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Commentary: Diversity in physics: Are you part of the problem?

Thomas E. Graedel, an atmospheric scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.), has been made an AGU representative to the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). The board oversees the operations of AIP, a nonprofit umbrella organization for 10 member societies, including AGU. Other AGU members currently on the governing board include Orson Anderson, a geophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles; AGU General Secretary Peter M. Bell of the Norton Company, Worcester, Mass.; AGU Executive Director A. F. Spilhaus, Jr.; and Martin Walt, a geophysicist with the Lockheed Corporation in Palo Alto, Calif.All AGU members receive the benefits of membership in AIP, including the monthly magazine Physics Today. Other AIP services available to AGU members include access to an employment service, AIP's electronic network Pi‐NET, and an insurance program. AGU members can also subscribe to journals published by the American Physical Society, another AIP member society, at discounted rates.—WWM

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the databases from a certain library are Pareto-compliant or not? If so, to what extent is the Pareto principle performance evident among these databases? The other purpose is to determine the differences in Pareto principle performance according to time change and database type. Design/methodology/approach Data on full-text downloads from six e-resources – Elsevier ScienceDirect (SD), Wiley Blackwell, Springer Journal, EBSCO Business Source Premier (BSP), American Chemical Society and American Institute of Physics (AIP) – for the period 2007-2013 were analysed; 42 samples were collected from these databases. The proportion of frequently downloaded journals from databases was selected as an indicator to determine differences in Pareto principle performance according to time change. The difference between the proportion of frequently downloaded journals and the classic proportion of 20 per cent was used as indicator to determine difference in Pareto principle performance related to database type. Findings There are 33 samples (78.57 per cent) which exhibited the Pareto principle. Four databases – Elsevier SD, Wiley Blackwell, EBSCO BSP and AIP – constantly exhibited the Pareto principle. The differences were not significant according to time change. The two multi-discipline databases – Elsevier SD and Wiley Blackwell – fluctuated more moderately than the two single-discipline databases – EBSCO BSP and AIP. Multi-discipline and single-discipline databases showed some differences in Pareto principle performance; however, these differences were not remarkable. Originality/value The Pareto principle confirmed that there were frequent and infrequent downloads of e-journals from e-journal databases. It was of great importance to analyse these to improve digital resources acquisition and user service.

Physics Today’s September 1966 issue included an interview with Herman Branson, who was chair of Howard University’s physics department at the time. Among the questions he fielded about the state of Black people in physics was, “Do you feel that the science community is biased to any degree?” He replied, “I don’t think so…. Scientists (and especially physicists) are among the most liberal people to be found anywhere.”Branson’s response evidently shocked his fellow African American physicist Tannie Stovall of the Linear Accelerator Laboratory in Orsay, France. He submitted a rebuttal, which appeared in Physics Today’s December 1966 issue. “Branson has painted a dangerously rosy picture of the black man in physics,” Stovall wrote. “I would like strongly to take issue with this view.”How could Branson believe that racial bias was absent from science in 1966? I can’t be sure. He might have harbored a belief that persists today: Physics is the objective, methodical study of matter and energy, which are devoid of life, let alone social and political actors. How can physics be biased?But if you read Branson’s interview, it’s clear he was quite aware of the systemic obstacles faced half a century ago by Black students in science. Indeed, he campaigned to remove them. Black colleges and universities had—and still have—less funding than other universities. “We know how to make a first-rate school in America,” Branson told his interviewer. “It’s primarily a question of money.”When Physics Today published its interview with Branson, the last of the five Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and 1960s—the Fair Housing Act of 1968—was stalled in the Senate. Asked if his physics students were as active in civil rights as humanities students, Branson answered, “Perhaps embarrassingly so.” Quite to his surprise, physics majors were among the student leaders in local civil rights movements. Some of them, he lamented, did not continue to pursue physics.As members of a prominent Black university in the US, those “lost” students of Branson’s who joined the struggle for civil rights were surely made welcome in the physics department. Sadly and reprehensibly, too many of today’s Black physics majors and graduate students do not feel as though they belong. If you doubt that physics is unwelcoming to Black students, read the commentary by Charles D. Brown II, which was posted on Physics Today’s website on 20 July. Brown, who is a postdoc in atomic physics at the University of California, Berkeley, recounts a litany of racist slights and presumptions that he faced as a physics student.Making physics more welcoming to Black people and other underrepresented groups will take effort, not least because a student’s peers have a strong influence on whether a department is welcoming. Professors must lead by example. If you need advice on how to do that, read the report11. AIP National Task Force to Elevate African American Representation in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy, The Time Is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Astronomy, American Institute of Physics (2020). from the TEAM-UP Task Force, which was organized by the American Institute of Physics (Physics Today’s publisher).A recent briefing in the Economist identified three policy areas that, if addressed effectively, could improve the lives and opportunities of African Americans: segregation, education, and childhood poverty. Although tackling those and other systemic sources of disadvantage will be expensive and difficult, it needs to be done. And Branson recognized another challenge in his 1966 interview: “Suppose you take a 17-year-old from an indifferent intellectual and cultural background; what can you do to bring him into 20th-century science? It’s not only a tough question for America but for the rest of the world as well.”Given the magnitude of the challenges, the individual physicist, including me, might be tempted to ask with exasperation, What can I do? We can listen to the personal experiences of Black physicists. We can work toward making our departments, labs, and teams more welcoming. And we can confront racism whenever we encounter or witness it. The killing of George Floyd on 25 May again brought into stark, painful view the anti-Black racism that endures in the US. The time is now to do what we can to eliminate it.ReferenceSection:ChooseTop of pageReference <<CITING ARTICLES1. AIP National Task Force to Elevate African American Representation in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy, The Time Is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Astronomy, American Institute of Physics (2020). Google Scholar© 2020 American Institute of Physics.

