Research

It gets lively when there are hot issues. As you might expect, we talk about balancing family and career. That’s a big issue. But we also talk about bias. There is a lot of subconscious bias against women in physics. If you say physicist, a certain image comes to mind. It might be a white male, for instance.

Yes, exactly. (laughs) Those images are powerful! There was a survey done that showed distinct bias. A group of researchers sent out CVs to human resources people in various companies. I think they may even have told them they were fake CVs. They found that if the name was a guy’s name, the person was found to be qualified far more often than if the CV had a woman’s name. People were subconsciously thinking that male physicists are more capable.

First, she would notice great progress. She had trouble getting into the French National Academy, partly because she was a woman. There’s been a lot of progress but not enough.

You’ve got your Ph.D., you do your postdoc and then you apply for the job. If you’re offered the position, the next step is to negotiate for a lab space and startup funds. The process is the same for women and men. What I think is different is women, including myself, are not good at negotiating. I also urge women to pursue opportunities in the field. I want women students to approach me about working in my lab. Come talk to me!

I think women always worry: Am I asking too much? We’re always worrying about whether we’ll be putting the other guy in an awkward position, or coming across as too pushy. So you end up with fewer resources.

I don’t think it’s a fundamental difference in aptitude for physics. Like any other topic, physics requires a lot of different skills. You need the ability to understand concepts and visualize things. You also need analytical capabilities, management skills and you have to be a good writer to write proposals to raise money. You need a complete package. I would think the variations among individuals is much larger than the differences between men and women.

The earlier the better. There are a lot of girls studying physics in middle school but after that point, the pipeline is very leaky. By the time you get to a faculty position, only 10 to 15 percent are women.

That’s part of it. In the later stages, a lot still comes down to family issues. It’s difficult to find two faculty positions in the same city, and if the husband has a good position somewhere else, it’s often the women who give up their careers.

Mentors are important and so are role models. I started out not liking physics. But I had a really good high school teacher. I also read a lot of books: the biography of Madame Curie and popular science books.

We’re actually in the same field. (laughs) We try not to compete and we try to stay out of each other’s projects. Sometimes, if things come out of a discussion, we turn it into a collaborative project.

It’s such a nice thing to understand nature. It’s the ultimate pursuit, to understand nature, to find the fundamental laws.

Flying to Mars is a good motivation, too. If they beam me up, that would be even better.

I watched it after I came to the U.S. But I’m quite the Trek fan now. I’m a Trekkie.

Hmm. I have to tread carefully here. It depends on which later ones you mean. I’m also watching "The Big Bang Theory." It’s about a bunch of nutty physicists.