For example, in 2016, there were six scientists from the U.S. who won a Nobel Prize and all six were immigrants. Sir Fraser Stoddart, originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”. David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz, both from Scotland, along with Duncan Haldane of England, earned the Nobel Prize in Physics “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Oliver Hart of England and Bengt Holmstrom of Finland “for their contributions to contract theory.”
According to the National Science Foundation, 49% of mid-career scientists and engineers in postdoctoral research positions who obtained their doctorates in the U.S. immigrated from other countries. In a separate report, NSF determined that, as of 2013, 18% of the STEM researchers and engineers in the US are immigrants. This total includes nearly 3 million scientists from Asia, over 800,000 from Europe, over 300,000 from Africa, and over 1 million from Canada, the Caribbean, and Central or South America. Immigrant scientists and engineers are also more likely to have earned an advanced degree than their U.S.-native counterparts.
Let’s look at five immigrants and refugees who have left their mark on the study of science in the U.S..
Hedy Lamarr
Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, Hedy Lamarr was well-known for her work as a film star from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1938, Louis Mayer of MGM studios, offered her an acting contract in the U.S., which she accepted in part to escape her very controlling first husband. In the U.S., Mayer promoted Lamarr as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” She was also an inventor.
Together with the composer George Antheil, she developed a frequency hopping technique that would prevent the radio signals guiding Allied torpedoes from being jammed (and thus redirected) during World War II. By continuously changing the torpedo guidance signal at regular intervals, the Navy could prevent those signals from being intercepted. Lamarr and Antheil patented their spread spectrum technology in 1942, but it wasn’t until the 1960s when the U.S. Navy officially adopted their invention during the Cuban missile crisis.
In her controversial autobiography, Lamarr suggested that her first introduction to military technology came from attending meetings with her first husband, an ammunitions dealer who had ties to Mussolini and the Nazi government in Germany. In her movies, she was often typecast as the exotic beauty with only few lines and so was rumored to have taken up inventing to relieve her boredom with such simple roles.
Lamarr’s spread spectrum technology is now used in modern wi-fi, CDMA (code division multiple access), and Bluetooth systems. Lamarr and Antheil were both inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
Elon Musk
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Elon Musk reportedly taught himself computer programming at the age of 12. After starting his degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 where he soon earned Bachelors of Science in both Physics and Economics.
Musk is an entrepreneur, an inventor, and an engineer who is perhaps best known for being the founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX and the co-founder, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors. SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, aims to advance the field of rocket technology and has achieved such firsts as the first privately funded liquid fueled rocket to put a satellite into Earth orbit (Falcon I), the first commercial company to launch and berth a vehicle on the International Space Station (Dragon), and the first time the first stage of an orbital rocket has returned to land back on the launch pad. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft have replaced the now retired U.S. space shuttle, and NASA has awarded contracts to SpaceX to develop the capability of transporting U.S. astronauts as part of the Commercial Crew Development program.
Many of Musk’s designs are aimed at mitigating global warming through sustainable energy practices, including the electric car. His company Tesla motors has worked to improve the range limitations and affordability of electric cars. To encourage other automobile manufacturers to also engage the electric car market, Tesla also shares their technology patents. Musk has earned many honors, including the Royal Aeronautical Society’s highest award, the gold medal, and the 21st spot on Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people in 2016.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Born in Liuho, China, Chien-Shiung Wu earned her physics degree from the National Central University before becoming a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica. In 1936, she determined the best way to advance her car was to pursue her studies in the U.S. So she took a steamship from China to the western U.S. and enrolled in grad school at the University of California in Berkeley.
Wu studied radioactivity, including improving the techniques employed by Geiger counters for measuring nuclear radiation levels, as faculty at Smith College, Princeton University, and later Columbia University. She was part of the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II and made major contributions to our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics through her experiment that proves particle parity is violated by the weak force.
Wu was the first female instructor at Princeton and the first female president of the American Physical Society. She also was awarded the National Medal of Science.
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch
Born in Danzig, Germany, Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch obtained her PhD in 1932 despite the prejudices against her as a Jewish woman scientist. She fled the Nazi government a year later and became a lecturer at Columbia University. Gluecksohn-Waelsch laid the foundation for studies of developmental genetics in mammals, specifically the genetics of differentiation, or the process determining how cells from a fertilized egg develop.
Despite her active research contributions, Columbia did not grant professorships to women and so Gluecksohn-Waelsch eventually left to become a full professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and later earned the National Medal of Science.
Albert Einstein
Of course, a discussion of refugee scientists would not be complete without this podcast’s namesake, Albert Einstein. Born in Ulm, Germany, Einstein was targeted by the Nazi government both as a Jew and as a theoretical physicist whose work promoted theories of relativity that challenged what we understood from Newtonian mechanics. Luckily, Einstein was visiting the U.S, when Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933 so he did not return to the Berlin Academy of Sciences where he was a professor. Had Einstein timed his trip to the U.S. differently or were he less famous (and thus likely less welcome to stay in the U.S.), his contributions to our understanding of the photoelectric effect and his theories of general and special relativity may have been lost.
These stories are only a few examples, of course. Erwin Schrodinger escaped Austria after the Germans took over in WWII. Johannes Kepler escaped Austria and later Prague. Emmanuel Dongala fled the civil war in the Republic of the Congo in the 1990s, and San Thang fled Vietnam after communist forces took Saigon at the end of Vietnam War.
The U.S. has a long history of providing safe haven for scientists and has welcomed immigrants who wish to contribute to the U.S. commitment to the pursuit of scientific truth. We will never know what advancements may have been lost due to refugees turned away or immigrants denied entry, but we can take measures to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Until next time, this is Sabrina Stierwalt with Everyday Einstein’s Quick and Dirty Tips for helping you make sense of science. You can become a fan of Everyday Einstein on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, where I’m @QDTeinstein. If you have a question that you’d like to see on a future episode, send me an email at everydayeinstein@quickanddirtytips.com.
Image courtesy of shutterstock
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