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You have several assignments this week. First, we're reading the work of two historians of physics: selections both from Sharon Traweek's Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists and from Margaret Wertheim's Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars. In your posting this weekend, tell us how you see Traweek's and Wertheim's analyses and ideas intersecting. How do they rub up against one another? Where do you see reinforcements and contradictions? How are their arguments similar or different?

Your second task this weekend is to select a woman physicist or astronomer of the modern era, and tell us on-line by Sunday evening whom you have selected. Then research her life in order to participate as her in our salon on Wednesday. Come ready to speak about her motivations for chosing science, what obstacles she encountered, what enabled her success, and what advice she might have for current women students.

Anne and Liz