The argon triple point (T_{90} = 83.8058,hbox {K}) is a fixed point of the International Temperature Scale of Preston-Thomas (Metrologia 27:3, 1990). Cells for realization of the fixed point have been manufactured by several European metrology institutes (Pavese in Metrologia 14:93, 1978; Pavese et al. in Temperature, part 1, American Institute of Physics, College Park, 2003; Hermier et al. in Temperature, part 1, American Institute of Physics, College Park, 2003; Pavese and Beciet in Modern gas-based temperature and pressure measurement, Springer, New York, 2013). The Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research has in its disposal a few argon cells of various constructions used for calibration of capsule-type standard platinum resistance thermometers (CSPRT) that were produced within 40 years. These cells differ in terms of mechanical design and thermal properties, as well as source of gas filling the cell. This paper presents data on differences between temperature values obtained during the realization of the triple point of argon in these cells. For determination of the temperature, a heat-pulse method was applied (Pavese and Beciet in Modern gas-based temperature and pressure measurement, Springer, New York, 2013). The comparisons were performed using three CSPRTs. The temperatures difference was determined in relation to a reference function W(T)=R(T_{90})/R(271.16hbox {K}) in order to avoid an impact of CSPRT resistance drift between measurements in the argon cells. Melting curves and uncertainty budgets of the measurements are given in the paper. A construction of measuring apparatus is also presented in this paper.

Schucking replies: The uncharitable story that Albert Einstein refused to see physicist Gunnar Nordström, who had traveled from Finland to Zürich, Switzerland, to discuss his theory of gravitation, does not accord with the events as recounted by Paul Ehrenfest. For almost a month in June and July 1913, Ehrenfest stayed with Einstein in Zürich. In his diary for 13 June through 1 July of that year, 1 1. P. Ehrenfest, diaries, Papers 1902-1933, ENB 4-15, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands; microfilm copy at Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, Ehrenfest Notebooks, EHR-12, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, College Park, Maryland. particularly in the entry for 29 June, Ehrenfest says that Einstein and Nordström discussed their gravitational theories during Nordström’s visit. Based on those discussions, Nordström published an improved version of his theory, dated Zürich, July 1913, in which he thanked Einstein directly. In his September 1913 lecture in Vienna, Einstein extensively discussed Nordström’s new version and made it clear that it was a viable alternative to his own then unfinished theory. The relationship between Einstein’s and Nordström’s theories is analyzed in The Genesis of General Relativity . 2 2. J. D. Norton, in The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 3, J. Renn, ed., Springer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands (2007), p. 413. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4000-9_18 The volume also contains English translations of Nordström’s papers.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<1. P. Ehrenfest, diaries, Papers 1902-1933, ENB 4-15, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands; microfilm copy at Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, Ehrenfest Notebooks, EHR-12, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, College Park, Maryland. Google Scholar2. J. D. Norton, in The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 3, J. Renn, ed., Springer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands (2007), p. 413. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4000-9_18 , Google ScholarCrossref© 2009 American Institute of Physics.

