Central Texas top stories for May 22, 2023. AISD and UT team up to train STEM teachers. Old education buildings in Austin rebuilt and reused. Housing bills in the state Senate.
Stem
Texas Standard: June 23, 2021
Health experts are closely watching the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19. We’ll unpack the risk and the concern about further variants. Also, Texas Governor Greg Abbott latest moves are looking to some like a concerted effort ahead of the 2024 presidential race. The view from outside of Texas. And as America continues to re-examine monuments and building names honoring leaders in the Confederacy. Some everyday people are also reexamining their family histories. Plus we’ll fact-check a claim about how much border wall was built under the Trump Administration. And we’ll explore the impact of the pandemic on the therapists who’ve been walking us through the past year. All of that and more today on the Texas Standard:
How Madame Curie’s Philanthropy Continues To Inspire
By W. F. Strong
A couple of years ago, there was a photograph published on Twitter of a group of radiation oncologists in the radiation treatment room at MD Anderson, all women, under the hashtag, “Women Who Curie.” They were celebrating the legacy of Madame Marie Curie and her pioneering work in radiology that daily inspires their mission.
As I looked at the photograph of the nine doctors at MD Anderson, I realized that Madame Curie’s legacy was far greater than Nobel Prizes and scientific advancement. She added the benefit of opening previously closed doors in science and medicine to women. Madame Curie was not just perceived as a female interloper seeking equality in disciplines generally reserved for men, but she was also an immigrant, a double minority at the Sorbonne. She was ignored and pushed aside and denied lab space and vital equipment. She succeeded by virtue of an iron will and unrelenting genius.
Few people realize she passed up Bill Gates-type wealth by not seeking a would-be priceless patent for radium, the element she and her husband Pierre discovered. She said the element “belongs to the people.” That act of philanthropy paved the way for institutes like M.D. Anderson, and her pioneering work for women served to staff them with brilliant professionals, too. Sometimes I wonder how much further along the human race would be now had we not denied education to half of us for most of recorded time.
One little known story about Madame Curie is that she feared at one point that she would not be able to complete her degree at the Sorbonne for lack of funds. She had resigned herself to the idea that she would have to remain in Poland and live a life as a tutor or a governess.
Then came the miracle. She received, unexpectedly, the Alexandrovitch Scholarship of 600 rubles – about $300. She calculated that it was enough, if she lived meagerly, with little heat and less food, to complete her master’s degree. She did, graduating first in her class. And that was just the beginning. She would graduate a little over a year later with another degree in Mathematics. As soon as she took her first job, from her first paychecks, she pulled out 600 rubles and paid back the Alexandrovitch Foundation for the scholarship they had given her. This had never happened before. The foundation was shocked, but as Madame Curie’s daughter said of her mother: “In her uncompromising soul she would have judged herself dishonest if she had kept, for one unnecessary moment the money which now could serve as life buoy to another young girl.” Now, that’s paying back AND forward.
Madame Curie went on to be the first female Ph.D. at the Sorbonne and the first female professor as well. In addition, she was awarded not one, but two Nobel Prizes, in different sciences – the first person, male or female, ever to achieve that distinction.
So as I looked at the photograph of the women she inspired at MD Anderson, I thought of Madame Curie’s influential reach across a century, across vast oceans. MD Anderson doctors have received the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award from the American Association for Women in Radiology four times in twenty years. MD Anderson also maintains a sister institutional relationship with the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Cancer Center in Warsaw. Marie is still enlightening minds, inspiring the academically marginalized and healing the sick, even here in Texas.
Texas Standard: August 2, 2018
Credit card hacking, vote hacking and energy grid hacking… What’s actually being done to protect U-S cyber security? We’ll take a look. And the years-long effort to re-write the code that guides how the state’s capital city grows could be completely thrown out. Has it really gone so horribly wrong? Also the country’s first trillion dollar company won’t be a Texas oil giant but a tech company with a big footprint in the state. We’ll explain. Plus, how will generations to come remember Hurricane Harvey? A project designed to preserve digital stories of the storm. And a new effort to understand a mysterious and devastating phenomenon in the waters of the Texas Gulf Coast. We’ll tell you about that and more on todays Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: October 24, 2017
As Washington prepares to declare an opioid emergency, an Amarillo lawmaker is tapped to take on the issue for Texas. We’ll hear his plan on how to fix the crisis. Also, the recriminations between President Trump and gold star families, front and center in the news: but which is the sideshow? That controversy, or the actual events that led the the attack on American forces in Niger? We’ll explore. And Texans may love high school football, but most don’t remember where some of the best games were played, or who played them. The Thursday night lights finally gets some recognition, we’ll meet the man telling the story. And what we might learn this week about what happened in Dallas on that most fateful November day in ’63. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: November 3, 2016
The republican presidential nominee says Tuesday will be another Brexit moment. Are there really holes in the polls? We’ll explore. Also, doing more with less? A new study on early education cuts provides serious pushback. Plus Texas researchers say one’s own fat may be where its at when it comes to treating knee pain, we’ll hear why. And if you think this campaign season looks odd imagine a reporter overseas parachuting into the the thick of it. Notes from a German correspondent covering Texas. Also, a Lone Star staple flourishes in France. Pro tip: when in Paris, don’t call it a barbecue joint. All that and more today on the Texas Standard: