Amelie Heying, 2026 AIP History and Library Programs Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Hamilton College
Hello! My name is Amelie Heying. I’m a rising senior at Hamilton College, double majoring in Physics and History. In physics, I’m extremely passionate about various forms of astronomy research; previously, I’ve worked with the Nicholas and Lee Begovich Center for Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy to measure birefringence in crystalline silicon samples and Hamilton College to confirm exoplanets identified by the TESS mission. In history, I focus primarily on the history of science and ideas. I’m particularly interested in American history, specifically on how gender, race, and science have intertwined to influence “ways of knowing” in our country. My goal is to make the world a more curious place through interdisciplinary efforts that open people’s minds to different possibilities. Outside of my academic pursuits, I enjoy hiking, cooking, and leading my school’s Marathon Canoe Racing Team. I am so incredibly excited to be this year’s AIP History and Library Program Intern!

Internship

Host: American Institute of Physics History and Library Programs

Internship Blog

Week 1: America Again

Wow. Time truly flies. I can’t believe it’s already been a week.
Some context to get you up to speed:
I’ve been out of the country since January 5th, studying abroad at Trinity College, Dublin. I had a terrific time, met tons of super interesting people, and spent about a month after finals traveling around Europe. At the end of my travels, my parents met me in Switzerland, and we spent an amazing week exploring the Swiss Alps. Last semester was the longest I’ve gone without seeing them, so it was super important to me that we got some time to adventure in Europe together.

After some tearful goodbyes, I flew straight to DC for this internship! I’m definitely missing my home state of California right now, but I’m pretty happy just to be back in the US.

Traveling to DC was a bit hectic: my flight out of Zurich was delayed, and I was about five minutes away from completely missing my transfer in Lisbon. In a crazy turn of events, TAP Portugal was able to delay my flight to DC by 20 minutes to get me onto the plane. I felt like the President; as soon as I got off my first plane, a bunch of TAP Portugal personnel in neon vests surrounded the tarmac and began sorting customers, sporadically yelling “Washington” to find me more quickly. Once they identified that I was the flier in question, they rotated around me, rapidly muttering on their walkie talkies in Portuguese, as we flew through security and passport control. I was just happy that all the action was able to wake me up from some of the endless travel stupor I was falling into. Shoutout TAP Portugal.

Once in DC, I was able to stay with some family members I hadn’t seen in a hot second, and then it was MOVE-IN DAY! My boyfriend was able to drive down to DC with some of the cooking supplies I had stored at Hamilton and helped me move into Shenkman Hall! Days 1-2 was a whole lot of reshuffling furniture, washing laundry, unpacking clothes, and getting to spend some much-needed time with my boyfriend.

I hadn’t seen Z (the boyfriend) since spring break when he visited me in Dublin, so it was important to spend some time together while we could. While he was here, we were able to explore a nice brunch spot in the area and go sightseeing. Our dorms are extremely well-positioned in the city with sites such as the Lincoln and Washington Memorials only a short walk away.

Walking down the National Mall was beautiful but made me ponder the role of the Historian in the creation of monuments and national mythologies. The scenes of the National Mall---brilliant white marble structures---showcased a stunning facade. Upon closer inspection, much of the initially beautiful architecture showed signs of strain: marble cracked, ceilings with holes, construction walls set in preparation for the big 250. Strolling past small groupings of National Guard members, I marveled at how permeable the American historical narrative seems in our current world. Fragile.

Before the first big day, I started meal-prepping for the week and made a large vat of Bircher Muesli (a Swiss breakfast I absolutely fell in love with while traveling) and the NYT’s paprika chicken and potatoes. If you follow this blog, you will figure out that I love food pretty quickly.

The first day in the AIP DC office was dedicated to meeting the other interns, taking headshots, and learning about the AIP organization/SPS internship program. We had a small competition to build the largest spaghetti/marshmallow tower (my team placed second but was first in spirit) and then spent the rest of the day orienting into the internship program.

I was able to take the leftover spaghetti home and then crafted some homemade ricotta and parmesan meatballs to serve with it! I’ve also been craving green things lately, so I threw together a lime, avocado, green onion, and cumber salad as a side dish. #zerowaste. The day after was spent ironing out some technical issues and receiving standard HR training.

My first few days of work were spent figuring out some more small technical issues, reading some history of physics introductory material, and brainstorming topics for my ‘capstone’ project this summer. A few of the interns went to the Shakespeare Library so we could do some work together!

It was incredible to meet the other interns. Everyone is very motivated and passionate about their work. From our first few days exploring DC (like seeing Petworth Porchfest this weekend) and bonding over JackBox games and Werewolf, I can already tell that this is going to be a fantastic summer.

Highlight of the Week: Trimble Lecture!
On Wednesday evening, Dava Sobel, a highly acclaimed science writer committed to highlighting the history of women in physics, came to AIP for her lecture “At Mme. Curie’s Lab: Radioactivity and a Place for Women in Science.” During her lecture, Sobel brought up a very interesting point about the internalized misogyny of women and how that can affect the scholarship we produce on the historical role of women. It really reminded me of Paris Spies-Gans’ piece, “Why Do We Think There Have Been No Great Women Artists? Revisiting Linda Nochlin and the Archive,” an incredible piece of historical scholarship that has really influenced the way I understand gender dynamics of greatness and remembrance. Essentially, the piece argues that women have been “greats” of their own time in a variety of different disciplines (Spies-Gans focuses on art), but preconceptions by historians (like that women couldn’t historically rise to high levels of career success) have limited our recognition of these women. Spies-Gans ultimately advocates a much less linear history of the progression of women’s rights. Sobel’s lecture reminded me to check my preconceptions at the door as I dive into the world of women’s historical involvement in physics. Reality is rarely linear, and it would be a disservice to the women I am trying to illuminate to try and categorically jam them into an easily explainable box.

Sobel’s account of her surprise at seeing women so deeply involved in the pursuit of physics also reminded me of an earlier lecture I attended at Trinity College, Dublin this year. A historian of the Irish Revolution had expressed her deep surprise at learning that her very own relative had been a large participant in the Revolution, along with all her friends. This “generational amnesia of women’s involvement,” I believe, is deeply ingrained---the relative’s generation of women had not been attempting to keep their involvement a secret, they had just never been asked about their involvement. It is very easy to write a historical narrative based only on the loudest voices, often to the historical narrative’s detriment. The historical archive is built along our own perceptions of possibility---what we value as legitimate material is heavily influenced by the social hierarchies of today. These are lessons I will need to keep in mind as I pursue my own historical research.

Week 2: Adjustment

The Week in a Flash:

• Finally got to see the Niels Bohr Library and Archive in person!

• Narrowed my final presentation topic down to three potential avenues (more on this next week)
• Watched the first few episodes of Love Island with some other interns

• First intern potluck!!! (and a MASSIVE pot of chili)

• The beginning of my Instagram era with my first official Instagram takeover of @spsnational

• First AIP Weekly History Newsletter published! This week, I extracted excerpts from a recent oral history interview with trans food physicist Megan Povey!
• National Orchestral Institute private showing in the National Museum of American History

• Happy Hour Friday with the Interns

• National Gallery of Art Block Party+Dupont Underground

• Dupont Circle Market

• Smithsonian Zoo with the Interns

Summer Goals:

• Explore different physics-oriented career paths (in other words, figure out what I want to do with my life)
• Find my creative voice (this is what I’m trying to do with this blog!)
  • Try and use a different writing form each blog (i.e. poetry, blog prose, bulleting)
• Get cooking!

• Write down essay ideas/research questions whenever inspiration strikes
• Make a whole lot of amazing physics friends (this one shouldn’t be too hard to do with all the amazing people in this program)
• Explore DC as a potential city to live in post-grad!

Week 3: What is a physicist?

The question above currently holds the crux of all of my work-related problems.

This summer, I’ve been tasked with forming a historical project that emphasizes the contributions of women to physics throughout the ages. This project should be simple enough: women have been involved in physics in all sorts of ways throughout time...or have they?

It all really depends on how you define a physicist. Do you need to have a PhD in physics? Or will a Bachelor’s do? Does an education define a physicist, or is their product the only thing that matters? Can you still be a physicist if you self-conceptualize in a different way (as a mathematician or a natural philosopher or a wife, for example)?

