2006 AWM Essay Contest:
First Place in Grades 9-12 Category
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Splendor of the Heavens: Dr. Knapp's Astronomical
Odyssey
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The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is nearly 4 x 1013
kilometers away from Earth. Whereas the night-sky may provide a panorama of
uncertainty and loneliness, it can also be cause for many an inquiry. While some
people discover their passion in the accelerating universe and theoretical
questions about parallel universes governed by possibly unearthly laws of
physics, Jill Knapp,
a current professor of astronomy at Princeton University, realized hers in the
lives and constituents of stars. When I visited Dr. Knapp, I quickly learned
that her looking at Saturn through the telescope of her father's friend fostered
in her a life-long fascination with the field of observational astronomy.
When she peered through that telescope, Dr. Knapp was looking up at Scotland's
night-sky. World War II had left in its path many crumbling English port-towns,
one of which was Dr. Knapp's initial home. Shortly after war's end, Dr. Knapp
and her parents moved to Scotland. Although her family was lacking in financial
resources, Dr. Knapp's circumstances were enough to fuel her curiosity about
science and math even before her discovery of the wonders of space. Her dad had
earned a Bachelor's degree in chemistry in England and worked at a
pharmaceutical company extracting painkillers. His acquaintances, like the
amateur astronomer with the telescope through which Dr. Knapp looked, were
sources of inspiration to enter the fields of math and science. Dr. Knapp's
mother was a part-time nurse. In her free time, she would travel to Edinburgh
and pick up science
books from second-hand bookshops. Dr. Knapp never seemed to have enough books to
pore over. During the interview, she described herself as having been a sickly
child. Her father used to joke, "you're the kind of person who would be, in
civilized society, put out on a hill." Although Dr. Knapp was not up to par with
Roman standards of health, she occupied herself with the books her mom found.
When Dr. Knapp was not sick, she made time for science and math. Geometry
especially interested her. When she was six, she brought her geometry book to a
party, sat herself in a corner, and worked out theorems and corollaries. Another
book she read as a little girl was "Splendor of the Heavens." Coupled with an
interest in shapes and sizes and stars, Dr. Knapp knew what she wanted to pursue
before she even started secondary school.
At Dalkeith high school, Dr. Knapp followed a relatively regimented curriculum.
Much to her chagrin, she was forced to take French instead of German. In the six
years of her secondary schooling, Dr. Knapp took five years of both physics and
chemistry. Although she took only three years of biology, she considered
evolutionary biology most interesting aspect.
Whereas her dad received Bachelor's degree in chemistry, Dr. Knapp received a
Bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Edinburgh. Afterwords, she
enrolled in the University of Maryland, College Park, Ph. D. astronomy program.
In her research on the distribution of gas in the galaxy and the mass and
temperatures of stars being born, Dr. Knapp met Frank Kerr, the advisor she now
considers the most influential person in her career. Dr. Knapp was the only
woman in a program with 44 men. Naturally, her peers assumed Dr. Knapp was
attending class to find a suitable partner for marriage. As a result, she was
not taken seriously in her academic endeavors. Dr. Knapp exclaimed at one point
in our conversation about certain male scientists that "they're young for a
start, and then they're scientists." Frank Kerr was not of this category. He did
not undermine Dr. Knapp's confidence and intelligence.
Also in Maryland, Dr. Knapp met visiting professor of cosmology, Beatrice
Tinsley. Dr. Knapp described her as "the great synthesizer," admiring her
ability to see connections in science.
Through her continued research of the elements of evolving stars and the gas
content of the universe as part of the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey (SDSS), Dr. Knapp has also made connections. She relates her early
interest in evolutionary biology to the evolutionary universe. Further, her
research has allowed her to connect the present universe with the past universe
and present stars with past stars.
Specifically, SDSS employs a telescope in New Mexico to take wide-angle pictures
of certain portions of the sky. The telescope is specially built to observe
spectra, enabling astronomers to calculate the redshift of a galaxy. Dr. Knapp
referenced a checkerboard while describing how the telescope's CCDs
(charge-coupled devices) recorded light. With the telescope's data, Dr. Knapp
discerns the size of a galaxy and pinpoints its location on a three-dimensional
map. Further, Dr. Knapp hopes the measurements collected on the distribution of
galaxies in the universe will be precise enough to decide among the competing
models of the birth and evolution of the universe.
On closing, Dr. Knapp described the importance of statistics to her field.
Unlike theoretical astronomy, observational astronomy is based on a certain
degree of uncertainty. Statistics allows astronomers to define their level of
confidence in their measurements and conclusions concerning topics ranging from
the amount of energy coming from a star to the distribution of fluctuations of
gas in the universe. Dr. Knapp gave me a "down-to earth" (pun intended) example
of the importance of statistics: "Statistics allows you to predict on a large
scale. While you have no clue what one person will do in ten years, you can
predict
with great accuracy the proportion of people who will, say, go into the
sciences."
Dr. Knapp now teaches courses ranging from observational astronomy to
interstellar medium and introductory astrophysics. She hopes to pique her
students' curiosity in much the same way as a peek at Saturn stimulated hers.
While people's questions about what is beyond the universe are cause for many a
sleepless night, Dr. Knapp focuses on questions that can be answered within the
next decade. She takes one step at a time, contributing her knowledge to the
scientific world, and ultimately, to future generations of astronomers that have
yet to discover the awesome embrace of the universe.
About the Student:
My name is Margarite Bechis. I live in Yardley, Pennsylvania and am a high
school senior at Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Flourtown of the same state. My
science and math interests are quite broad, but I have pinpointed astronomy and
microbiology, and the mathematics pertaining to each, to be of utmost interest.
I hope to pursue a combination of both areas in college for possible majors or
minors.