Category: AmSci News

Turing c. 1928 at age 16
Turing c. 1928 at age 16

June is now here! That means warm weather, the summer solstice bringing the longest day of the year, and a month where businesses edit their logo to be rainbow colored! Here at American Scientific, we are looking back and honoring a member of the LGBQ community and his legacy and impact on both WWII, the gay community as a whole, and computer science.

Alan Turing was a computer scientist/logician/cryptographer that famously helped to decode the toughest cipher machine in World War 2. The so-called “Bombe” machine was a machine that was capable of decoding the messages of the German “Enigma” machine which was used to send coded messages during the war.

Despite Great Britain’s and Poland’s attempts at creating a machine that could decode these messages, they could only produce machines that could temporarily decode messages. As the Germans kept changing procedures on the Enigma machine, the old machines became outdated and useless. Turing was able to make a machine that could decode messages independently of the German’s internal procedures.

His work is estimated to have shortened the war in Europe by over 2 years and saved millions of lives by doing so.  After the war, Alan Turing was honored with the title of the Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his contributions.

Turing’s homosexuality came to light to the British government and he was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts. He was given the option of prison or chemical castration as a punishment for his homosexuality, despite all his awards and notoriety for his war contributions. Turing died at the age of 41 by suicide in 1954.

The United Kingdom later legalized homosexuality in 1967, but it wasn’t until 2013 that Queen Elizabeth posthumously pardoned Turing. He is now being honored in England by appearing on the £50 note, that is expected to come out this month (June 2021).

This month, we would like to honor Mr. Turing, not only for his contributions to WWII, but also for his contributions to Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence as a whole – Happy Pride Month 2021!

Kyle Bartels

Chien-shiung Wu (1912-1997)

Did you know that May is Asian American & Pacific Islander month? This month, we take the opportunity to honor an Asian American that have made a difference in US history and the scientific field as a whole!

Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese American that was born in May, 1912. She graduated National Central University in China with an undergraduate degree in physics in 1934. When she entered the workforce in China, she was encouraged to pursue a graduate degree and finish her education in the United states. She immigrated to the United states in 1936 and continued here education at the University of California Berkley in 1936. In 1942 she moved to Massachusetts where she was the first woman that was hired as a professor of Physics at Princeton University. 2 years later, she would go on to join the Manhattan Project, the group of scientists tasked with engineering the atomic bomb which would later put an end to WWII.

Chien Shiung would go on to identify “gaseous diffusion,” a method to separate the isotope Uranium-235, a rare isotope of uranium from Uranium-238, the most common isotope of uranium. This process would prove critical to the creation of the bomb, as only Uranium-235 is fissile, while Uranium-238 is not. She would go on to gain United States citizenship in 1954.

Chien Shiung is remembered even to this day as “The First Lady of Physics,” and was the first woman to become president of the American Physical Society. She died in 1997 and was buried in her homeland of China.

Sources: https://www.nps.gov/people/dr-chien-shiung-wu-the-first-lady-of-physics.htm

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chien-Shiung-Wu

https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/chien-shiung-wu

Hinode's view of the eclipse on Jan. 4, 2011.
Hinode’s view on Jan. 4, 2011.
Image Credit: NASA/Hinode/XRT

On Sunday, June 21st, an annular solar eclipse will be taking place. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon covers the Sun’s center. This results in a ‘ring of fire’ around the moon.

The path of this particular solar eclipse will be visible across Africa, Ethiopia, Pakistan, India, China, and Taiwan. A partial solar eclipse will be visible in Southern and Eastern Europe, Northern Australia, and across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

How to safely view a solar eclipse:

  • Do not stare directly at the Sun.
  • Do not wear ordinary sunglasses.
  • Use special solar filtered glasses to protect your eyes.
  • Do not remove your solar glasses until you have looked away, or the solar eclipse is over.
  • Do not try to view a solar eclipse through a camera lens.

Not able to view the annular solar eclipse from where you are located? Tune into this live stream and make sure to consider your local time for viewing.