Digging my way through the various archives of DC this week has convinced me that women have always been deeply involved in finding the fundamental laws governing matter and energy. However, I’ve also found it nearly impossible to create a feasible summer project focused on the contributions of women.

The title of physicist does not come easily to womankind. Women have historically been excluded from educational opportunities that would allow them to self-identify with the term ‘physicist.’ Even when their contributions are appreciated by the historical record, their fame is relegated to the status of amateur scientist, inventor, or experimenter. But a lack of educational opportunities does not cover the entirety of the problem. Laura Bassi earned her doctorate in science in 1732. While she was an exception rather than the rule, a whole series of women had earned PhDs in physics by the early 1910s. Surely, by now in 2026, we should have a robust history of female contributions to the field.

Not so. In a feat of massive specification, the archive has managed to obscure the historical role of women by embedding social hierarchy into its labels. All too often, this social hierarchy is enforced after the fact, in a combination of lazy record-keeping and social norms that historically relegated women to the private sphere. A picture of three physicists becomes two physicists and an assistant. A woman experimental physicist becomes a technician. A woman who does her physics at home is simply the wife of a physicist. This becomes especially egregious when trying to quickly sift through millions of pages of archival material.

My education in historical thinking has occurred during the immense refutation of the ‘great man theory’---the idea that major events and societal shifts are driven by the actions of extraordinary and inherently brilliant individuals. Thus, I refuse to believe that the history of women in physics should be driven by the few individuals who managed to gain legitimacy in the scientific establishment. These women were undoubtably brilliant---this is not to undercut the incredible barriers they managed to overcome. However, it does not (and should not) take an extraordinary individual to become a physicist. Knowledge is created and accepted collectively. I want to create a history that reflects this.

To me, a physicist is someone who seeks to understand the fundamental interactions of the world around them. Is this an overly broad definition? Almost certainly. However, I’m trying to understand the history of physics, a field that has only recently become separate from other sciences. Should I confine my definition to those recognized as physicists? This excludes almost half of the discipline’s history, as well as pretty much all women and contributors of color. My new rule: if it thinks like a physicist, it is a physicist.

In the words of Amalie Emmy Noether, the mother of abstract algebra whose theorem created the key links between symmetry laws and conservation laws in physics (later leading to Einstein’s discoveries):

“My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously.”

In Other News...The Week in a Few Pictures:
The Capitol City at sunset with a paragliding show by one of the military branches:

A spectacle on the Hill:

A maize chapel and a butter cow:

The People’s House becomes a next-generation parking structure for police vehicles:

Some art:

Some food (and my dad):

Talking of the apocalypse....

Week 4: The World Gets Big

But first...an ode to something small:

An Ode to the Quigley’s Pharmacy Ice Cream Sundae

Tired and worn down,

Seven interns left Foggy Bottom in pursuit of fun.

They heard Quigley’s Pharmacy had the best Monday trivia around town,

But, alas, their efforts were outdone!

For when they appeared in the doorway,

The Pharmacy was filled to the brim.

The sad seven interns were turned away,

But allowed to remain on the patio...how grim.

However, the interns’ fate was soon to turn,

For when the menu did appear,

They spotted the Quigley sundae and soon yearned,

For the melted chocolate goodness to give them cheer!

Soon seven happy interns,

Had seven happy brownie-filled gratins.

They felt very far away from frights like their midterms,

And were ready to get back on their work wagon!

I don’t say this very often, but Quigley’s brownie sundae was truly amazing. Very Chocolate-y. 10/10. Such small things can bring so much happiness.

This week was filled with different intern events! We had the AIP dinner cruise (my first networking event), a tour of NIST, and fellow intern Ethan’s birthday. At the beginning of the week, I learned how to edit Wikipedia articles with Corinne, one of my mentors. I also took a trip to Columbus, Ohio for the Juneteenth holiday.

My world expanded through all these happenings. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been extremely focused on my project and the mechanics of getting through each week. Stepping into a space where I was part of a larger intern program allowed me to start thinking of the whole summer and its place in my career path. What do I want to do after I graduate? What is interesting to me? What do I value in my career and in my life? In what ways does this internship set me up for success? When am I going to get my act together and finally update my LinkedIn? These have been the dominating questions this week.

Miscellaneous Thought Soup:

• I’ve reversed my previous views on role models. I’ve previously been a bit skeptical of the effectiveness of role models in getting marginalized groups to join physics. I think, in the past, many women in STEM were pitched to me in terms of their specific accomplishments. As a sixth grader, I didn’t really care that Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium. I didn’t even really know what polonium or radium was. However, learning the stories of negotiation and curiosity that seem to underlie the professional lives of so many women in STEM has been inspiring this summer. Listening to the AAAS fellows at NIST talk about their journeys through physics was incredibly interesting and has really made me reconsider my position on getting a physics PhD.
• I need to read more (this is a frequent thought)
• Any woman going into physics/engineering/science policy should read some of oral histories with women in those fields. Reading the Nancy Grace Roman and Arati Prabhakar (to name a few) oral histories has been inspiring. It’s important to know the legacy you are upholding by entering a field.
• Having a community is incredibly important to my happiness. This summer, having a group of fellow interns has kept me from taking myself too seriously.
• (After a Wyclef Jean performance...and I fear this might be an obvious take that is only mind-blowing to me) Hip-hop is a radical musical invention because it takes its lyrical cue from the beat. Coming from a classical western music background, I’m so used to music that is dominated by its melody. It’s interesting to listen to music that is developed around a completely different sound structure.

And a photo dump...

Week 5+6 (work blog): Dive

If I’m lucky, I make it up to Portland, OR once or twice a year. My primary purpose is always to see my grandfather, aunt, and cousin (and their cats!) who I love dearly. However, an embarrassingly close second is to visit Powell’s Books, an absolutely massive bookstore that sprawls over an entire city block. Powell’s is my paradise: neatly organized, great recommendations creatively handwritten on placards, and the smell of paper, ink, and glue perpetually in the air.

My strategy has been the same since I was kid. I spend an hour or two surveying my options, visiting almost every section of the store and taking pictures of the books I’d be interested in buying. Then, I begin to narrow down my preferences. It’s a drawn out and tedious process of elimination, that I’m sure is completely insufferable for all my family members to endure.

Why not just pick a book and get it over with? I’m sure I’d enjoy the book. It would probably be a lot nicer for everyone involved.

I think I love the feeling of superposition. While a choice hasn’t been made, I can hang in the luxury of experiencing every possibility simultaneously. In the moments before I pick a book (or...a career...for instance) I hold a lifetime of potentials in my hands.

There’s also fear involved. What if I choose the wrong book and waste valuable time? What if one possibility leads to a better life than another?

Possibility isn’t reality. Life continues whether we want it to or not. An electron doesn’t control the moment we decide to observe it. Nonetheless, its superposition collapses into a fixed state. This is neither a happy nor a sad fact; it simply is. I take solace in this interpretation---that the collapse of possibility into reality is simply natural. Ironically enough, this is where (depending on your philosophical proclivities) the metaphor collapses. I, unlike the electron, will never truly assume a fixed state unless I choose to. I take solace in this interpretation as well. Superposition upon superposition upon superposition.

This is how we make it week 5---the time to stop dithering and dive in.

In astrophotography, dithering is the process of making small, minute changes in your telescope’s position to randomize fixed pattern noise in the final image. Dithering makes for a better final image, but there’s a point of limited return.

I’ve found that much of the same principle applies in the archives: a bit of dithering in archival documents can produce an interesting product, but too much creates too many strings to tie up in a single project.

For the last week, I’ve been sending emails to a series of archives to see what materials they can pull for my project. My project proposal to investigate the health outcomes of women who worked directly on the Manhattan project was edged out by the time constraint of the summer. If anyone would like to work on that project with me, please reach out. It’s a multi-year project that is way too big for one person to handle. Crafting a project on female atomic spies during the WWII/Cold War era was similarly limited by the classified nature of documentary evidence. Finding sources that weren’t caught up in the sensationalism of the topic was nearly impossible. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on women in the defense industry after WWII. An overly broad topic, right?

Not so much. When I tell archivists my topic, they get an amused expression on their faces. “How much luck have you been having finding sources for that?”

The truth of the matter is that there were plenty of women in the defense industry between 1945 and 1980. Sure, not as many as men, but I have list upon list upon list of names. Just names. An obituary here and there if I’m lucky. Unless I want to create an art piece with just the names of these women, I might have to switch directions once more.

Or so I thought. Every night for the past week I had been sending up a prayer to the archive gods that I would get a little bit more than a name. I’m not greedy. I just needed a tidbit to get my project moving. About halfway through the week, my tidbits came in three different forms. One, I was at the library of congress reading room with my cart of books and happened upon the records for the Society of Women Engineer’s Second International Conference. Aha! More names. Great.

Not great, but good enough. See, the Women Society of Engineers was full of women who believed in leading by example and publicizing their involvement in physics. Women who sought the spotlight with purpose. A.K.A. women who made a material recording of their involvement in engineering and physics. Interestingly, the 1967 conference on food insecurity and engineering solutions to food crises around the world was full of American women involved in the defense industry. More interestingly, were the Iranian attendees---woman engineers in prominent positions within the National Iranian Oil Company. Even more interestingly, cross-referencing the list of female attendees yielded a whole bunch of documentary evidence and oral histories. I decided to go in a different direction for my final project (see below) but this conference is going to remain in my back pocket until I can turn it into something great. Piecing together these materials also gave me the confidence to finally make my way to the manuscript room.

Two (I bet you forgot this was a list), I was at the Niels Bohr Library and Archive eating lunch with my mentor, Corinne, when a graduate student from MIT’s History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) program asked to eat with us. Tathagat Bhatia ’s doctoral work is incredibly interesting---they’re examining the data practices (AKA the models, fieldwork, information sharing, etc) of earth and environmental scientists, especially those from South and Central Asia. How were these practices historically modified by the politics of colonization and decolonization? How do these practices intrinsically differ culturally? These are just a few questions I look forward to reading about when he publishes his research.

After an interesting discussion, I had my second tidbit: Tathagat was working with Irene Fischer’s materials from the Niels Bohr Library and thought they might be pertinent to my topic. This tidbit was pocketed for a bit, and only really became relevant after the third tidbit. The HASTS program is also getting pocketed for the upcoming years. I doubt I have the resume quite yet to pursue the program, but I’ll be looking into it as I (quickly) approach post-bach life.

Three (I swear you’re nearing the end), while I was examining the Miriam Young papers in the Library of Congress manuscript room, I spoke to an incredibly helpful history of science archivist (who, for all of my efforts, I cannot remember the name of). He pointed me towards a couple of different collections that I hadn’t looked at, including the Gladys West papers that had just recently come into the manuscript division. A quick thank you to all the archivists who staff the manuscript division---without their expertise and recommendations, my project probably would have collapsed in Week 4.

And... We’ve come to the end of how much I want to share of the project thus far. Keep your eyes out for the final presentation to see how it all comes together.

Week 5+6 (life blog): Immersion

A quick list of events:

• Lunch and Learn careers talk with some of the AIP science communications team
  • This was a great opportunity to learn about how different people within the AIP organization have turned their love of science into a career path outside of research. I think I’m finally starting to accept that my career path will most likely not be linear.

• Moulin Rouge at the Kennedy Center with the interns (for only $20!)
  • Wow! The Kennedy Center is truly spectacular! I love theater, but I honestly wasn’t expecting much from Moulin Rouge. It was surprisingly good and a great way to end Thursday evening.

• Dinner with the AIP board of directors
  • My second ever networking event. I think I’m slowly getting better at creating connections, but time will tell! I could say a lot about this event. Aside from the excellent food and a fun chance to dress up, it was wonderful to see how passionate the board of directors was about helping the next generation of students. Despite a long day full of meetings, the directors were incredibly welcoming and supportive. It was inspiring to see the various directions that their careers took as they figured out their unique interests and niches.

• National Orchestral Institute Concert
  • I haven’t had the chance to listen to much modern orchestral music, so the final National Orchestral Institute’s Concert was a pleasure to attend. Polina Nazaykinskaya’s Fenix was a beautiful composition. If there’s ever a movie made of my life, please let that be the score. Igor Stravinsky’s work, as always, was uncomfortably good. During the intermission, I got to engage in an interesting conversation with a couple who were working in various parts of space diplomacy/funding. It was cool to hear their perspective on creating a career in science policy and diplomacy. The AAAS fellowship is now firmly on my radar.

