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AMERICAN

Scientist
Departments Feature Articles
Volume 109 • Number 6 • November–December 2021

322 From the Editors

323 Letters to the Editors 352

326 Spotlight
Drilling into the climate of human
origins • Watchdogs of the savanna
• Pandemic data collection in
authoritarian regimes • Briefings

338 Perspective
Conservation across borders
Arturo Ramírez-Valdez

342 Engineering
All things cryptic
Henry Petroski
346 Arts Lab
Artists as archeologists of wildfire
Robert Louis Chianese

Scientists’
Nightstand
376 Books
Mythmakers in the market for
perfection • Humanity’s prospects
on a finite planet
360
352 Bird Brain Evolution
From Sigma Xi Avian smarts run the gamut from
381 Sigma Xi Today ostriches to crows. Why do large brains
Sigma Xi elections begin
November 8 • Gold Key Award
emerge in some lineages?
Daniel T. Ksepka
368
recipient Shirley M. Malcom • 2021
cohort of Sigma Xi Fellows • Faces of 360 The Curse of E = mc2 368 Insect Decision-Making
GIAR: Anika Wohlleben • Sigma Xi The most famous equation has a Combining virtual reality and fieldwork
award winners history that goes far beyond Albert yields insights into the mind of the apple
Einstein, and a meaning that is far fly, teasing out how the brain translates
less straightforward than is commonly information and patterns.
believed. Shannon B. Olsson and Pavan
Tony Rothman Kumar Kaushik
The Cov er
Each of the birds pictured—the scarlet macaw, the New Caledonian crow, and the extinct moa—has a large brain. But to truly under-
stand the evolution of avian intelligence, one must consider the relationship between brain size and body size, as explained in “Bird
Brain Evolution,” by biologist Daniel T. Ksepka (pages 352–359). When estimating “intelligence” from brain size—the only way to
make such an estimate from a fossil—biologists look at how much larger or smaller the braincase is than the expected size for a species
of that body mass. Scaled in this way, relative brain size is a proxy for intelligence. Thus, although the moa had a large brain in abso-
lute terms, the bird was also tremendous in size. As the moa evolved, its brain size lagged behind its body size, until it ended up with
the smallest relative brain size of any bird ever. By contrast, the large relative brain sizes of parrots and crows stand out from all other
birds, but they got there through different pathways. Parrots decreased their body size rapidly while retaining relatively large brains.
Corvids, who have the highest rate of brain-body evolution, evolved larger bodies, but their brains enlarged even faster than their bod-
ies, much as the brains of hominids did on the mammalian family tree. (Illustration by Emma Skurnick, https://emmaskurnick.com.)
From the Editors AMERICAN

Puzzling Brains
Scientist
www.americanscientist.org

VOLUME 109, NUMBER 6

T he largest of New Zealand’s now extinct moas,

giant flightless birds that could reach 3.6 me-
ters in height with their necks stretched upward,
Editor-in-Chief Fenella Saunders
Managing Editor Stacey Lutkoski
Senior Consulting Editor Corey S. Powell
weighed about 230 kilograms, and had brain Digital Features Editor Katie L. Burke
volumes of only about 60 milliliters. Moas had Senior Contributing Editors Efraín E. Rivera-
adapted to life on islands that had been isolated Serrano and Sarah Webb
from other land for some 80 million years; there, Contributing Editors Sandra J. Ackerman,
without much in the way of predators (at least Emily Buehler, Christa Evans, Jenny Jennings
Foerst, Jeremy Hawkins, Diana Robinson
until humans arrived), they didn’t have much to
Editorial Associate Mia Evans
fear—and they didn’t need to be smart. The moa
had the brains it needed to survive, but it lacked Art Director Barbara J. Aulicino
the “smarts” we associate with greater intelligence,
such as learning, tool use, and complex sociality. SCIENTISTS’ NIGHTSTAND
By contrast, corvids and parrots adapted to envi- Book Review Editor Flora Taylor
ronments in which it was advantageous to evolve brains that were larger than
AMERICAN SCIENTIST ONLINE
their body size might seem to warrant.
Digital Managing Editor Robert Frederick
Size is all relative, explains Daniel T. Ksepka in “Bird Brain Evolution” (pages
352–359), and it’s not as simple as the ratio of brain size to body size. To determine Publisher Jamie L. Vernon
across the fossil record when birds might have evolved more intelligence, Ksepka
and his colleagues developed a measure of how big of a brain would be expected EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE
for a given body size. Humans have brains about seven times bigger than expected American Scientist
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(pages 368–375), Shannon B. Olsson and Pavan Kumar Kaushik discuss the ways NPS Media Group • Beth Ulman, account director
they have used virtual reality arenas to figure out what’s going on inside the brain
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ligence. As Henry Petroski mentions in this issue’s Engineering column, “All
Things Cryptic” (pages 342–345), humans can’t help themselves when it comes PUBLISHED BY SIGMA XI, THE SCIENTIFIC
to puzzles: We consider them to be the epitome of thinking, and we can’t leave RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
them alone. This tendency has allowed us to have fun with riddles and word President Robert T. Pennock
puzzles, but it has also had rippling effects in cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, Treasurer David Baker
President-Elect Nicholas A. Peppas
and international espionage.
Immediate Past President Sonya T. Smith
Petroski opines that scientists see nature as a universe of puzzles. Indeed,
Executive Director Jamie L. Vernon
other fascinating creatures in this issue have been at the center of research co-
nundrums. In the Perspective column, “Conservation Across Borders” (pages American Scientist gratefully acknowledges
338–340), Arturo Ramirez-Valdez explains why population counts for giant sea support for “Engineering” through the Leroy
Record Fund.
bass have been so flummoxing and what the numbers can tell scientists about
how to handle conservation data going forward. And this issue’s Infographic,
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor
“Watchdogs of the Savanna” (page 330), discusses new research into the physiol-
Society is a society of scientists and engineers,
ogy of giraffes, explaining what keeps their blood flowing throughout their very founded in 1886 to recognize scientific
long necks. achievement. A diverse organization of
If humans can’t help themselves when it comes to a puzzle, let’s hope that members and chapters, the Society fosters
one riddle we find a solution for is how to deal with climate change. In this is- interaction among science, technology, and
sue’s Arts Lab, “Artists as Architects of Wildfire” (pages 346–350), Robert Louis society; encourages appreciation and support
Chianese discusses artworks that bring the effects of fire right up to the viewer, of original work in science and technology; and
by using debris from fires as the artistic medium. His hope, and that of the art- promotes ethics and excellence in scientific and
ists as well, is that these works will raise the consciousness of viewers, and en- engineering research.
courage us to focus our intelligence on cracking this immediate but complicated Printed in USA
puzzle. —Fenella Saunders (@FenellaSaunders)

