PASSPORT TO THE UNIVERSE: BIOGRAPHIES

K a t h y F l a n a g a n
Instrument Builder and Supernova researcher
MIT and the Chandra X-ray Observatory

Kathy explaining Chandra's HETGS (High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer).

P2K:
What concepts students might learn at school are crucial to the work of your and your colleagues? How does what kids learn at school enable our minds to reach out throughout the Universe?

KF:
Everything that we've learned in school, through the textbooks and other means, in fact, through our experience, beginning with infancy, is essential to our understanding of what's going on. When I listen to an ambulance that is moving rapidly away from me, and I hear the pitch of the siren drop, I'm listening to a Doppler shift. That is exactly what I am measuring when I look at a supernova remnant which has matter that is moving away from me. Every one of those principles applies directly, it's simply a different laboratory, but it's the same science.

I think, in terms of your basic physics, to understand what we're seeing from Chandra, you need to understand gravity, those same basic forces that are operating everyday on Earth certainly dominate many of the mechanisms that I'm examining, and I think a basic necessary understanding of light is essential. We're also learning quite a bit about the chemistry of the stars and the galaxies and so forth, and that feeds back in to our comprehension of what's going on in the objects that we look at.

P2K:
Anyone ever tell you that women don't build instruments for spacecraft, that it's a guy thing???

KF:
Yes, I have often been told, women don't build instruments for science, it's a guy thing to do, and so forth. My attitude is: thank you for sharing; I don't have time to waste on that. Too busy building instruments!

Kathy shows the test set-up.

P2K:
Fill in the blank... if you had one piece of advice...

KF:
If I had one piece of advice you give anyone, I would say love what you do. And do what you love. If you love astronomy, do it, do it with every piece of your breath, every moment of your day, if you can. I think if you are passionate, then it will show in the work you do, and in the excellence of the work.