Women in STEM Friday: Dr. Rachael Padman

"“I seized the opportunity to go to England for my graduate study, both because Martin Ryle's group in the Cavendish Laboratory was at the cutting edge of radio astronomy, and also because I thought that by moving to the other side of the planet, I might finally be able to start working out how to deal with my overpowering urge to change my sex.”

Dr. Rachael Padman is a physicist at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. In Australia, she earned a degree in Electrical Engineering and later at Cavendish earned her PhD in millimeter-wave astronomy and instrumentation. Her research interests include “Millimetre wave optics and receiver systems; Low-mass star formation, and in particular jets and outflows from young stars; Spectral-line data reduction software” (http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/directory/padmanr). Dr. Padman speaks eloquently about her transition, which happened “quite openly” as she researched for her PhD. She is a Fellow of Newnham College of the University of Cambridge where she lectures and serves as the Director of Studies in Physical Sciences in addition to the Director of Education in the School of the Physical Sciences.

HER RESEARCH When stars are created from “gravitational infall,” astronomical objects collapsing upon themselves due to their own gravity, they propel matter outwards in a “molecular outflow.” Padman has studied the origins of different types of outflow and seeks to determine an evolutionary pattern taking into account the age of stars and type of outflow produced. (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/…/IAUS./0182//0000140.00…)

In Hawai’i, she build on her background at the CSIRO Division of Radio Physics in Sydney, Australia where she researched antenna creation for radio astronomy. As Deputy Project Scientist, she oversaw the building of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the largest submillimeter-wavelength telescope in the world. (http://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/person/dr-rachael-padman/)

ON BEING A TRANS WOMAN IN STEM “Problems of this sort may be personally upsetting, but they don't of themselves affect how you do your job. There are others that do. In the late 1980's I was deputy project scientist for a new telescope being built on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. I got on well with most of the crew, but there were times when I had to make unpopular requests. That sometimes resulted directly in a rejection of me as a woman. The deal that was being proposed was pretty transparent -- 'If you pull rank to get us to do things we don't want to, then you're not acting like a woman and we won't treat you like one...' More recently I've realized that the crew would probably have used the same tactic with any woman in the position I was in. The rejection of her womanhood would have then been symbolic rather than actual, but I'm sure just as distressing to her as it was to me, if harder for her to put her finger on. And in a way, this might be a metaphor for a transsexual woman's life. Whenever anything goes wrong, there is an immediate temptation to read something personal into it. It's very hard to be sure how to take things. Perhaps it's simple sex discrimination, but since you are new to this game, it's hard to be sure. Or maybe someone really has taken offence at your gender presentation, or is using your past against you. Or perhaps it is a simple interpersonal problem that has nothing at all to do with gender. The latter is always a possibility, but it is sometimes hard to remember this” (http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/…/c…/TSsuccesses/RachaelPadman.html)

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Rachael Padman’s story as told by her: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/…/c…/TSsuccesses/RachaelPadman.html Molecular outflows: http://www.eso.org/~tstanke/thesis/chap2_22.html A paper by Rachel on “Observations of Atomic Gas in Photodissociation Regions” https://books.google.com/books… Dr. Padman’s Website: http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~rachael/ Gravitational collapse: http://www.ego-gw.it/…/e…/vesf/presentations/dimmelmeier.pdf

More questions? Contact Dr. Padman at rp11@cam.ac.uk "

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