A Singularly Unfeminine Profession

by Mary K. Gaillard

In 1981 Mary K Gaillard became the first woman on the physics faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. Her career as a theoretical physicist spanned the period from the inception in the late 1960s and early 1970s of what is now known as the Standard Model of particle physics and its experimental confirmation, culminating with the discovery of the Higgs particle in 2012. A Singularly Unfeminine Profession recounts Gaillard's experiences as a woman in a very male-dominated field, while tracing the development of the Standard Model as she witnessed it and participated in it. The generally nurturing environment of her childhood and college years, as well as experiences as an undergraduate in particle physics laboratories and as a graduate student at Columbia University which cemented her passion for particle physics left her unprepared for the difficulties that she confronted as a second year graduate student in Paris, and later at CERN, another particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The development of the Standard Model, as well as attempts to go beyond it and aspects of early universe physics, are described through the lens of Gaillard's own work, in a language written for a lay audience.

Genres: Feminism, Science

150 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2015

About the author

Mary Katharine Gaillard was an American theoretical physicist, known for her work in particle physics. She was a professor of the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, and visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was Berkeley's first tenured female physicist.

Reviews

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really mixed feelings on this one.

Somewhere near the end of the book Gaillard talks about how she's always been a physicist first and a feminist second and so I suppose the fact that around half the memoir is dedicated to explaining particle physics to a budding grad student reflects that.
It just didn't feel particularly organised and it would have been better if the Physics and memoir were organised into distinct chapters or if there was a Physics and a memoir portion per chapter rather than it changing page to page.

The parts of this memoir that are not Gaillard explaining Physics, but rather where she recalls the process for getting to those ideas, the collaborative efforts, and her work and living situations in the various countries she visited and lived in were really interesting.
I'm completely astonished at her experiences with Cern vs Berkeley as they are the diametric opposite of what I've heard from another prominent female physicist (an experimentalist in HEP), who has also worked for both labs during the same time period.
The last chapter: 'Reflections' is worth the whole book to read. So too is the report she briefly mentions in the book: 'Report on women in scientific careers at CERN' - check it out if you get the chance.

The Physics portion of the book was less easy reading.
Interesting anecdotes were interspersed with pages and pages of textbook-style information about the standard model & beyond. I understand the motivation, to provide a bit of background to her career and give context to her discoveries, but much of this is over-lengthy.

I'm an experimental particle physicist (mostly on the border of instrumentation and Physics), living and working as a grad student at Berkeley Lab and also working for CERN, so I recognised quite a few of the character's in Gaillard's memoir. You could also argue that I'm the intended audience for this book so I feel confident in saying that the Physics is NOT presented for a lay audience but rather for a graduate student (or an particle-enthusiast undergraduate!).

I'm really glad she wrote this and that I've read it but it's not as an enjoyable reading experience as other Physics autobiographies (by theorists and experimentalists alike!) that I've read before.

[Tim Crowe]

A Singularly Unfeminine Profession by Mary K. Gaillard is an autobiography spanning her entire life. The book goes into detail about Gaillard's experiences with sexism throughout her career and covers a fairly in-depth account of the scientific discoveries she was a part of.

This book has somewhat of an identity crisis. The title and blurb suggest this book will focus on the various injustices against women in STEM fields that persist to this day with a glimpse into the working life of Gaillard in terms of the groundbreaking work she was a part of. Instead, the book generally feels kind of rambly, with Gaillard switching back and forth between in-depth, jargon-heavy particle physics talk and anecdotes about skiing in France. It's difficult to pin down who this autobiography is aimed at.

While the issues raised in this book surrounding misogyny in academia are definitely important and worth an entire book, Gaillard doesn't actually seem that perturbed by it, at least by the way she writes. She doesn't seem to have made any great effort to shine a light on any of these issues during her career and contented herself with being the only woman in the room for a very long time. Gaillard even describes herself as a "feminist by necessity" which was kind of disappointing.

In terms of the physics covered in this book: there is a lot. Gaillard covers all things standard model from Grand Unified Theories and the discovery of new quarks to Higgs fields and supersymmetric string theories. Gaillard goes into a lot of intimidating detail for a 170 page book generally advertised as something else. I can't imagine trying to read this book without some prior knowledge of the content (which I had and which generally didn't help) so it's difficult to imagine a non-physics graduate enjoying this book.

Despite all the above, I did enjoy this book for the most part but I would advise anyone not already somewhat interested in the physics side of the book to strongly consider whether this book would be worth your time.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pioneering female theoretical physicist writes about her professional life from the late 1950s to the present, with the motive of encouraging women who are thinking of entering physics. She is a physicist first, so much of the book describes the problems she was working on which many non-scientists readers will not find so interesting and which almost require some previous exposure to particle physics theory. To me the valuable parts of the book are her experiences with other physicists (she worked with many of the biggest names in theoretical particle physics) and the challenges she faced as a woman in a very heavily male dominated field, beginning before the women's movement opened things up for women generally. She notes in the last chapter that difficulties for women still remain, both in children's and young adults' education and on the professional level, though she has seen dramatic improvements in the attitudes of male professionals towards women. This is a very objective treatment and I think she still finds discrimination against women, such as she experienced, completely mystifying.

[Emily Maher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will probably only appeal to a small audience. As an experimental particle physicist and a woman, I am absolutely in that audience. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the author’s experiences, the history of my field, and the descriptions of the theoretical physics of the Standard Model and beyond Standard Model physics. I imagine these descriptions would be difficult to understand without some previous background in the theory. I also very much enjoyed reading stories about my former professors, especially the origin of the penguin diagram.

[Jon Butterworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting insights into what life was like for a female particle physicist, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Some good CERN gossip. Personally I didn't find physics bits particuarly well done, but then I'm not really the target audience. (I mentoned it
this article.)

[Mills College Library]

Biog G139g 2015

[Jaime]

"They, like most of the Western participants in the Seoul conference, were on their way to Tokyo. So it added particular insult to injury when CERN staff member Daniele Amati approached me just after my complicated travel plans had been arranged. He told me that Guido Giuliano had given up his place as a CERN delegate; would I like to go in his place? In other words, CERN was now willing to pay be to go as a simple delegate, while they had refused to finance my trip as a principle speaker." p 104

Ah, the joys of being a professional woman, and having that gut feeling that you are being put in your place so clearly confirmed.