322 American Scientist, Volume 109

Letters
Condo Collapse
To the Editors:
Henry Petroski’s expert analyses of
structural failures are of vital interest
to all of us who must depend on infra-
structure that is often past its prime, or
novel and unproven. However, his most
recent column, “What Lessons Will Be
Learned from the Florida Condo Col-
lapse?” (Engineering, September–October)
went to print within two months of
the catastrophe. I wonder whether the
very timeliness of these reports nec-
essarily leaves unsaid much that we
would wish to know.
Petroski carefully avoids drawing
conclusions unmerited by available
data. Might not our hunger for under-
standing be better nourished by delay-
ing the analysis until sufficient data is
obtained? Barring that, perhaps past
reports can be briefly revisited as fur-
ther investigation clarifies the underly-
ing causes of the disaster.
Jeff Freeman
Rahway, NJ
Dr. Petroski responds:
The reader is correct in noting that my
column about the Surfside, Florida,
condominium collapse does not draw
American Scientist (ISSN 0003-0996) is published bimonthly by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 (919-549-0097). Newsstand single
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any conclusions about the ultimate As I understood the law in Milan,
cause of the catastrophe. I wrote about every building with more than four
the tragedy within weeks of the inci- units has to hire a professional admin-
dent because other readers of American istrator, I think usually with an archi-
Scientist were already asking me when tecture degree. They have to belong
I might do so. to a professional association (albo).
The definitive report from the Na- As it’s a part-time job, administrators
tional Institute of Standards and Tech- typically handle several buildings in
nology (NIST), which is investigating addition to their architectural work,
the failure, is not likely to be issued for in which they function as a general
a year or so. Indeed, as I am writing this contractor. The Milan city government
response it is two months after the col- keeps a record of the administrator for
lapse and NIST has just announced the each building.
composition of the expert team that will Homeowners can delay repairs, and
carry out the official technical investiga- condo associations can likewise stall.
tion into the fall of the building. They’re amateurs. But when there’s
I wrote my column to be timely in a professional involved, there are no
providing context for the collapse and excuses. He or she cuts through the
to describe some early theories of what complaints and fixes problems what-
might have caused it. I expect to write ever the cost. It’s the law.
a more analytical and conclusive col- So I was baffled. In the United
umn on the subject after NIST issues States, do condo associations oper-
its final report. ate in the same manner as owners of
single-family dwellings? Is nobody en-
To the Editors: forcing anything?
When I heard the news about the
Anne Aldridge
Florida condo collapse and the various
Alameda, CA
inspections, I was baffled. I lived for
25 years in Milan, Italy, in a six-story Dr. Petroski responds:
building dating from about 1905. Most It sounds like Milan has a much bet-
people there live in condos; single- ter system for regulating condo build-
family homes are rare. ings than Surfside, Florida, and other
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2021 November–December 323
Online | @americanscientist.org
From the Street to the Stars
In this podcast, astrophysicist and
author Hakeem Oluseyi has a wide-
ranging conversation with digital
media specialist Kindra Thomas.
They discuss his experiences as
a Black scientist and his advice
on backyard astronomy, and also
explore the connections he sees
between music and science.
www.amsci.org/node/4849
Ethics of Land Relations in Science
Max Liboiron’s inaugural book,
Pollution Is Colonialism, is a primer
on untangling and resisting the
Gordian knot of justifications,
manipulations, and traditions that
enable colonialism in science.
www.amsci.org/node/4848
See Flies Navigate Their World
In “Insect Decision-Making” (pages
368–375) Shannon B. Olsson and
Pavan Kumar Kaushik detail their
research into how the brains of
apple flies work. The online version
of the article includes videos of these
insects navigating a virtual reality
arena that the authors created for
their study.
www.amsci.org/node/4851
American cities do. My understanding
is that in the United States, regulation is
up to the individual cities, and I gather
from anecdotal evidence that gover-
nance, operation, and maintenance of
buildings varies greatly. I doubt that the
federal government will get involved in
this issue, and probably not even the in-
dividual states, so building regulations
will continue to be a local matter and
therefore vary widely in effectiveness.
324 American Scientist, Volume 109
Deep Dive into a Fish Population
Want to know more about the
giant sea bass described in
“Conservation Across Borders”
(Perspective, pages 338–340)? Check
out a detailed infographic posted
with the online version of the
article. The illustration describes
the complicated history of fishing
and protecting this species.
www.amsci.org/node/4852
More on Biological Clocks
In this podcast companion to the
September–October Spotlight
column, circadian biologist Russell
Foster expands on his research into
sleep patterns.
www.amsci.org/node/4832
Check out AmSci Blogs
http://www.amsci.org/blog/
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As I mentioned in the article, some
counties in southern Florida do re-
quire recertification of a structure
before it reaches 40 years of age. Of
course, that does not address what
happens in the intervening years. My
daughter used to live in a co-op (a
New York City version of a condo),
and I got the sense that if any pro-
fessionals were involved in building
management, they tended to be law-
yers. The technical work of mainte-
nance seemed to be handled by a gen-
eral handyman. I’m sorry to say that
little is likely to change in this country
before other, similar collapses occur.
For the Love of Chalk
To the Editors:
Many thanks to Brian Hayes for his
review of Do Not Erase (“Chalkophilia,”
Nightstand, September–October). I had
an exceptional lecturer in college who
insisted on having a chalkboard in her
classroom for three reasons. First, al-
though slides were good for present-
ing results, they did not show the
process of working through a prob-
lem. Second, dry-erase markers were
smelly, quick to dry out, and wasteful.
She also thought that the markers were
“just too colorful,” and found that the
whiteboards were inevitably ruined by
improper usage. Third, chalkboards
were immense. On the 1-meter by
3-meters surface, she could start from
the far left and work her way through
the entire organogenesis of the hu-
man ear. By the end of a period, her
students had a collective map of their
odyssey to understanding. Students
rarely got completely lost in her class,
because the map was always there,
slowly unrolling.
Although interactive whiteboards,
referred to as smart boards, stand as
heir apparent, they are essentially just
adding complexity and watts to an al-
ready near-perfect design. Even with-
out “smart” technology, every student
with a phone (that is, every student)
could create their own Do Not Erase log
for the year through photographs of
their instructors’ chalkboards. I hope
classroom designers will resist adopt-
ing tech for tech’s sake and consider
the merits of a blackboard revival.
Justin Vaughn
Athens, GA
How to Write to American Scientist
Brief letters commenting on articles
appearing in the magazine are wel-
comed. The editors reserve the right
to edit submissions. Please include
an email address if possible. Address:
Letters to the Editors, P.O. Box 13975,
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 or
editors@amscionline.org.
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Spotlight | A sediment core packed with information
Drilling into the Climate of
Human Origins
Cores of sediment from ancient basins and lake beds in eastern Africa
reveal the fluctuating conditions under which our species evolved.
For the past couple of million years,
the area of eastern Africa around the
equator has been a particularly hos-
pitable neighborhood for our genus,
judging by how rich it is in early hu-
man fossils and artifacts. No fewer
than five varieties of early Homo have
been identified in this region, which
includes portions of Ethiopia, Uganda,
Kenya, and Tanzania. How did one
relatively small spot nurture such va-
riety, and why did half a dozen species
dwindle down to the single one, Homo
sapiens, that survives today?
According to a growing scientific
consensus, a large part of the answer
to both questions can be found in the
climates of the past. A great many
clues about past climates, and about
when and how much they changed,
reside in the sediment that lies beneath
fossil-rich areas. The search for evi-
dence of this variability leads, then, to
sediment cores from eastern Africa—
particularly from basins and lake beds,
whose sediments are now yielding de-
tailed records of climate history.
Core drilling for the purposes of sci-
entific research first took place on the
high seas, in efforts to test the theory
of plate tectonics; the slow sedimenta-
tion rates of the seabed allowed pale-
oceanographers to assemble records
spanning many tens of millions of
years, albeit at low resolution. By con-
trast, research into human evolution
calls for drilling onshore in the basins
of ancient or extant lakes, where the
rapid buildup of sediment can yield
records that are typically shorter but
offer a much finer time resolution of
past African climate changes.
A period of particular interest for
scholars of human evolution is the inter-
val from about 500,000 to about 300,000
years ago, when the archaeological
record shows large, heavy stone tools
being replaced by a variety of smaller,
more deftly fashioned tools for cutting,
326 American Scientist, Volume 109
scraping, and other specific purposes.
The Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya is world
famous for its trove of fossils and for
artifacts documenting this transition to
more complex behavior—including the
earliest known use of ochre as a pigment
and the carrying of obsidian (volcanic
glass) over long distances from its source
to other sites where it was worked into
tools and put to use. Sometimes stones
were knapped or flaked into tools at one
site, and then carried elsewhere to be
used for butchering. Unfortunately, se-
vere erosion of the Olorgesailie outcrop
has left a gap in the fossil and archaeo-
logical record at just this interval, so that
Many clues about past
climates, and about
when and how they
changed, reside
in the sediment that
lies beneath
fossil-rich areas.
researchers up to now have had scant
evidence of specific factors in the en-
vironment that may have driven these
profound changes of behavior.
Now available to help fill the gap,
however, is a sediment core drilled
from the neighboring Koora Basin,
an ancient lake bed just 24 kilometers
from Olorgesailie. Andrew Cohen,
professor of geosciences at the Univer-
sity of Arizona, explains, “The point of
drilling [here] is to capture the interval
of time missing in the outcrop record.
The core site at Koora is from an area in
the central part of the basin where sedi-
mentation was much more continuous
during the time that erosion was occur-
ring in the Olorgesailie outcrop area.”
In a new article in the Journal of Hu-
man Evolution (August 2021), paleocli-
matologist Rachel Lupien and her col-
leagues combine several studies of the
Koora Basin sediment core to produce a
high-resolution record of environmental
fluctuations in eastern Africa over the
past one million years. Richard Potts, di-
rector of the Human Origins Program at
the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of Natural History, oversees
the drilling project and last year pub-
lished the first results with his collabo-
rators (Science Advances, October 2020).
The unusually high resolution of the
Koora Basin record relies on three dis-
tinct components found in sediment
cores: plant waxes, bulk organic mat-
ter, and phytoliths. The three different
components show good alignment in
their chronology (within a few millen-
nia of one another), but each compo-
nent yields information about a differ-
ent spatial scale. “The three aren’t all
giving us exactly the same informa-
tion, but they give information that’s
very closely linked,” Lupien says.
Plant waxes offer information on
what was growing on land in the Koora
Basin (and, by inference, the neighbor-
ing Olorgesailie Basin) at a given time.
Composed of carbon and hydrogen,
these compounds evolved early in the
history of vegetation to protect soft tis-
sues and reduce the evaporation of wa-
ter from leaf surfaces. Plant waxes are
lightweight and easily carried by wind
throughout a large area. Under isotopic
analysis, they can indicate the photo-
synthetic pathways of numerous plants,
giving the general ratio of carbon-3
plants (trees and shrubs) and carbon-4
plants (mainly grasses) that were grow-
ing within the basin, and hence the types
of vegetation that were available for ear-
ly humans and other animals to eat.
Bulk organic matter incorporates ma-
terial from both land and lake—Lupien
likens it to a “soup of all the organic
matter”—and therefore gives a record
of past vegetation that is somewhat
more broad than the detailed informa-
tion from plant waxes or phytoliths.
Recently, however, a new technique of
analyzing so-called “clumped isotopes”
from samples of calcium carbonates
from ancient soils has begun to yield
information about another important
aspect of climate: temperature. Geo-
chemist Emily Beverly, of the Universi-
ty of Houston, explains that in calcium
carbonate, different isotopes of carbon
and oxygen “clump” together in a way
that depends on the ambient tempera-
ture. By measuring how frequently the
rarer and heavier isotopes, carbon-13
and oxygen-18, bond in these carbon-
ates, as compared with how frequently
they would be expected to bond by
random chance, researchers can get an
idea of how hot or cool the atmosphere
would have been in a given millenni-
um—a useful level of resolution in a
climate record spanning a million years.
The phytolith samples, the third
component studied, give information
only about plants that were growing
within the basin itself. First recognized
by Charles Darwin, who termed them
“plant stones,” phytoliths are micro-
scopic structures composed of silica that
growing plants take up from the soil
and deposit into and around their cells.
(See “Phytoliths: The Storytelling Stones
Inside Plants,” March–April 2015, for
more.) Paleoecologist Rahab Kinyanjui,
senior research scientist at the National
Museums of Kenya, explains that be-
cause these “cell casts” are inorganic,
they preserve their form and structure
for many thousands of years, whether
in dry or moist environments. In a labo-
ratory setting, researchers can extract
phytoliths from sediment and classify
them according to taxa, and sometimes
even to family, by their characteristic
features. Within the grass family, phyto-
liths can indicate whether a plant used
a carbon-3 or carbon-4 photosynthetic
pathway; the presence of abundant
carbon-3 plants would indicate rela-
tively cool, moist conditions, whereas
carbon-4 plants would prevail at times
of greater heat and aridity.
Although the analyses of plant wax-
es, bulk organic matter, and phytoliths
each reveal different aspects of the
paleoenvironment, they all tell the same
story: recurring cycles of great variabil-
ity in the climate of eastern Africa be-
tween about 400,000 and 90,000 years
ago. As James Russell, chair of Brown
University’s Department of Earth, En-
vironmental, and Planetary Sciences,
says, “The fact that all these data show
very similar patterns lets us focus on Photo by Jennifer Clark, Human Origins Program, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution
the environmental history of the area.” In the Koora Basin in Kenya, an international research team has drilled out a core of sediment
A major driver of environmental that accumulated over the course of the past million years. The sediment core gives evidence
history in this region is the nature of of a highly variable climate, which may have spurred the substantial changes that can be seen
the monsoons, which produce a twice- in both the fossil and the archaeological record from about 500,000 to 300,000 years ago at the
yearly onslaught of wind and rain that nearby Olorgesailie Basin site.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 327

