Category: Science

Picture a Scientist, a documentary film that chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists, will have its U.S. broadcast premiere on PBS NOVA on April 14, 2021.

Observations of the cosmos suggest that the matter we see—planets, stars, and galaxies—must be dwarfed by another form of matter that exerts gravity but is invisible to us.

The Heising-Simons Foundation in partnership with Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya  is proud to present the Art & Science Lecture Series, “Shape of Science” born out of the project FINDINGS, a public art series, that celebrates women and science and reimagines science through vibrant large-scale murals.

When Dr. Andrea Ghez first proposed conducting research on a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy, she says, “people didn’t think it would work.” Earlier this year, and decades in the making, that work led Dr. Ghez to be awarded the 2020 Novel Prize in physics.

On a towering brick wall near the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, a mysterious class of cosmological objects dance with the diverse women of New York City. “A Cluster of Enigmas” is the first in a series of colorful murals completed by renowned artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, in her new partnership with the Heising-Simons Foundation entitled “Findings.”

Grantee partner Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics today. Ghez shares the prize with Reinhard Genzel of University of California, Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

Scientists at MIT, Cardiff University, and elsewhere have observed what may be signs of life in the clouds of Venus. The astronomers, led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, detected in Venus’ atmosphere a spectral fingerprint, or light-based signature of phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile. Their discovery and analysis is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.