On Attending Scientific Meetings (Just For The Fun Of It)

Scientific conferences intimidated me when I was a graduate student. Even under the wing of my thesis adviser, a well-known scientist and a good mentor, my awful insignificance and inexperience were readily apparent to all. As my own professional wings spread, conferences became less formidable. My steadily growing credentials gave my words weight. I grew to express the unexpected and controversial, and even to help plan some of the meetings that had once awed me. Meetings became fun. Basis AUTHOR: KEN CROSWELL, pp.13 Not long ago, I spent two hours in the library in pursuit of a single fact: a certain astronomer's first name. I was writing about Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. Alpha Centauri is ]actually triple; it consists of two bright stars and one faint one. The faint star is called Proxima Centauri, because it is the closest of the three. The two bright stars have been known for centuries, but who discovered Proxima? According to my source, the star had been found in 1915 by someone named R.T. Innes. Thus began my troubles. Editors like writers to supply first names, rather than just first initials, of all people in their articles, and "R." Innes was not going to do. So I set out to find who "R." was. I began my search by checking other astronomy books, but they did not even mention Innes, let alone reveal his first name. Clearly this guy (if he was a guy) was going to be tricky to track down. After exhausting the usual sources, I turned to old circulars of the South Africa Union Observatory. Alpha Centauri lies so far south that it is invisible from most of the northern hemisphere, so Innes might have made his discovery from South Africa. This time I had immediate success, because I knew the year of the discovery. I quickly came across an article by Innes himself, announcing Proxima's existence. The article was entitled "A Faint Star of Large Proper Motion." But guess what? Innes had, on the discovery paper, given his first name only as "R." Though the paper was fascinating to read, I still did not have what I wanted. No problem, I thought. Surely this guy had published here in the same journal. Indeed, I found dozens of articles he had written. But he had stubbornly abbreviated his first name on all of them only as "R." Clearly, Innes was not going to tell me his name. After more thought, I figured Innes must have died long ago, because he had made the discovery back in 1915. Perhaps I could find his first name if I could find his obituary. Fortunately for me, if not for him, Innes had indeed died. I turned to The Observatory, a small journal that runs lots of obituaries of astronomers. I did not know when Innes had died, so I started with 1915 and worked my way forward, until I found his obituary, which had appeared in 1933. Ironically, although it was three pages long, the obituary never even mentioned Proxima Centauri. But it told me what I wanted to know: The full name was Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes. My search was over. But it had taken two hours--and all for a single fact. Why do so many scientists do this, refuse to give their first names? Are they trying to be recluses, like the authors B. Traven and J.D. Salinger? Or do they think that substituting an initial for a first name makes them appear more scientific? Whatever the reason, the practice continues to this day. In a recent issue of Nature, for example, the Letters section has 74 authors, 44 of whom do not give their first names. Of course, if all scientists were famous, this wouldn't be a problem. Everyone can figure out who I. Newton, C. Darwin, and A. Einstein are. But for every Newton, there are thousands of scientists like Innes whose names never appear in any textbook or encyclopedia. Furthermore, if all I have to go on is the first letter of the first name, how do I know whether the scientist is male or female? The answer, of course, is that I don't. Which means I have to write without pronouns--which is no fun, and means I can't talk about "his" findings or "her" observations. Things like this drive writers crazy. It may even cause the harried writer to delete any mention of the scientist. In my case, I could have said that Proxima Centauri had been found in 1915, and left it at that. Innes isn't around to complain, either. So, all you scientists who have not yet gone the way of Innes, do us a favor: Whenever and wherever you publish, give your first name--not just an initial. Your first name may not be a secret to your family, friends, and colleagues, but to the rest of us it probably is. And who knows? With your help, present-day science writers and future historians may just make you so famous that no one will ever again wonder about your first name. Ken Croswell is an astronomer and science writer in Berkeley, Calif. But then, over the last few years, the fun seemed to fade. And the last time I received a program for my discipline's big annual conference, I felt not buoyant anticipation, but a sinking feeling. Part of this feeling stemmed from the program's brute mass. Just the abstracts of the nearly 5,000 talks to be presented occupied 800 pages and weighed in at well over a pound. Worse yet was the anxious, crisis-like mood I had foreseen when the program arrived--the mood that I later experienced at the conference. Not that this particular gathering was unusual: I speak of an atmosphere that now seems thicker and tenser at many meetings. A keen-eyed friend thinks that scientists