In the early 1960s, when I was an undergraduate student majoring in Physics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh – there was only one girl in my advanced physics classes. As I learned later, nothing much had changed since the days of Einstein. When he was studying Physics at the Polytechnic in Zurich, the physics classes were all male – except for Mileva Marić, a Serbian who was the first girl in high school ever to take a physics course in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because Switzerland was the only place where women were admitted to university classes, she was there with Albert in Zurich.
She was very smart, especially in math, and also proficient at the piano. Born with a dislocated hip, Mileva had a slight limp, and the men in the class ignored her – except for one, Albert. They became a couple and eventually married.
Back to me in my university physics classes – where it seems that little had changed for over sixty years. In my advanced classes there was only one girl. Her name was Rita. She mainly stayed to herself. Majoring in Mathematics, she took all the advanced physics courses available, right through the fourth year. In short, in those predominantly male classes, she was an anomaly – alone and ignored by her classmates.
Except me. No, I didn’t date her, yet I didn’t ignore her. During those undergraduate years, I lived at home and took a bus or a trolley to school five days a week, leaving early in the morning. The university is in downtown Pittsburgh. Walking to the campus, I first went to the Physics Department, using it as my base. From there I went to my other classes during the day. There was a small classroom in the Department that was almost always empty, especially in the morning. It could be used for individual studying or small group discussions and such. In the early morning, I was usually the only one there – except for Rita, who used it for studying, too. She often was there, even before me. Usually the conversation started by me saying something like: “Hi Rita, did you get the last problem in mechanics class homework?” Her response was invariably, “Yes.” We would go over it, with her finding my mistakes. We had an amiable relationship that never went beyond our interactions about physics – right up to the end of our university years. As far as I can remember, I don’t think I knew much about her beyond the classroom.
But one event, which I’ll never forget, stands out. It was during our last year of classes in a course on the theory of relativity. For the textbook the prof used a paperback edition of the original papers on the theory. Early in the course, we went through Einstein’s first paper of 1905 – step by step. On this particular day, the prof came in and said he had a problem with the next step in the paper. As we all sat with our books in front of us, he pointed to a certain equation where we ended in the previous class. In the next sentence, Einstein says that such and such follows. The problem for the prof was that he didn’t know how Einstein got that deduction. I looked at it, and didn’t have a clue either.
Just then, Rita’s hand went up. She said she thinks she knows how Einstein got it. The prof asked her to come up to the blackboard and show him. Rita did, and the prof said that she was right. I’m quite sure that – then and there – Rita got an A in that course, if not an A+.
That gives you some idea about Rita and my relationship with her at the time. Not a very significant part of my 4-year undergraduate years – except for this one event in a physics course.
Why then am I bringing this up now, so many years later? Here’s why.
I graduated with my BS degree in the fall of 1964. I then went to graduate school at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, majoring in Physics. (It’s now Case-Western Reserve University.)
When I moved there, I lived in a formerly swanky hotel on the edge of the campus, which was purchased by the university as a residence solely for graduate students. They called it The Graduate House. Eleven floors, the top 8 with suites for students, with one floor solely for female students. It was a radical experiment in co-ed living for the time.
My first day there, after getting my room and putting my things in drawers and so forth, it was late in the afternoon – and I was hungry. I had been told when I registered that the dining hall would open the following morning, but for now there was no food. However, on the third floor there were vending machines with sandwiches and such, so I went to find them.
Going down the elevator, exiting at the third floor, and walking down a hall – suddenly I heard my name called. “David, what are you doing here?” Turning around – there was Rita! It was quite a surprise for both of us. This tells you how minimally we interacted before; not even knowing that we both were going to the same graduate school.
I told her that I was majoring in Physics at Case. She, of course, was majoring in Math. After a chat about all this, I said that I was looking for the sandwich machines. She said that there was a diner nearby, and she was going there for dinner with someone else she had just met so I went, too. Thus, Rita and I reunited in Cleveland, now living in the same building.
In a short while, I made friends with a group of people in the Graduate House with diverse majors. Some were in various sciences, others in humanities. It was a lively group, with animated discussions on a range of academic topics, including politics, especially as the Vietnam War became the center of the news in the USA.
Rita was not a part of that group, but I did often see her. Being the eager student that I was, I was up early, getting to the university to study in the library before classes started. Coming to the dining room for breakfast, not long after it opened, I often saw Rita, too – all alone in a far corner. I took my tray and we had breakfast together. Except for that morning ritual, I seldom had any interactions with her.
Thinking about this now, I find the parallel morning rituals (first in Pittsburgh and then in Cleveland) a fascinating serendipitous episode in my life. The difference was that in Cleveland, we were not taking the same courses so we didn’t have to compare solutions to homework. We did talk about our respective courses, and interestingly a parallel appeared. By around mid-term of that first year in graduate school, we both were less than enthusiastic about what we were learning and, accordingly, were both thinking of not carrying on in our respective subjects.
For me it was Quantum Mechanics and the impossibility for us to know reality in itself. Everything was statistical, uncertain and almost esoteric. I found the uncritical attitude toward this world-view to be almost religious in nature. (I only learned later that Einstein felt the same way!)
For Rita, it was the same, despite the different fields. The math now was far beyond basic geometry, algebra and calculus. Topology, Group Theory, Galois’ Theory, and more – all culminating in Gödel’s Theorem, which asserts that all mathematical knowledge is inherently incomplete. It all was too esoteric for her. She knew that she was not going to get a PhD in mathematics.
We commiserated together, with another parallel in our unusual relationship, but with a difference. I still wanted to get my Master’s Degree and somehow still go on to get a job as a professor – that had been my goal in life ever since my first semester at Duquesne. Rita, however, was thinking of dropping out immediately and leaving university life altogether.
For me, this problem was resolved in my second year of Physics at Case, when I took a course taught by Martin Klein. Although he was a physicist in the Department, for many years he no longer was doing research in it. Instead, he was writing papers on the history of the subject – mainly involving Einstein, Boltzmann, Gibbs, Ehrenfest and others. Today those papers are paragons in the field. It was my extremely good luck that the department permitted him to teach such material for the first time.
I loved the course. I was enthralled by the topics – this was the way I wanted to learn physics, through its history. After getting my Master’s in Physics at the end of that year, I moved across campus to the History of Science Department. In another four years I had a PhD in the subject.
Back to early 1965: I tried to talk Rita out of dropping out, but she was adamant. The kicker was this: she really preferred numbers with $$$$ in front of them. Yes, she wanted to be an accountant. She didn’t want to waste any more time here, when she could be home getting her accounting credentials. As I recall, sometime before the spring of that year she went back to Pittsburgh. I’m sure she had an easy time getting her accounting licence and all that went with it. As she was very smart. My guess is that she was an excellent accountant and was very successful in that career.
I have no way of knowing. We didn’t keep in touch (honestly, I don’t know why not) and I can’t even remember her last name. All that I can recall is what I’ve written here. Nonetheless, I find these two interactions between Rita and me an interesting and pleasing tidbit about life and relationships – so much so that I deem it worthy of repeating here.