• Visits to the Great American State Fair and the National Museum of African American History
  • Disappointing and excellent. I’ll let you decide which is which. If you haven’t already heard, the Great American State Fair has turned into the big letdown of the 250^th. Unlike the fair, this isn’t a partisan remark. Before we get into the next part: *my views are my own and are not representative of AIP in any way*
  • Before this weekend, I was truly excited to celebrate the 4^th of July. Despite my occasionally critical view of America, I’m very patriotic. I love my country. The Bicentennial was a defining moment in American history. The 250^th has been in the works since 2016 when America 250 began planning for the anniversary. The blatant grift associated with the Freedom 250 takeover is heartbreaking. An empty, partisan fair. AI generated photos that make the founding women of our nation look younger and more conventionally attractive. Perhaps its only redeeming quality was that it was shut down due to the heat wave hitting DC. I am so incredibly disappointed that we have decided that this is what makes us great.

• SPS Intern tour of the Niels Bohr Library and Archive
  • I got to show the other interns where I work! This was super fun, and the archivists at NBLA did an amazing job curating material for the visit.

• The Fourth of July holiday!
  • A contentious holiday, but fun, nonetheless. Flyovers during the 3^rd and 4^th were super cool to see, despite the noise. Our nation has come super far in aeronautics, and that capability was on full display during the holiday. It was HOT this 4^th. Between visits to the botanic gardens (with a 250^th selection of flowers from every state!), the Library of Congress (to see the reading room and a founding documents display), and the Holocaust Museum, my boyfriend and I took naps back at GWU with the AC on full blast. We decided not to go to the national mall for fireworks because of TSA-style security, instead opting to view them from down the river. However, the fireworks were delayed over an hour, so we headed back to Foggy Bottom, thinking they were canceled. Around midnight, we started to hear the sparks and gathered outside for an incredible display. I’ve never seen so many fireworks at once. A good end to a sweltering weekend. Happy 4^th!

Week 7: Collecting

Lately, I’ve felt like a collector. I’ve been accumulating experiences, pictures, primary source documents, potential paths: the options are endless. I don’t want to relinquish the originality of any piece of my trove, but my heart (and my brain) only has so much room. It’s time to synthesize. It’s time to create.

For the first time, the interns were victorious: we finally made it to Monday Night Trivia! We weren’t incredibly optimistic about our chances but managed to place third overall. Not too bad. We will be back.

This week was plagued by the ordinary, and, honestly, I absolutely loved it. A list of things:

• I finished up the Gladys West Archive (recently put in the Library of Congress)
  • It was really cool to see photos of Ira West’s involvement with an interracial baseball team during the Korean War. Integration of America’s pastime had just begun in 1947 (three years before the Korean War). It’s interesting to see how Jackie Robinson was part of a broader movement of black involvement in baseball and how the sport allowed black men to cross racial barriers in a plethora of different ways. Gladys West and Irene Fischer both talk about their issues finding community with other women in physics---unlike for the men, there were no sports teams or workplace clubs created for women. For Gladys West, this created a stronger racial barrier. In her early days, it was nearly impossible to connect with the white women in her workplace. Times have really changed---it’s interesting to see how central different sports clubs and workplace activities were to creating company culture in the 1950s and 1960s.

• • Gladys West’s images of sorority and fraternity life at her HBCU, Virginia State University, solidified for me how important community is for achieving success in physics and math. Role models, compatriots, and mentees depending on you to succeed, all wrapped up in one organization. I had never paid attention to black sororities and fraternities and their role in fostering success before looking at Gladys West’s archive.

• Pageantry and Physics
  • While browsing through the Institute of Aerospace Sciences Archive at the Library of Congress, I happened upon a document recording a beauty pageant at Douglas Aircraft during WWII. It’s really interesting to see how women negotiated their femineity while working in traditionally male roles.