now drink more at conferences than they once did. I know why. These days, our frantic scurrying among sessions seems an attempt to satisfy a lemming-like need to pursue all possible angles in the funding wars, not a commendable desire to keep up with science. Questions after talks seem posed to show that the speaker is wrong and the questioner is right, not to learn. Meetings with treasured friends are made less pleasant by mutual horror stories about the lack of students, and about investigations of scientific honesty and scientific funding. These are all parts of an increasingly uncomfortable environment. Fortunately, about the time the tome of abstracts came, I experienced another kind of conference, which turned out to be pure pleasure: the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I had never before attended, because the AAAS conference did not probe my specialty deeply enough to seem worthwhile. This year my sabbatical location in Washington, D.C., was just a Metro stop away from the meeting site, and I went. The megaconference style was no different at the AAAS meeting. Major chunks of physical, life, and social sciences were covered, as well as science policy and education. This breadth meant that I did not hear much of the detailed, nitty-gritty science I need in order to stay competitive. Instead, the greatest pleasures and newest insights came from sessions distant from my specialties, sessions whose appeal was "just for fun," or those in which I thought I--as a physicist--had only a passing interest. In a session on the anthropology of science, for example, I heard how people's images of their own internal biochemistry connect to scientific literacy. As perhaps the only physicist there I added my views, and took away a strengthened feeling that images are as important as lists of words in defining scientific understanding. Another session pulled me in with its intriguing title, "Mathematics in the Public Policy Arena." Amazingly, I found a talk directly connected to my research, when I heard that fractal analysis as applied to nuclear winter might help resolve an old problem about the optical response of granular systems. This experience reminded me that I sometimes find a real winner when I pick a bottle of wine just by its label. The same method can work for scientific insight. In fact, in so varied a supermarket of science as the AAAS meeting, serendipity may be the way to go. By sheer kismet, I ran into the author of a book about scientists that I had admired so much--I blush to admit--I had written her a fan letter. I don't know which of us enjoyed the chance meeting more. I hope that electronic communications networks, important as they are, never obliterate the element of happy coincidence I relished at the meeting. Maybe networks need built-in, random factors that unpredictably give you Jane Smythe the geologist, or Jake Smith the science writer, when you're trying to reach Jack Smith the chemist. As happened with the fractal talk, one of these unexpected encounters just might supply a better answer than the one you thought you were looking for. Some presentations, such as stunning computer graphics simulations of industrial processes, were unconnected to any particular scientific interest of mine, but showed me how science gains power and fascination as it intersects human realities. Science's human side appeared in another way, as well. Because of the diverse areas represented, the conferees were more mixed in race and gender than at the meetings I usually haunt. This variety keenly reminded me that science is done by real people operating within human societies, with all the ensuing richness and complexity. Society appeared again in the many sessions covering science policy and funding. Speakers representing the major players used data and anecdotal evidence to vigorously discuss whether there is a funding crisis, a major issue when the conference was held; now, they might discuss with equal vigor scientific oversight, or overhead costs policy. Beyond these specific issues, the sweep of the presentations convinced me that we scientists must learn to present our work, and to stand behind its honesty and objectivity, in terms that persuade those who fund us. These are often not the terms that matter most to us. The deep personal commitment we take for granted is not enough, by itself, to sway a society that must choose among many areas with valid claims on dollars. Artists also invest mind, soul, and integrity in what they do, and help define the human spirit by doing it; yet funding for the arts remains sparse. When I look back, I realize that despite its treatment of science budgets in the billions of dollars, the AAAS meeting didn't improve my own odds in the funding sweepstakes, nor did I gain ground on any scientific competitors. What I took away--and it was more than enough--was renewed understanding that I'm part of something older, broader, and deeper than just "condensed matter physics," or even "physics." True, my more limited meeting, with the 800 pages of abstracts, was essential. After that conference, I knew better how to aim new funding proposals at dollars faintly gleaming far off on the horizon. But I didn't enjoy it as I did the AAAS meeting, where I remembered why I became a scientist in the first place. Sidney Perkowitz is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at Emory University, Atlanta.

On Attending Scientific Meetings (Just For The Fun Of It)

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