 21,000 years in length, cycles of pre-
cession appear to account very well
for the environmental variability that
shows up in the records of plant waxes,
bulk organic matter, and phytoliths.
Precession is not the only orbital pat-
tern to make its mark on the climate.
In a longer cycle, about every 400,000
years, precession becomes much stron-
ger, according to Mark Maslin, paleo-
climatologist at University College
London. With a great increase of rainfall
from strengthened monsoons, fresh-
water lakes would suddenly appear,
only to dry up and disappear again over
the course of the next few thousand
years. In any case, says Maslin, “I’m not
convinced we can trace the story of hu-
Phytoliths—microscopic structures of silica that form inside growing plants—are like “cell man evolution in Africa by focusing on
casts” that preserve their characteristic forms for many thousands of years and can ultimately
a small number of sites” such as Olorge-
testify to the presence of long-vanished vegetation. The phytoliths shown here were collected
from Mumba Rock Shelter, in Tanzania. (Images courtesy of J. Mercader, et al. 2021. Phytolith
sailie. In studying four million years of
palaeoenvironments at Mumba Rock Shelter. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9:699609.) climate records with his collaborators,
Maslin says, “We found you could see
can account for up to 75 percent of an- of the monsoons. “There will always be changes in the whole of eastern Africa,
nual rainfall. Extensive research has a rainy season and a dry season,” says and even throughout the continent.”
shown that Earth’s rotation is subject Lupien, “but the length and intensity Crucially, the climate fluctuations
to a rocking motion, known as preces- of monsoons, and in turn the timing that researchers have teased out thus far
sion, like the wobble of a spinning top, and intensity of rainfall in a given year, all appear to have acted in different time
which can alter the length and strength will vary because of precession.” At frames, on many distinct but interrelat-
ed aspects of the environment. Equally
important, the fluctuations cannot all
be traced to a single cause. The formula
of attributing human evolution mainly
to various ice ages is one that Maslin
dismisses as a “zombie idea,” repeat-
edly and deservedly put down, only to
rise again. “We must look at the fossils,
the geological records, the astronomical
data, the history of the ocean basins,
and the paleoclimate all together,” he
insists. “It is variability of the climate
that drives human evolution. Variability
allows for the proliferation of species,
Photo by Jennifer Clark, Human Origins Program, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution

but it also leads to higher population

densities, and hence to competition.”
In view of the wealth of information
they can uncover, drilling rigs will like-
ly soon be added to the toolkit of many
archaeological excavations that take
place on the shores of ancient or extant
lakes. After all, says the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute director Peter
de Menocal, “It’s these lake sediments
that really tell the story of changes in
the climate, right next to where the fos-
sils are found.”—Sandra J. Ackerman
Geochemist Emily Beverly takes samples of
bulk organic matter from the Koora Basin
sediment core to obtain a record of past cli-
matic conditions. Beverly studies isotopes
found in the calcium carbonates of ancient
soils, whereas other researchers focus on the
records left by plant waxes or phytoliths.

328 American Scientist, Volume 109

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Infographic | Charlotte Ricker

WATCHDOGS OF THE SAVANNA

Giraffa c melopardalis reticulata
ON THE LOOKOUT STRONG AND FLEXIBLE NECK
Giraffes are herbivores that live on the open savanna The bony structure of the viraffe’s neck
and in wooded vrasslands in Africa. They tower demonstrates an excellent balance of weivht,
above all other mammals—adult males can top out flexibility, and durability. Like humans, viraffes
at 5.8 meters tall and weivh 1,270 kilovrams, with have seven cervical vertebrae, but theirs can
necks up to 2.4 meters lonv. Giraffes require very vrow more than 25.4 centimeters lonv. The
hivh blood pressure to circulate blood throuvh vertebrae are joined by ball-and-socket joints
their tall bodies. A February 2021 study that offer a 360-devree ranve of motion. The
published in the Annual Review of Physiology first and second thoracic vertebrae are also
outlines the unique characteristics of the joined with a ball-and-socket joint, allowinv
species’ blood vessels, heart, and kidneys to additional flexibility. The joint between the
compensate for this hivh blood pressure. viraffe’s neck and skull allows it to extend its
Other animals look to the viraffe for sivns of distress head almost perpendicular to the vround. The
because they are often the first to detect danver neck sways with its stride, vuidinv its center of
from their sky-hivh perspective. Giraffes live in vravity, and the viraffe tosses its neck back and
loosely bound, scattered herds of 10 to 20 forth to help it rise from a sittinv to a standinv
members. Accordinv to an Auvust 2021 paper in position on its spindly levs.
Mammal Review, the herds exhibit cooperative, The vertebrae over the viraffe’s shoulders
matrilineal social vroups that are maintained have lonv vertical extensions, which create
throuvh complex communication systems. its sivnature hump. Its nuchal livament runs
Wide Range of View from the back of the skull to the base of
Giraffes have the larvest the tail, and is thickest over the shoulders.
eyes of any land mammal. This livament acts like a viant rubber band,
Keen eyesivht is essential counteractinv the weivht of the viraffe’s
for spottinv predators
on the open savanna.
head and neck. This mechanism causes SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP
the viraffe’s head to bob up and down Red-billed and yellow-billed oxpeckers, or tickbirds,
The viraffe’s lonv eyelashes
when it walks and allows the animal to have a symbiotic relationship with viraffes. The
repel ants and sense thorns
on the branches of the acacia hold its head aloft without relyinv solely oxpeckers eat ticks and parasites off the viraffes,
trees that they eat. on muscular enervy. Male viraffes, called and the viraffes are relieved of blood-suckinv,
bulls, compete throuvh necking, in disease-carryinv parasites. The birds’ feet are adapted
which they use their hefty necks to for vraspinv, which allows them to remain perched on
strike each other with their host while it moves throuvh the savanna. The
PATTERN crushinv force. oxpeckers sift throuvh the viraffes’ hair lookinv for
The irrevular brown insects, and they also clean the viraffes’ teeth.
markinvs that cover
most of its body are
unique to each viraffe,
like finverprints in
humans. The pattern
offers some
HORNS
camouflave, but the Males may have up to
markinvs are primarily five calcified occicones,
used as thermal or horns, that they
use durinv fivhts
EXTRA SUPPORT
windows to revulate
temperature. Each for dominance.
markinv has a larve The viraffe is a two-toed ungulate,
blood vessel around or hoofed animal. A hivhly specialized
its border. By structure prevents viraffes’ thin levs
directinv blood flow from collapsinv under their immense
to or away from the weivht. Elonvated metatarsal and
smaller vessels
branchinv toward the
metacarpal bones account for rouvhly
half of the lev’s lenvth. A vroove runs 46-
center of the markinv, alonv the lenvth of these bones,
housinv a structure called the
CENTIMETER
the viraffe can radiate
or retain heat as suspensory ligament. This elastic tissue TONGUE
needed. provides support so that viraffes can Giraffes’ tonvues add 46 centimeters to their reach,
carry their weivht with minimal muscular allowinv them to snav their favorite snack: the leaves,
effort, reducinv fativue. pods, and fruits of acacia trees, which can vrow to
Giraffes have a pacinv vait, movinv both heivhts vreater than 12 meters. Giraffes can eat more
levs on one side at the same time, which than 66 kilovrams of leaves daily. The lips of the viraffe
causes them to sway back and forth when are made of touvh skin that serves as protection from
they walk. This vait saves enervy by the tree’s thorny branches, and the roof of its mouth is
enablinv lonver strides. Giraffes can sprint vrooved to help strip leaves off the tree.
as fast as 60 kilometers per hour in short The viraffe is the world’s larvest ruminant, a vroup of
FLY SWATTER bursts, and their powerful kick is stronv
enouvh to kill a lion.
animals that partly divest their food and then
A black tuft on the revurvitate it to chew as cud. Food is divested throuvh a
end of the viraffe’s four-chambered stomach to maximize nutrient
SKULL (lateral view) absorption. Because of their efficient divestive system,
lonv, thin tail is an
incisor teeth
efficient fly (bottom jaw only) viraffes can survive for several days without water.
swatter that
keeps insects UPPER JAW
off the animal’s (ventral view)
rump.
vroove in roof of mouth
Pandemic Data Collection in Authoritarian Regimes
Collecting and sharing data during public health crises is typically considered a benefit
to everyone. Among other advantages, data can bolster researchers’ understanding of
viral spread, inform politicians’ policy decisions, and alert people to potential risks. As
the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted, however, data sharing is no guarantee of
data validity, and according to Ruth Carlitz, data originating in authoritarian regimes
requires special scrutiny. An assistant professor of political science at Tulane University,
Carlitz studies public-service provisions in developing countries such as Tanzania, where
she conducts much of her field work. Carlitz spoke with Scott Knowles, a historian of risk
and disaster at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, on his daily
podcast, COVIDCalls. On the podcast, Knowles speaks to guests about their research

Courtesy of Ruth Carlitz

and the far-reaching effects of the pandemic. He began their conversation by noting
the number of COVID-19–related deaths in various countries, including 21 fatalities
reported in Tanzania. Carlitz pointed out that the Tanzanian government stopped re-
porting pandemic data in May 2020, which illustrates the need to question information
from authoritarian regimes. This interview is part of an ongoing collaboration between
American Scientist and COVIDCalls. It has been edited for length and clarity.

You recently coauthored a paper in the

Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and
Law on open data from authoritarian
regimes. What are some of the indices
that you use to classify a country as
authoritarian?
Indices such as the Democracy Index
[produced by the Economist Intel-
ligence Unit] are certainly helpful for
identifying countries that have similar
systems of government and similar con-
straints, especially on the free flow of
information. Another factor is the pro-
cesses through which governments are
selected, the degree to which the popu-
lar will translates into who’s selected.
But I also find the scientific measure-
ment and ranking of democracy a bit
troubling and ahistoric. The indices of-
ten ignore factors such as the legacies
of colonialism, especially in the part of
the world that my research has focused
on. I’m more comfortable with systems
of classification that say, “These are fea-
tures of a system of governance that we
associate with democracy.”
Once we put numbers and rankings
on things, we take them to be objective,
but behind these numbers are a lot of
assumptions. Many of these rankings are
based on the subjective opinions of ex-
perts. But who gets to be an expert? And
when you’re comparing a country rank
of 97 versus 96, what does that mean?
“Once we put
numbers and
rankings on things,
we take them
to be objective,
but behind these
numbers are a lot
of assumptions.”
There are a lot of boxes that don’t
get opened once something has a
number on it. The ranking becomes a
cold, hard, objective fact. I do use these
rankings in my work, so I’m being a
little hypocritical, but they do some-
times make me uncomfortable.
That’s the bind we’re all in, simultaneous-
ly critiquing and relying upon the num-
bers related to COVID-19. To what extent
are reported health statistics part of the
calculations used to understand how
democratic a given country might be?
Population health and well being is a re-
ally important indicator of how well that
society is doing. When you have serious
inequities in health outcomes, that of-
ten points to governance issues. Even in
the United States we have very different
mortality rates among people of differ-
ent races and people who live in differ-
ent parts of the country, not only from
COVID, but also from giving birth and
other medical matters. Some of that dis-
parity is definitely due to governance-
driven decisions about what sorts of
publicly funded care is made available
to people and whose influence is restrict-
ing access to certain types of care.
Some of your recent research concerns
COVID-19 denialism in Tanzania, in-
cluding among what you call street-
level bureaucrats. You haven’t been
able to travel to Tanzania during the
pandemic, so how did you conduct this
research, and what have you found?
Having a collaborator in Tanzania is
vital. Tanzania completely stopped re-
porting on COVID cases and deaths in
May of 2020, around the same time that
Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli,
declared the country COVID-free. Ma-
gufuli’s main action on the pandemic
was to encourage people to attend na-
tional prayer services and to live their
lives without fear. But his Ministry of
Health did issue some guidelines at the
beginning of the outbreak reflecting