• Two Great Meals
  • Yum! Not much to say. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

• Exploring new cafes and libraries in DC
  • DC is truly an academic’s playground. Between the free museums and nerdy events, libraries, and working cafes, I could spend hours drifting from place to place. This week, I explored Flor Coffee+Books and Blank Street Coffee. One of the reasons I love the US is our creative takes on iced coffee and matcha. Yes, it’s too expensive, but I’ll be dead before I stop buying yuzu infused coffee and strawberry matcha with a ‘whimsy’ topping. I also managed to explore the Georgetown public library which was incredible. It’s so nice to have so many free study spaces in the city.

• Downpour
  • I’ve never met a city with such erratic weather. The climate went from dangerously hot to a frenetic downpour in the space of three days. Alexandria’s anniversary fireworks were almost rained out, but they still managed to light them up amid a short downpour.
• A Little Grasshopper Named Klari (TW: suicide)
  • On Saturday, I went to the Library of Congress to see Klara Von Neumann’s papers. Honestly, the papers were emotionally hard to read. A few things were clear from the papers: Klari and Johnny (the famous mathematician and Klara’s husband) were brilliant, very in love with each other, and incredibly mentally ill. This makes my job as a historian a bit difficult. Mental illness can skew our perception of the world. Klari and Johnny did not have the language to talk of their mental illness, even though both acknowledged that they struggled in ways that average people didn’t seem to. I need to acknowledge that Klari is probably an unreliable narrator of her own story in certain, significant ways. On the other hand, mental illness does not rob a person of truth. Klari’s narrative is her own and she tells her truth in way only she can. To add to this conundrum, I need to factor in the biases of her time. Was Klari’s constant upset stomach a sign of mental illness in physical manifestation? Or was she gaslit by a medical establishment predisposed to disbelieve women’s pain? I’m very used to treating first person documents and narrative documents with a critical eye. Klari’s papers have taught me that I need to take that same criticality to authoritative documents I usually wouldn’t question.

And the usual photo dump:

Week 8: Threads

This week, I’ve begun to wrap up a lot of different threads that have sprawled into a lot of different directions. I began the week at the Niels Bohr Library and Archive, scanning all the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) records on the Equal Rights Amendment. The rest of the week was spent categorizing these materials into a massive excel sheet and preparing for my first oral history interview. Stay tuned for a Ex Libris Universum post!

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the Responsible Historian. I’ve been handling materials with a lot more currency to the living than a historian normally would. I think history is incredibly important because it delimitates the possible. Psychologically, it’s much easier to do something once we believe it’s already been done. This doesn’t mean we can’t stretch---or even break---this barrier. Indeed, history also proves the permeability of social limits. However, history does define what feels safer, so to speak. What I’m trying to express in a rather long-winded manner is that history is always important to contemporary society. My current work departs from this importance because many of the people I am writing about are either still alive or very recently dead. It gives extra weight to my work: should my focus be on the preservation of legacy? On unfiltered historical analysis? How much is fair to analyze?

A bit of guidance came to me in the form of the National Museum of Asian Art’s exhibit night on Vishnu’s Cosmic Ocean. Between March 7^th and September 7^th, the largest bronze ever cast in Southeast Asia---a statue of the Hindu god Vishnu---is on loan to the Smithsonian from the National Museum of Cambodia. This poses a bit of a question in museum/exhibition ethics: how do you ethically display pieces of immense cultural value for foreign audiences in foreign places (and often, in foreign times as well)? Many museums across the world are currently facing this question, especially when their exhibition pieces were acquired through processes of colonialism. Colonialism is a bit less relevant here, given that the statue is on loan from its place of origin, but the question of ethical display tactics remains.

I thought that the National Museum of Asian Art’s response was fantastic. Walking into the exhibit, the first thing you see is a wall which has been converted into a floor-to-ceiling screen. A 12-minute video plays, situating the viewer into the cultural and environmental context of the statue of Vishnu. The whole production was extremely well done. Watching the “Smithsonian Dreams” projections on the Smithsonian Castle afterwards made me ponder the ways in which new developments in projection technology can drive better fulfillment of exhibition ethics. Anyways. I’ve decided that my current version of the Responsible Historian is to situate historical action in context.

