I come from a very arty, “high-culture” family; my father is a classical music composer and my mother is an artist. My father taught music at Brandeis University for 37 years, and he was the music faculty member to whom that Brandeis physicist’s snarky remark about concerts vs. physics lectures was addressed.
I originally intended to be an academic. I studied classics (Greek and Latin) as an undergraduate at Brandeis and as a graduate student at Harvard. But I also did art on the side, and once I discovered that I could sell my art, I didn’t want to be a graduate student any more. I left academia in 1978 and became a professional artist in 1980. I don’t have much formal training; my art training is either from my mother, or from short courses at various universities, or mostly from self-teaching and experience. I am also trained as an architectural illustrator and I make a lot of my art money from architectural renderings.
I didn’t forget my scholarship, though, while working as an artist. For the last 10 years or so I’ve been an independent scholar working in Religious Studies, specializing in Zoroastrianism, the ancient and still-living religion of Persia. I’ve published articles and lectured on this subject; you can find some of my Zoroastrian writing on this Website if you are interested. I also study other religions, both mainstream and esoteric.
Much of my professional art career has been spent making and selling art in the science fiction and fantasy field. I have made the rounds of science fiction conventions for 2 decades now and continue to show art and participate in panel discussions at these conventions. (I have even given talks on Zoroastrianism at these conventions!) Fantasy and S.F. is another major part of my life though I don’t read that much of it these days.
There aren’t many science or math professionals in my extended family, but my father the musician has always been interested in the sciences, especially physics and cosmology. He often tried to get me to read books about it written for us laypeople, but when I tried, it just sounded like science fiction to me. Nevertheless I always had some interest in it, rather like a family heritage.
It was an extraordinary Web site which catalyzed my renewed interest in the physical sciences. In 1998 A friend sent me the URL for a site which had a live video camera transmission of a view of the very active volcano Mount Etna. (The camera was destroyed by an eruption of Etna in July 2001.) Long ago in 1961 when I was just 8 years old, I viewed the orange fires at the summit of Etna from a distance when my folks and I toured Sicily. I have never forgotten it and have been a volcano fan ever since. This site provided incredibly spectacular views of blazing eruptions, live! My enthusiasm for volcanoes, and geology, was, to put it aptly, re-kindled. I started reading up on volcanoes and collecting volcano videos, pictures, lava rock samples, etc.
But I soon realized here on the east coast that the nearest active volcano was at least 3000 miles away and there was no way I was going to get to one any time soon. I started thinking about other sciences that I might find more available.
This is where I use what might be called “mythical logic.” As a classicist, religious scholar, and fantasy fan I live in a world of myth (as I described in that text excerpt about Fermilab) and mythical associations. Myth, legend, apocalypse, fantasy, alchemy, world-building, symbolism, images and idols, poetry, epic, comic books, all of these are the sources from which I gather the material which I use in my creative work.
So I explored the associations. When I was assembling the material for Archangel Michael, I gave him the association of High Energy Physics because Michael was traditionally associated with Fire, and in Mythic Logic, Physics is the science of primal Fire. (plasma?) I am attracted to Zoroastrianism because of the Iranian religion’s use of Fire as the prime symbol for God. Volcanoes enthrall me because they are fiery. I guess there is a theme there…I am constantly attracted to bright, fiery things that have a lot of energy. (I like fireworks, too!)
It was this line of “mythic logic” that led me to my “pilgrimage” to Fermilab. Somewhere at the heart of this great machine, was a place of primal fire, where they sought to get as close to the ultimate original energy as possible, and I wanted to see it. Once I heard the roar of the Klystrons, it was no longer science fiction. It was real.
Though I had read some books about modern physics, I had never really enjoyed them – it had seemed totally unreal or science-fictional to me until I actually encountered it at Fermilab. These elementary particles and radiant energies were real! I asked Tom Kroc which book he would recommend to someone like me who would like to know more about the work at Fermilab, and he suggested Leon Lederman’s book – THE GOD PARTICLE. Once I returned home to the Washington DC area where I live, I ordered the book and in due time read through it.