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 331

international best practices, such as so-
cial distancing, handwashing, and use
of PPE [personal protective equipment].
My collaborator at American Uni-
versity, Nina Yamanis, and I wondered
how social distancing works in a so-
ciety such as Tanzania’s that’s much
more communal and where informal
living arrangements are common. We
reached out to Henry Mollel of the De-
partment of Health Systems Manage-
ment at Mzumbe University in Tanza-
nia, asking him to join us, and thanks
to his great efforts, we were able to
get interviews on the ground with 40
local health officials at different lev-
els of government, including hospital
administrators, district health officers,
and village health officers.
Just two months after the president
declared victory over coronavirus, we
found out about a whole lot of work
done by these tireless local officials
to get people to wash their hands, to
socially distance, and to wear masks.
They were running public education
campaigns to tell people how to report
suspected cases and how to quarantine.
We didn’t hear a lot of pushback to
the national-level messaging. Rather,
our respondents overwhelmingly
praised the president, saying that the
limited national response was helpful
for reducing fear and stigma. One of
our interviewees said the absence of a
national response allowed them to treat
COVID like any other disease. And this
is a context where local officials have
a lot of experience working with other
communicable diseases, such as Ebola
and HIV-AIDS. For some of our inter-
viewees, having the national response
be “COVID is nothing special” let them
go on with their lives and adapt their
best practices that they had developed
from dealing with other diseases.
That being said, we are aware of
a potential social desirability bias—
interviewees or survey respondents say-
ing something that they think you want
to hear, or maybe that they think their
higher-ups want to hear. So we weren’t
going in and expecting people to tell us
their deepest, darkest hopes and fears.
But we heard enough criticism along
with the praise that we thought a lot of
the responses were pretty genuine.
There was a disconnect between what
someone only reading the headlines
might think was going on in Tanzania
versus the perspectives of local officials.
But it was not a comparative study. It
looked at Tanzania at one point in time.
332 American Scientist, Volume 109
To what degree are the populations
that you have studied complying with
pandemic safety recommendations?
Moraka Makhura [of the University of
Pretoria, South Africa] and I conduct-
ed a study in South Africa where we
examined subnational data on popula-
tion mobility from cell phones [pub-
lished in World Development, January
2021]. A number of scholars have used
this data to get at the extent to which
people are complying with lockdown
orders—or in places where there isn’t
a strict lockdown, such as Sweden, to
see whether people are still staying
home. If the cell phone is moving, we
assume the person is, too. These mea-
sures work best in places where a lot of
“The pandemic is
affecting the rich
countries, and that
can have a leveling
effect. There’s
the potential to
disrupt hierarchies
of knowledge and
expertise.”
people use smartphones, so South Af-
rica is a better place to use them than
in some other parts of Africa.
Our subnational analysis of this mo-
bility data in South Africa showed that
the people complied less in parts of the
country where their livelihoods were
more subsistence-based, where it was
much harder to work from home in
these sorts of situations. That was a
driver of variation in compliance or in
population mobility in South Africa.
For emergency management in the
United States and in Europe, account-
ing can’t always be done in the mo-
ment, but there’s a sense that when the
disaster ends, we’re going to get an ac-
counting of what happened. When the
pandemic is declared over, what confi-
dence do you have that we will begin
to get a clearer picture in Tanzania,
for instance, where the government
stopped reporting statistics last year?
I think it’s unlikely anywhere to have
that accounting, especially with some-
thing that has generated just so much
fatigue. But I think Tanzania is a very
interesting place to be watching right
now because President Magufuli, who
really took the country in a more au-
thoritarian direction, died this spring,
a few months into his second term—
suspected by some of COVID. He was
succeeded by his vice president, Samia
Suluhu Hassan. She’s in the same party
and is not necessarily seen as a reform-
er who’s going to reverse Magufuli’s
directives, but she is taking a very dif-
ferent tack with respect to COVID.
Hassan has been seen in public wear-
ing a mask. She’s convened a commit-
tee to develop recommendations for
managing the pandemic. It’s really
night and day regarding a commitment
to access to information, reporting, and
surveillance. The government is also
joining the global vaccine alliance to
get Tanzania access to vaccines through
COVAX or other initiatives. But I don’t
imagine that a lot of their efforts are go-
ing to be backward-looking.
Tanzania is still a society—a system
of governance—that often doesn’t feel
very comfortable publicly question-
ing authority. So my sense is there’s a
feeling of relief in many quarters that
Hassan is operating very nimbly and,
I imagine, diplomatically. I’m cau-
tiously optimistic that her policies will
improve health outcomes for people in
Tanzania in aggregate. It will be really
interesting to keep an eye on.
Are the United Nations, the World
Health Organization, and other non-
governmental organizations that fo-
cus on health provision or press free-
dom motivators for transparency at
the national level?
It’s hard to tell, when there are so many
fires to put out. Something that’s strik-
ing about the COVID-19 pandemic
when compared with other health or
governance crises in a country like Tan-
zania, is that it’s also affecting the rich
countries, and that can have a leveling
effect. There’s some potential to disrupt
hierarchies of knowledge and expertise.
When it’s clear that some of the rich-
est and most powerful countries in the
world really don’t know what they’re
doing either, maybe that opens the door
(continued on page 334)
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for more listening to the experiences
and judgments of countries like those
in Africa that have deep reserves of ex-
perience in dealing with communicable
diseases and practices such as contact
tracing that rely on communities shar-
ing information.

Now that Samia Suluhu Hassan has be-

come president, Tanzania is under the
leadership of a woman. Back in the dark-
est days of the pandemic there were re-
ports that nations led by women were
more successful in containing COVID-19.
What do you think about that framing
of looking at national leadership styles
with regard to gender?
I’m pretty wary of centralizing gender.
I think we’ll have true equality when
women leaders can be just as corrupt
and incompetent as men [laughs]. I
think it’s more likely that there’s some-
thing about the overall systems of gov-
ernance in countries that elect women
to the highest offices. It’s sort of epi-
phenomenal rather than a causal effect
of female leadership.
That said, given how women are
socialized in many countries and the
norms that surround women’s roles in
society—or even in the household—
there’s reason to believe they may
be more responsive to certain public
health concerns or more likely to adopt
approaches that can have beneficial ef-
fects. I have done some work looking
into that, and it’s really about consider-
ing the different experiences and lived
Associated Press/AP Images
People using a handwashing station outside a market in Dodoma, Tanzania, on May 18,
2020, are following the recommendations of their local public health officials and lead-
ers. That same month, then-President John Magufuli declared the country COVID-free,
stopped collecting data on the pandemic, and told people to go back to their normal lives.
Leaders of local organizations say that, counterintuitively, the lack of national response
helped their work, because the disease did not become stigmatized.
realities of women versus men in many sumptions that inform social norms.
countries, and then what the implica- So I think with the pandemic there is
tions are when women are in positions potential for the restructuring of gen-
of power. There may just be things that der divisions of labor in the household
men in their same positions wouldn’t and seeing how that filters up into na-
be thinking about and wouldn’t be tional politics. I don’t think we want
aware of, and that can have a number to speculate too much, but we’re at a
of consequences down the line. critical juncture in so many ways, so
Crises can be opportunities, because it’s something to keep an eye on.
they are situations in which the sta-
tus quo is disrupted, and that can lead Am A podcast of the full interview with
to a reevaluation of some of these as- Sci this researcher is available online.

