divided into three segments. The first one was the period of the two-room laboratory (from 1906 to June 1914). The second (from July 1914 to November 1918) and third (from December 1918 to May 1934) ones, are during and after World War I. Even before Pierre and Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in 1903, their studies into radioactivity attracted the world’s attention, but the French government would not give them an independent laboratory. It becomes almost a myth that the couple discovered radium in “a dilapidated shed.” 3 After receiving the Nobel Prize, Pierre became a professor at the Sorbonne in 1904, but the post did not give him a new laboratory. Only in 1906, just before his death, Pierre was given the narrow two-room laboratory.4 Radium, the element they discovered, was expected to have medical and industrial applications. Yet it was not until 1909 that the government implemented a plan to build the Radium Institute. The Institute, consisting of a medical department and basic research department, opened in July 1914. So, the first period started after Pierre’s death in 1906, when Fig.1 Marie Curie in the Radium Institute Marie succeeded his post as a teacher at the (about 1923) Musée Curie (coll. ACJC) Sorbonne, and started accepting researchers in the two-room laboratory. When Henri Becquerel discovered the radioactivity of uranium in 1896, radiation was a complete mystery. But α, β and γ-rays were distinguished before World War I. It became clear that radioactivity research meant probing the atom. Research should be further developed when the new building opened in 1914, but soon after that, World War I broke out. Up until the end of the war in 1918, the Radium 3 Eve Curie, translated by Vincent Sheean, Madame Curie (London & Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd., 1938), p. 165. 4 For the definition of “Curie laboratory”, see Natalie Pigeard-Micault, “The Curie’s Labo and its Women (1906-1934),” Annals of Science, 70-1 (2013): 71-100, pp. 2-3: J.L. Davis, “The Research School of Marie Curie in the Paris Faculty, 1907-14,” Annals of Science, 52 (1995): 321-355, p. 324. 57 International Workshop on the History of Chemistry 2015 Tokyo Institute did something unusual. Since the men were off fighting the war, it became a female-centred institution. However, the war did not completely stop the radioactivity research. In Berlin, Lise Meitner (1878–1968) and Otto Hahn (1879–1968), who later became Irène’s rivals, discovered a new radioactive element, protoactinium, in 1917. Moreover, although the announcement was made after the war, Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), Marie’s friend, confirmed that bombarding the nucleus of a nitrogen atom with an α-ray would result in an oxygen nucleus and hydrogen nucleus (proton). The third period, from the end of the war to 1934, was the most prosperous time for the Radium Institute during Marie’s lifetime. Especially in the 1920s, when Yamada was there, France enjoyed favorable business conditions, called les années folles, when people from around the world, visited France. Such trends led to the development of the Institute. In addition to aid from the Carnegie Foundation that had been given before the war, Marie gained substantial funds from wealthy supporters and many business enterprises, and she made the Institute the world’s centre of radioactivity research.5 The great breakthrough of this period was James Chadwick’s (1891–1974) discovery of the neutron in 1932, revealing the major components of the atom. As seen in Rutherford’s above-mentioned experiment, the scientists were beyond searching to define radiation or the atom, and were introducing the idea of changing the atom. Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie’s (1900-1958) discovery of artificial radioactivity was also an attempt at achieving the transmutation of the atom. Though nuclear fission had yet to be discovered, the neutron became a new tool for creating additional artificial substances. 2. Curie’s First Laboratory (1906–1914) and distinctive features of Marie’s female disciples What did Marie do before 1906? When her husband was alive, she was a physics teacher at Sèvres Higher Normal School for Women since 1900. After Pierre became a professor of the Sorbonne, she held the additional post of chef de travaux, laboratory chief of her husband’s lab. She was the only woman working in this laboratory at the time. Now, let’s discuss the students of Sèvres, though they were not members of Curie Laboratory. Even after moving to the Sorbonne, Marie arranged for the students of Sèvres to attend her lecture. Among them, her most notable student was Eugénie Feytis (Mme Cotton, 1881-1967), who became a scientist and a famous educator. Later, she became the principal of Sèvres and struggled to realize gender equality in education, especially promoting science education for women. She was also awarded the Légion d’honneur. 5 As for the development of the Radium Institute and the Curie Institute, see Curie Museum’s site: http://musee.curie.fr/media/files/04_De%20l'institut%20du%20radium%20%C3%A0%20l'insti tut%20curie.pdf 58 International Workshop on the History of Chemistry 2015 Tokyo In the first period—even when Marie Curie had the two-room laboratory—there were always young, female researchers in the laboratory. By what standard did Marie accept these researchers? The pattern was basically as follows. She would accept a person if he or she had an adequate recommendation letter and his or her research theme fit with the work being carried out in her laboratory. Later, ceasing to work hard would mean the discontinuation of one’s acceptance.6 No Fig.2 Marie and Irène Curie, and Students of gender discrimination occurred; Marie Sèvres. Eugénie Feytis is on the extreme judged men and women by the same right. (1903) Musée Curie (coll. ACJC) standard. In fact, this was an amazing ○ｃMusée Curie standard. As Meitner’s case reveals, discrimination against women was common at the time.7 The idea of not distinguishing between the sexes itself was exceptionally rare. So, the news of the establishment of a laboratory led by a woman was a boon to female researchers globally, especially those who wanted to work in radioactivity. What did those women, or men, come to Curie to do? Most of them were there to gain a PhD or a DES, the qualification for a PhD. Indeed, Yamada earned a Doctorate of Science from Tokyo Imperial University with dissertations he wrote in Paris.
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