On Tuesday, March 8, Isabella Karle will speak about her early work as a chemist during the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government's crash program to build an atomic bomb during World War II. Karle, a senior scientist specializing in crystallography at the Naval Research Laboratory, speaks at 4:30 p.m. at the museum.
Karle has worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., for the past 59 years, and, since 1959, as the head of NRL's X-ray Diffraction Section for the Structure of Matter. She has determined the structures of numerous biologically and medicinally important compounds, including peptides, antibiotics, toxins and anti-malarials.
Coinciding with Karle's talk, the museum is hosting a reception that evening to open a new exhibit. The museum and the Lab's Physics Division are co-hosting "Jewish Women Scientists Around the World," a national exhibit showcasing the lives and work of several Jewish women scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, whose contributions have been made in fields ranging from astronomy to zoology. The women scientists were from the United States, Europe, Israel, South Africa and Turkey.
The exhibit's costs were donated by the Los Alamos Women in Science group and the Hadassah chapters of Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The exhibit remains up through March 27. The reception from 5 to 7 p.m., is free and open to the public.
Two other talks are planned this month at the museum. At 7 p.m., Thursday (March 10), Jeanne Fair of the Laboratory's Atmospheric, Climate and Environmental Dynamics Group, will explain the use of bluebird nesting boxes, which can be seen hiking in some areas around Los Alamos and how they are used for monitoring environmental health.
Fair works on ecological risk assessment, epidemiology, disease modeling and West Nile Virus in birds. "Birds as Sentinels of Environmental Health" is the title of Fair's presentation. She has been collecting data since 1997 and will discuss the effects of the fire, drought and other potential environmental concerns. Recently, wild birds have become a focus for discovering emerging diseases such as West Nile virus.
A third Women's History Month talk at the museum is scheduled for noon, March 15 by Stephani Sandoval of the New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service. Sandoval, a forest health specialist, will talk about changes in forests since fire suppression, forest conditions of today and common insects seen. She also will talk about the bark beetle and where it stands today as well as some other insects affecting the forest and their roll in the ecosystem. The Los Alamos Women in Science are co-sponsoring the talk.
The Bradbury Science Museum is located at 15th Street and Central Avenue in downtown Los Alamos. Museum hours apart from special events are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
The Bradbury Science Museum is part of Los Alamos' Public Affairs Office.
For more information, contact Pat Berger of the museum at 665-0896.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.