334 American Scientist, Volume 109

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2021 November–December 335
Briefings
I
n this roundup, managing editor
Stacey Lutkoski summarizes
notable recent developments
in scientific research, selected from
reports compiled in the free electronic
newsletter Sigma Xi SmartBrief:
www.smartbrief.com/sigmaxi/index.jsp
Scuba-Diving Reptiles
Some lizards can breathe underwater by
forming an air bubble over their snouts.
Evolutionary biologist Christopher K.
Boccia of the University of Toronto led
a team that investigated how members
of the Anolis lizard genus—also called
anoles—manage to stay submerged for
several minutes at a time. The team cap-
tured 32 species of both semiaquatic and
nonaquatic anoles in Costa Rica in order
to observe how the animals behaved in
water. By rebreathing air trapped in a
bubble around their snouts, semiaquatic
Lindsey Swierk
anoles were able to stay underwater for
up to 18 minutes. The hydrophobic skin
common among all Anolis species is the
key to the bubble formation. When an
anole is submerged, a thin film of air is
trapped between the water and its skin.
As the lizard exhales, that film traps
the air in a bubble over its nose; when
it inhales, the bubble deflates and the
film retracts around its body. Some non-
aquatic anoles can also form a bubble
and rebreathe, though they cannot do
so consistently. The replication of this
rebreathing behavior across all of the
semiaquatic and some nonaquatic Ano-
lis species that the team studied is an
example of macroevolutionary conver-
gence among anoles.
Boccia, C. K., et al. Repeated evolution of un-
derwater rebreathing in diving Anolis lizards.
Current Biology 31:2947–2954.e4 (July 12).
Smoke-Filled Clouds Don’t Rain
Wildfires may hamper clouds’ ability to
form precipitation, which leads to dry
conditions that are more likely to trigger
wildfires, thus creating a feedback loop.
Atmospheric scientists studied cumulus
336 American Scientist, Volume 109
clouds over the western United States
during the 2018 wildfire season. (See
“Artists as Archeologists of Wildfire,”
pages 346–350.) They found that smoke-
filled clouds could hold five times as
many droplets as clouds without smoke,
but that each droplet was about half the
normal size. These small droplets were
less likely to collide and accumulate into
masses large enough to form rain. Simi-
lar results have been found in the Ama-
zon, but these U.S. findings show that
the phenomenon is not unique to that
environment. Global climate change has
resulted in an increased number of high-
intensity wildfires worldwide, and this
self-perpetuating cycle could be contrib-
uting to the severity of the problem.
Twohy, C. H., et al. Biomass burning smoke
and its influence on clouds over the west-
ern U.S. Geophysical Research Letters
doi:10.1029/2021GL094224 (July 26).
A Glimpse Inside the Red Planet
Data from seismic activity on Mars are
giving researchers a peek into the inner
workings of the planet. These findings
are the first seismic mapping of the inte-
rior of any planet other than Earth and
are an important step in understanding
the formation of rocky planets. The NASA
lander InSight (Interior Exploration us-
ing Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and
Heat Transport) has been gathering data
from “marsquakes” since 2018. In a trio
of articles published in Science, a bevy of
experts unpack the numbers to expose
the planet’s composition. They looked at
data from 35 quakes that ranged from
magnitude 3.0 to magnitude 4.0 on the
Richter scale, which are large by Martian
standards but would barely be felt on
Earth. Most of the marsquakes originated
in the crust, but 10 subcrustal seismic
events provide clues about the planet’s
inner layers. The researchers determined
NASA/JPL-Caltech
that Mars’s core starts about 1,560 kilo-
meters beneath the surface, or nearly
halfway to the center. Given the planet’s
known mass, this larger-than-expected
core must also be less dense than previ-
ously thought. Between the core and the
crust is a relatively thin mantle—about
half as thick as that of Earth. The data
indicate that the Martian core is liquid,
though further research is required to
determine whether there is a solid inner
core similar to that of Earth. InSight’s suc-
cess has resulted in a two-year extension
of its mission.
Khan, A., et al. Upper mantle structure of
Mars from InSight seismic data. Science
doi:10.1126/science.abf2966 (July 23).
Knapmeyer-Endrun, B., et al. Thickness and
structure of the martian crust from InSight
seismic data. Science doi:10.1126/science
.abf8966 (July 23).
Stähler, S. C., et al. Seismic detection of the
martian core. Science doi:10.1126/science
.abi7730 (July 23).
Dams Increase Risk of Malaria
Reservoirs formed by small dams are a
breeding ground for mosquitoes, result-
ing in a significant number of malaria
incidences. A team of public health and
water management experts looked at
malaria rates in the population of 14.7
million people living within 5 kilometers
of dam reservoirs in four sub-Saharan
river basins: the Limpopo, the Omo-
Turkana, the Volta, and the Zambezi.
The regions’ 258 large dams (those with
a height of 15 meters or greater, or that
hold more than 3 million cubic meters
of water) represent major infrastructure
projects, whereas the 4,907 small dams
are often community constructions built
without input from hydrologists or engi-
neers. Those experts are trained to de-
sign dams that are less likely to attract
mosquitoes by, for example, avoiding
shallow slopes, which generally corre-
spond to poor drainage. The researchers
found that between 0.9 million and 1.7
million malaria cases per year in those
four river basins could be attributed to
living in close proximity to a dam, and
between 77 percent and 85 percent
of those incidences were due to small
dams. People often live near small dams
because they rely on the captured water
to irrigate fields and water livestock.
These findings can help public health
and water management professionals
focus their malaria mitigation efforts.
Kibret, S., M. McCartney, J. Lautze, L.
Nhamo, and G. Yan. The impact of large
and small dams on malaria transmission
in four basins in Africa. Scientific Reports
doi:10.1038/s41598-021-92924-3 (June 25).
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www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 337

 Perspective
Conservation Across Borders
Research indicating that the giant sea bass is critically endangered did not
consider data from Mexico, where the majority of the species lives.
Arturo Ramírez-Valdez
I
was looking at the seafloor, fo-
cused on identifying fish species as
I normally did when diving off the
California coast, when I sudden-
ly sensed something large above me.
When I turned my head, I saw an enor-
mous fish—more than 2 meters long—
calmly investigating the air bubbling
from my scuba regulator each time I ex-
haled. This 2016 dive marked my first
encounter with a giant sea bass.
I am a marine ecologist who studies
how international borders pose chal-
lenges for conservation and manage-
ment efforts in aquatic environments.
Giant sea bass are heavily regulated and
researched in the United States, but scientific
and conservation efforts rarely extend beyond
the border with Mexico.
338 American Scientist, Volume 109
Despite the absence of walls or fences
in the ocean, borders can still act as
stark barriers for a variety of marine
activities, including research.
Giant sea bass live off the western
coast of North America in both Mexi-
can and U.S. waters. Large differences
between the two countries in regula-
tion and research efforts have led to a
significant misunderstanding of giant
sea bass population health, including
the likely miscategorization of the spe-
cies as critically endangered by the In-
ternational Union for Conservation of
Nature (IUCN).
Jeffrey Bozanic
QUICK TAKE
In Mexico, giant sea bass are largely un-
regulated and unstudied, but observations
and data from fisheries indicate that the spe-
cies remains plentiful.
Science Across Borders
The giant sea bass (Stereolepis gigas)
is the largest coastal bony fish in the
northeastern Pacific Ocean. It can grow
to be up to 2.7 meters long and weigh
up to 315 kilograms, and its life span
can reach 76 years. It lives in coastal
waters ranging from Humboldt Bay in
far northern California to the southern
tip of the Baja California peninsula in
Mexico, including the entire Gulf of Cal-
ifornia. (In this article, I use California to
refer to the U.S. state and Baja California
to refer to the Mexican peninsula.)
In California, commercial fishing for
giant sea bass began in the late
1880s. The fish were abun-
dant across the entire range
until the early 1970s, when
a sudden reduction in yield
led to the collapse of U.S. gi-
ant sea bass fisheries. In 1981
the United States banned both
commercial and recreational
Giant sea bass live up to their
name, as is evident when one is
juxtaposed with a scuba diver.
The fish were once common off
the California coast, but sightings
are now rare, and the species is
considered critically endangered.
However, that classification did
not take into account data from
Mexico, where the fish remain
plentiful. Information siloed on
the two sides of a border may
hamper research and conservation
efforts for other species as well.
Asymmetrical data and research can result
in false impressions of a species’ population
health and thereby hamper conservation and
sustainability efforts.
fishing for giant sea bass, and in 1996
the fish was included on the IUCN Red
List of Threatened Species as critically
endangered due to the population being
“severely fragmented, leading to a con-
tinuing decline of mature individuals.”
The giant sea bass population col-
lapse in California and its subsequent
protection along with a flurry of re-
search on the fish in the United States
stand in stark contrast to activities in
Mexico, where few regulations govern
fishing for giant sea bass, and there is
almost a complete lack of data and re-
search on the species.
The dearth of Mexico-based schol-
arship about giant sea bass is com-
pounded by the problem that research
from U.S. institutions stops at the bor-
der. My colleagues and I conducted an
extensive literature review and found
56 unique, peer-reviewed articles that
mention giant sea bass; of those, only
three include any data or information
from Mexico. The IUCN based its de-
cision to categorize giant sea bass as
critically endangered on a report that
included no data whatsoever from
Mexico. This lack of information about
giant sea bass from Baja California and
the Gulf of California is concerning,
given that 73 percent of the species live
in Mexican waters. This knowledge gap
made me wonder whether ecologists
had the wrong idea about the health of
giant sea bass populations.
To our surprise, from our very first as-
sessments we found that giant sea bass
were plentiful in Mexican fish markets
and fishing grounds. The local fishmon-
gers were never out of the fish; indeed
Despite the absence
of walls or fences in
the ocean, borders
can still act as stark
barriers for a variety
of marine activities,
including research.
when we inquired about their stock,
they would ask, “How many kilos do
you need?” It was clear that for fishers
in Mexico, the species is still common in
the sea and, therefore, in their nets. It is
still possible to find big fish weighing as
much as 200 kilograms, and the average
catch weighs around 12 kilograms.
It was fantastic to see an abundance
of these fish in markets, but I wanted
to understand what led to the miscon-
ception of a dwindling giant sea bass
population. To that end, I examined
fishery trends through history and
compared current fishing levels with
those of previous years. Historical and
contemporary fishing records show
that the Mexican commercial fleet has
caught an average of 55 tons of gi-
ant sea bass per year over the past 60
years, and catch size has been relative-
ly stable over the past 20 years, with a
peak in 2015 at 112 metric tons.
According to U.S. and Mexican re-
cords, the largest yearly catch on record
for giant sea bass in Mexico was 386
metric tons in 1933. Biologists consid-
er a fish population to have collapsed
when total catches, under the same
effort, are less than 10 percent of the
largest catches on record. So a steady
trend of 55 tons per year shows that in
Mexico the species has not collapsed. It
is clear that giant sea bass populations
have faced severe declines throughout
their range, but the health of the species
is not as dire as previously thought.
We also found that the apparent
collapse of California’s giant sea bass
fishery documented in the 1970s actu-
ally began as early as 1932. As the U.S.
commercial fleet overfished giant sea
bass off the California coast over the
first half of the 20th century, the boats
moved into Mexican waters—but they