This book was a joy to read. Not only did it clearly explain this amazing science to a layperson like me, it was hilariously funny. I also loved reading the stories about the scientists themselves, their personalities and their adventures. One of my favorite moments in the book is on page 283 where Dr. Lederman “begged (his) Columbia colleague T.D. Lee to propose a new particle that, when discovered, would be named the Lee-on. But to no avail.” I decided that there really was an (imaginary) particle named the “Lee-on.” When a simple inquirer is hit by a beam of Lee-ons, they cause that person to have an irresistible desire to know more about physics. I was sorry when I finished the book, because there wasn’t any more of it to read. But it must have radiated “Lee-ons,” because after reading it I had one thought in mind: “I want more physics!”
But how would I, a middle-aged architectural artist, get more physics? I tentatively asked some of the scientists I know, and I got nice answers like, “You can read lots of books written for laypeople about modern physics. The books don’t have any equations or math in them so you’ll understand them.” But what if that wasn’t enough for me? What if I wanted to glimpse the world of science as the scientists saw it? What if I wanted not just to hear about the “elegance” of mathematics and physics discoveries, but to actually know enough to appreciate just what that “elegance” was?
My scientist friends then said, “If you want to understand it the way we do, you will have to study intensely for at least 12 years.” That made me feel rather intimidated for a while, but then I thought to myself, I’m 49 now, if I started, maybe I’d understand some of it by the time I am 61. It’s a good ambition, especially since the subject will never end and there will always be more. And it will keep me from being bored out of my mind by my commercial art jobs. So I decided to begin anyway.
I was impressed by the incredible complexity of the information that was handled by the men who did this science. Complex systems impress me as much as fire, whether they are visual, musical, scientific, or mathematical. But there, at the base of the system – inside the fire, as it were, was something which had defeated me for thirty-five years…mathematics.
I failed math or barely got by, all the way from elementary school through junior high into high school. It was a deep shame for me that I couldn’t do this. I assumed, as so many people from my generation and before do, that I couldn’t do math because I was a female. But if I wanted to understand anything about science from more than just a mythical, or even worse, pseudo-scientific standpoint, I would need to re-learn math. Even to do the simplest school-child elementary mechanics (?) – beyond which I may never go – I would need it. I never learned it. In fact, I have never studied physics at all (scared of the math), I am an “empty slate.” But now I have resolved to at least try, with both mathematics and physics.
My math skills were so poor that I had to begin again at the grade-school level. I started with simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, early in 2001. By mid-2001 I was reviewing high school algebra, the stuff I failed back in the late ‘60s. I am now determinedly slogging my way through college algebra, using many different textbooks which date from 1958 to the present. I have enlisted my scientist and mathematician friends (including two astrophysicists at NASA/Goddard) as allies and when I have problems and questions, they are eager to help me. It is often difficult for me. I am not a “natural math talent” like the scientists in the stories I read, who seem to have done calculus while still in grade school.
But I am willing to do this if that is what it would take to re-educate myself. I have no plans to go back to formal classrooms any time soon. School and college was a nightmare for me – I am a slow learner, and I was always being left behind, and I couldn’t take the pressure and the competition. If it takes me twice as long as it would a young student, to learn this by myself, then so be it – after all, I am not planning to make a career out of it. I would never have a career in science, at least in this life. (If I get another life, preferably as a male, I’ll consider it.) I am inspired by another passage in the Lederman book, in which an old man on the subway is doing a calculus problem, asks his neighbor a question about it, and just happens to have the good fortune to sit next to T.D. Lee. What I wanted to know when reading that passage was, why was this old guy doing calculus problems on the subway? Well, in a few years, maybe that will be me. I hope I have the luck to sit next to a theoretical physicist.
I am much better as an artist than I could ever be as a scientist. Perhaps I’ll be inspired to make physics-oriented art, though there’s no guarantee I’ll do so. The artistic connection is not important to me. The quest is. It is not just that I want to know about math and physics – I have set myself the quest as a personal challenge. Will I be able to do this work which is so difficult, and different from what I am used to? I will see as time goes on.