Other things this week: got amazing (too expensive) coffee with Sierra on Monday, Jahanvi and I headed down to the National Portrait Gallery after work for Analog Night, some pop-up art on the National Mall, a quick trip to Bluegrass Night at the National Postal Museum before heading to a night of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with the other interns, and some very very scary air quality. This weekend I also took a very fast trip down to Tampa, Florida to see my grandmother! See you next week:)

Week 9+10: All Good Things Come to an End

Work, work, and more work. The last two weeks of this internship have passed in a blur of moving parts. Between a private tour of the Air and Space Museum with the interns (given by Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the Apollo collection) and the final presentation symposium/move out combo, my life has been choked full of events.

Work
I completed two more oral histories to finish my mini OHI archive of women engineers in the defense industry. My appreciation of oral histories has grown multitudes over this internship. Oral histories are a way of preserving primary source material through audio/audiovisual recordings. The emphasis is placed on capturing memories and stories from a broad range of different voices and backgrounds. I’ve found it especially useful for representing the histories of people who wouldn’t leave a large mark on traditional archives. For example, women in the defense industry normally have their work hidden behind a security clearance---it’s extremely hard to figure out exactly who did what and when. In addition, these women usually work in industry, an underrepresented space in an archive like NBLA (we are currently working on this!). Capturing oral histories like the ones in my mini archive will (hopefully) allow future historians to understand informal/formal structures of mentorship and support in the defense industry, the impacts of larger public events (COVID-19, AI, consolidation of defense companies in the 90s + proliferation of nontraditionals in the 2010s, administration changes, etc.), why women are involved in the defense industry, the diversity of the industry, and the individual stories of the women I interviewed. By the end, I interviewed three women in various stages of their career who had intersected through different mentorship networks at Northrop Grumman. I thought this diversity of voices would be able to both highlight these women’s numerous contributions to the industry while also providing a window into the industry and the wider social contexts of our period.

Meanwhile, I was also working on my final presentation for the intern symposium and my Gladys West article for Physics Today. I’m hopeful that the presentation can serve as a rough template for my history thesis this upcoming year, so I broadened my topic and presented on women in the defense industry during the Cold War era (and beyond) and their intersections with technocratic feminism (a term dubbed by Laura Puaca). For more information, watch the intern symposium video! Unfortunately, catastrophe struck during the symposium and all the formatting for my slides was pretty messed up. I was the first speaker and there was slight miscommunication---TLDR: my beautiful slides were not so beautiful due to technical difficulties. I was pretty crushed (I don’t think I gave the best presentation as a result), but it was good practice in quickly recovering and presenting without my normal slides. I have plenty of time to sharpen my presentation and try again in the Fall. I’m still figuring out whether I want to re-record a video and send it as a replacement for the final symposium video, but for now I think I’ll leave it be. The next couple of days I’ll be focusing on writing my Gladys West article (which will come out sometime in the Fall) and editing my AAS and the ERA article (which will come out as soon as we finish the last round of edits)!

Life
I’ve been trying to live up my last two weeks in DC! Week 9, the interns once again tried to get into Monday trivia and failed (I got a consolation brownie as a result). I would also like to clarify that the numerous brownies that have appeared on this blog are a social activity. Pretty much every Monday the intern group orders a fleet of brownie sundaes. I do not have a problem. Week 10, we succeeded in getting into trivia (but unfortunately lost…very badly). I rounded off the last few monuments I wanted to see in DC and finally made it to Jazz in the Garden. I listened to Punjabi-Jazz fusion for the first time which was an experience I never thought I’d have. Pictures feature Daniel’s last monkeybread and physicists caught outside of their habitat:

On the night before our last, we went out to a nice restaurant and then began to pack. At presentations, Mikayla gave us each a copy of Dava Sobel’s Glass Universe. On Friday/Saturday, we all said goodbye and started our individual journeys home. I’m back in California (home) for two weeks, and then I’m going to make my way to New York to start my senior year of college.

I wanted to thank everyone who helped support me during this internship. Without my family, the other interns, and the amazing staff at AIP, there’s no way I would have been able to finish this journey. If you’re a future intern who is only reading this far in the blog to prepare last minute for your interview---reach out! You’d be surprised by how many people are willing to help once you start asking questions.

Goodbye. I hope to see you soon!

-Amelie Heying