Different Countries, Different Science

In 2017 I led an effort to document the
giant sea bass population in Mexico and
to look for clues that would indicate
how their numbers may have changed
over time. At the beginning of the proj-
ect, my colleagues and I feared that
the records in Mexico would confirm
the precarious situation of the fish, as
shown by data from the United States.

Giant sea bass have been spotted from Hum-

boldt Bay, California, to Oaxaca, Mexico,
but the population is concentrated along
the coast of Southern California and Baja
California. (The Oaxaca specimen was a fish
larva; fish larvae are not commonly included
when assessing species distribution because
they are unlikely to survive to adulthood.)
The author and his colleagues analyzed
From Ramírez-Valdez, 2021

11,251 government, scientific, and fishing

industry records from the United States and
Mexico to pinpoint the species’ distribution
and movement since 1880. The vast majority
of giant sea bass research and regulations
come from the United States, but 73 percent
of the species live in Mexican waters.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 339

continued to count all catches as being that the population of this iconic fish is mulated better data from south of the
from the United States. This practice likely much larger than biologists pre- U.S.–Mexico border, we can make a
changed in 1968 when the two govern- viously thought, especially in Mexico. more informed determination that bal-
ments signed the Mexico–U.S. Fisher- Over the 40 years since the Califor- ances responsible species management
ies Agreement, limiting how much fish nia State Legislature banned commer- with human needs.
each country’s fleet could take from the cial and recreational fishing of giant sea More accurate information about
other country’s waters. bass, the fish’s populations along the giant sea bass populations may be-
Thus the collapse of U.S. giant sea U.S. coast have begun to recover. In re- come increasingly important as climate
bass fisheries in the 1970s was not due sponse, a new industry has emerged: change continues to warm oceans. If
to a drastic reduction in fish numbers scuba-diving excursions for tourists who the giant sea bass start migrating north
in the region; it was driven by chang- want to swim with the massive fish in and returning to the California coast in
es in fishing regulations between the the wild. These types of experiences search of cooler waters, it will be cru-
United States and Mexico. California’s are currently far more common in the cial to have a sense of the total species
giant sea bass populations had been de- United States than in Mexico, but recre- population, both north and south of the
pressed for decades, but the lack of fish ational scuba tours are beginning to take U.S.–Mexico border. Otherwise, we will
in the United States had been hidden root south of the border as well. These not know whether a growing number
by the continued supply from Mexico. businesses raise the nonconsumptive of giant sea bass in California is due to
value of the giant sea bass, which could population explosion or dislocation.
Better Data, Better Management bolster efforts to reduce overfishing and I hope that our study inspires pol-
Based on my research, I believe that to develop more sustainable fishery- icy makers in the United States and
the giant sea bass may not qualify as management practices in Mexico. Mexico to start a conversation about
a critically endangered species. My I am leading the next assessment how to manage this incredible fish in a
analysis of modern catch data suggests for the IUCN; now that we have accu- collaborative way. But I feel our work
also has larger implications. It shows
U.S. landings (Mexican waters)
commercial fishing how asymmetry in research and data
400
U.S. landings (U.S. waters) can create significant barriers to under-
landings (metric tons)

Mexican landings standing the past and present status of

300
Mexican landings (estimated) a species such as the giant sea bass and
200 make it harder to implement sustain-
able practices for the future.
100
Bibliography
0
Dallimer, M., and N. Strange. 2015. Why socio-
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 political borders and boundaries matter in
conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution
recreational fishing 30:132–139. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2014.12.004.
800
Dayton, P. K., M. J. Tegner, P. B. Edwards, and
K. L. Riser. 1998. Sliding baselines, ghosts,
total individual fish

600
and reduced expectations in kelp forest com-
munities. Ecological Applications 8:309–322.
400
Pauly, D., R. Hilborn, and T. A. Branch. 2013.
Fisheries: Does catch reflect abundance?
200
Nature 494:303–306.
Pondella, D. J., and L. G. Allen. 2008. The de-
0
cline and recovery of four predatory fishes
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 from the Southern California Bight. Marine
Biology 154:307–313.
combined recreational and commerical landings in the United States and Mexico
Ramírez-Valdez, A., et al. 2021. Asymmetry
400
across international borders: Research, fish-
ery and management trends, and economic
landings (metric tons)

300 value of the giant sea bass (Stereolepis gigas).

Fish and Fisheries doi:10.1111/faf.12594.
200
Sahagún, L. 2020. Scientists seed local seas with
imperiled fish. Can giant sea bass make a
100
comeback? Los Angeles Times (March 4).
0
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
year
Arturo Ramírez-Valdez is a staff researcher at the
University of California, San Diego, where he received
Fishing records indicate that although the number of giant sea bass has decreased, the popula- his doctorate in marine biology. He is the founder and
tion has not reached the point of critical endangerment. California experienced a sharp drop lead scientist of the Giant Sea Bass/Mero Gigante
in giant sea bass landings in the early 1930s (top), but fisheries compensated by moving into Project, a team of early-career scientists and fishers
Mexican waters until 1968, when the Mexico–U.S. Fisheries Agreement was signed. When the working to improve fishery management through
U.S. fisheries collapsed in the 1970s, recreational fishing for giant sea bass increased, particu- science-based marine conservation initiatives. This ar-
larly in Mexican waters (middle). Combined data from U.S. and Mexican fishing records show ticle expands on and is adapted from an article in The
that giant sea bass levels are not as dire as U.S. records alone suggest (bottom, dotted red line Conversation (www.theconversation.com). Email:
indicates threshold for collapsed fish stock). From Ramírez-Valdez, 2021. garturorv@ucsd.edu