The American Institute of Physics, now in its twentieth year, has from its inception been concerned with the general welfare of physicists. It has specifically assumed the responsibilities of encouraging, of coordinating, of stimulating, conserving, and developing their activities; of safeguarding their professional status; and of informing the policy‐making groups of government, industry, and education of the contribution that physics and physicists can make to the well‐being of the nation, both in times of armed neutrality and of war. Some parts of this program have been accomplished by the concerted efforts of small groups of members acting on temporary or continuing committees, others by the broad program of publication that the Institute has sponsored. The present uneasy international situation, recurring military necessities, the increasing technological bias of civilization in those parts of the world that possess high standards of living, and the manifold potential uses of nuclear energy have combined to place upon physicists a present value which, even if somewhat exaggerated in the popular mind, nevertheless compensates in part for the comparative obscurity in which they languished during the first forty years of the century. Another consequence of these same factors is that the traditional concept of the solitary research physicist has been swept away entirely. In his place there is now a team of which each member, from the most brilliant to the most humble, plays his appointed part. It is, therefore, not only a natural activity but a bounden duty of the Institute to concern itself with the problem of maintaining the necessary flow of physicists at all levels of competence and of adjusting the flow to the probable future demand.

Harvey Hubbard was an amazing person who contributed substantially to both the profession of acoustics and to the Acoustical Society of America. This short talk is the story of Harvey Hubbard's ASA oral history. It was a great honor to work with Harvey on his oral history. The transcript of the interview is currently available online through the American Institute of Physics' Center for History of Physics and the Niels Bohr Library and Archives. The interviewer for that oral history will recount some of the highlights from Harvey giving that interview and from some of the superlative life experiences he recounted. Everyone is encouraged to participate in the collection of similar oral histories for the preservation of the history of acoustics and the history of the ASA.

The American Institute of Physics, a scholarly publisher, reached a huge new market by creating a new platform for sometime and one-time buyers. The new platform leverages AIP’s taxonomy and highly structured product data and makes it very easy to buy an article. And by focusing on search engine compatibility within the site, AIP provides a seamless experience for seekers who start their journey at an Internet search engine.

Together, Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans make up over 25% of the US population, but they earn only 7% of physics bachelor’s degrees. In order to help broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields, the American Institute of Physics has several programs to work with students as well as to reach the general public. To engage physics undergraduates on the challenging subject of diversity, the Society of Physics Students (SPS), a society of over 4000 undergraduate physics students that is part of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), has launched two new programs. SPS has developed a Physics Jeopardy-like game as part of a “Future Faces of Physics” kit that includes various materials that help engage students in conversations about diversity. These kits have been used at more than 20 regional and national meetings since 2008 with positive results. AIP has also worked with Research Corporation to launch a program that brings Nobel laureates to HBCU’s and to SPS campus or regional events that include participation by Minority Serving Institutions. Another AIP program creates short TV science news segments and distributes them free of charge in Spanish. These programs and future directions will be summarized.

Prepared at the request of the AAPT Committee on Resource Letters; supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. This is one of a series of Resource Letters on different topics, intended to guide college physicists to some of the literature and other teaching aids that may help them improve course contents in specified fields of physics. No Resource Letter is meant to be exhaustive and complete; in time there may be more than one letter on some of the main subjects of interest. Comments and suggestions concerning the content and arrangement of letters as well as suggestions for future topics will be welcomed. Please send such communications to Professor Arnold Arons, Chairman Resource Letter Committee, Department of Physics, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts. Notation: The letter E after an item number indicates elementary level, useful principally for freshman liberal arts through sophomore physics courses; the letter I indicates intermediate (junior, senior) level; and the letter A indicates advanced material principally suited for senior, graduate study. An asterisk (*) indicates items particularly recommended for introductory study. Additional copies: Available from American Institute of Physics, 335 East 45 Street, New York, New York 10017. When ordering, request Resource Letter MOP-1 and enclose a stamped return envelope. A small booklet containing reprints of some of the fundamental references will soon be available for purchase from the American Institute of Physics.

A Busy March Meeting Is Brewing in Seattle

An intersociety Joint Council on Quantum Electronics has been established, charged with the responsibility of coordinating and organizing general meetings in the field and of representing its sponsoring organizations in international activities. Cooperating in the new organization are the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the IEEE Groups on Electron Devices and on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

The American Center for Physics will bring three of the nation's leading physics organizations to College Park, Md., to create a focus for physics in the nation's capital. Groundbreaking for the new center was on July 29. It is scheduled to open in September 1993. The initial organizations that will share the site are the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Physical Society.

Notes on Contributors