340 American Scientist, Volume 109

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 Engineering
All Things Cryptic
Whether one is designing a virtual currency or creating a word puzzle, finding
a secure way to disguise information is a technological and mental challenge.
Henry Petroski
A
virtual currency, or crypto-
currency, is a decentralized
means of exchange that is
independent of govern-
ment regulation and monetary policy.
The most familiar example is Bitcoin.
Unlike an account holding a fiat cur-
rency, such as the U.S. dollar or the
Japanese yen, a Bitcoin account can-
not be frozen or seized by an issuing
government. However, because Bit-
coin and other cryptocurrencies can be
traded like stocks, they do come with
a certain amount of risk and volatility.
But accounts holding them are consid-
ered essentially unhackable, because
transfers among them are protected
by extremely sophisticated software
employing secure validation protocols.
(See “Bitcoins Maybe; Blockchains Like-
ly,” November–December 2017.)
When money is involved, security
is the top priority—and in the age of
digital money, encryption is how trans-
actions are assured. A cryptocurrency
system will only be as good as the
cryptography on which it depends.
Cryptography is a well-established
technique for keeping messages confi-
dential by encoding them using a digi-
tal key. Among the most sophisticated
coding systems are those that require
two keys to unlock: The first is a public
key known to both sender and receiver;
the second is a private key known only
to the recipient. (See “Cypherpunks Write
Code,” March–April 2016 for more on pub-
lic key encryption.) An encoded message
will present a puzzle to anyone without
the proper key. Such puzzles can be vir-
tually impossible to solve.
Henry Petroski is the Distinguished Professor
Emeritus of Civil Engineering at Duke University.
Email: petroski@duke.edu
342 American Scientist, Volume 109
Humans have a long history of not
being able to leave a puzzle alone. A
puzzle of any kind epitomizes think-
ing. To scientists, nature presents a uni-
verse of puzzles; to engineers, the fu-
ture consists of solutions to puzzles. Just
as scientific and technical puzzles can
take many forms, so can word puzzles,
in which encryption and cryptograms
have their roots. Among the oldest word
puzzles must surely be the verbal chal-
lenge “Who goes there?” Only the right
answer would gain an individual en-
try into the protected space. In ancient
Egypt, tombs and pyramids were guard-
Humans have a
long history of not
being able to leave
a puzzle alone. A
puzzle of any kind
epitomizes thinking.
ed by sphinxes, creatures with the body
of a lion and the head of a human. The
most familiar may be the Great Sphinx
of Giza, probably dating from the 26th
century BCE, which has a man’s head.
By contrast, in Greek mythology one
common form of sphinx had a winged
lion’s body and the face of a woman. It is
one of this form that is believed to have
guarded the entrance to Thebes and
first posed the famous riddle, “What is
it that walks on four feet in the morn-
ing, two at noon, and three in the eve-
ning?” The language, like that of most
word puzzles, is cryptic and metaphoric,
with morning, noon, and evening repre-
senting the life stages of a person, who
crawls on all fours as a baby, walks up-
right in adulthood, and uses a cane as
an old person. There may also have been
a second riddle, one involving a pair
of sisters: “One of them gives birth to
the other and she gives birth to the first.
Who are they?” Here the humans consti-
tute the figurative language standing in
for the temporal. Once that is realized,
the answer to the duality riddle should
be as clear as night and day.
Today, we may not be asked such ex-
plicit riddles to gain access to the virtual
spaces we have a right to visit, but we
are asked for a password. When I for-
get my password, I am provided a code
with which I can enter a portal—a digi-
tal gatekeeper—that asks me personal
questions, riddles with answers that
few other people, if any, might know. To
a hacker, the questions are challenges,
puzzles to solve by using whatever clues
they may pick up from the web about
my first school or my first pet.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Modern encryption hearkens back to
written records. To keep a discovery
secret until they wished to reveal it,
Galileo, Robert Hooke, and other 16th-
and 17th-century scientists constructed
word puzzles in the form of collections
of letters without word groupings or
punctuation. Although these forms are
sometimes referred to as anagrams or
logograms, strictly speaking they are
neither. They might be considered cryp-
tograms of a trivial kind, in that there
was no encryption key because each let-
ter represented itself. If the creator of
one of these puzzles was challenged
to prove he was the first to observe the
phenomenon or formulate the principle
he claimed was hidden among the string
of letters, he could simply unscramble it.

Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
This detail shows a sculpture titled Kryptos, installed on the grounds of the Central Intelligence
Agency headquarters in Virginia. It is both an homage to cryptography and a puzzle in itself.
Galileo followed this practice when
he looked at Saturn through his home-
made telescope. The instrument did
not provide a sharp enough image for
him to see the planet’s distinct rings, but
he was able to make out what he inter-
preted to be a large body between two
much smaller ones (because at that reso-
lution, the rings appeared to be spheri-
cal bodies when viewed across their or-
bital plane, somewhat like this: ◦O◦). He
revealed his discovery in a dated com-
munication to Johannes Kepler, which
contained the cipher smasmrmilmepo-
etalevmibvnienvgttaviras, which decrypt-
ed reads in Latin Altissimum planetam
tergeminum observavi and translates to “I
have observed the most distant planet
to be threefold.” Similarly, when Thom-
as Hooke discovered the linear rela-
www.americanscientist.org
tionship between the force applied to a
spring and its extension, he presented it
as ceiiinosssttuv, which decoded became
ut tensio, sic vis, and which translated
states, “as the extension, so the force.”
Today we call this Hooke’s Law and
write it as the linear equation F = – kx,
where F is the restoring force, x is the
extension of the spring, and k is a con-
stant indicating the spring stiffness. The
minus sign expresses the fact that the
spring exerts a restoring force opposite
in direction to the extension.
Until the 20th century, word puzzles
were solved largely with pencil and pa-
per by trial and error, aided by knowl-
edge of the quirks of the language in
which they were written. For longer
messages, letter frequency often provid-
ed a starting point for breaking a code.
However, near the end of World War I,
the German engineer Arthur Scherbius
invented an electromechanical machine
capable of encrypting and decrypting
automatically, as long as a secret code
key was known. In the 1920s the device
became known as Enigma and was used
initially by industry and later by govern-
ments. During World War II it played a
central role in German military commu-
nications, but it became an unrecognized
liability when the Allies broke the code
and intercepted encrypted messages.
Cryptograms are a staple of word
puzzle enthusiasts. Each issue of The
Enigma, published since 1883 by the
National Puzzlers’ League, and which
my wife, Catherine, and I edited for a
brief time in the 1970s, contains a collec-
tion of cryptograms for its subscribers to
solve. Recreational cryptograms are said
to have been created by monks during
the Middle Ages. Some of them could
be solved only by transposing the letters
from the Latin alphabet into their Greek
equivalents. The 13th-century Francis-
can friar and philosopher Roger Bacon
mentioned in his writing several types
of cipher, and asserted that “a man is
crazy who writes a secret in any other
way than one which will conceal it
from the vulgar.”
In 1841, Edgar Allan Poe published
“A Few Words on Secret Writing” in
Graham’s Magazine. This article and his
1843 short story “The Gold-Bug,” in
which a cipher plays a major role, did
much to encourage the 19th-century
public’s fascination with cryptograms.
Poe challenged readers of the magazine
to send a puzzle of their own creation
that they believed he could not solve.
There were no winners of the prize of
a free year’s subscription, an outcome
that he essentially predicted. At the
same time, he wrote that “it may be
roundly asserted that human ingenuity
cannot concoct a cipher which human
ingenuity cannot resolve.”
Skeptics and Mathemagicians
The 20th century’s most prominent
popularizer of puzzles in general and
of word puzzles in particular was
the polymath Martin Gardner. Born
in 1914 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Gardner
had a fascination from childhood with
magic, and as a teenager published a
magic trick in The Sphinx, the maga-
zine of the Society of American Magi-
cians. It was the first of an enormous
number of articles and books Gardner
would produce over a long career. After
2021 November–December 343
 graduating in 1936 from the Univer-
sity of Chicago with a degree in phi-
losophy, he held positions at the Tulsa
Tribune, his hometown newspaper; in
the U.S. Navy; at the children’s maga-
zine Humpty Dumpty; and at Scientific
American, with which he would become
most closely associated. When in 1956
the magazine’s publisher at the time,
Gerard Piel, asked him to write a col-
umn on mathematical games, he threw
himself fully into it, and by his own
admission learned as he went along.
(See more about Gardner in “Recreational
Computing,” November–December 2010.)
Gardner interpreted “mathemati-
cal” broadly, and the games he wrote
about often intersected with the genre
of word puzzles. For example, he once
asked what was special about the
number 8,549,176,320? The answer
(given at the end of this article) was
more literary than numerical. In addi-
tion to writing on recreational math-
ematics in his column for almost a
quarter of a century, he wrote popular
books debunking fringe science, anno-
tating popular works of literature, and
discoursing on word games, including
World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
an introduction to cryptography.
Gardner’s Codes, Ciphers and Secret
Early observations of Saturn—such as the ones in this engraving by German astronomer Johannes
Hevelius (1611–1687)—did not have sufficient magnification to show the rings distinctly, and
Writing was published in 1972. Accord-
viewers such as Galileo assumed that the planet had two orbiting smaller spheres. Galileo wrote ing to the German computer scien-
about this observation, and all of his findings, using a code. His uncoded, translated letter to tist and historian of encryption Klaus
Johannes Kepler on the finding says “I have observed the most distant planet to be threefold.” Schmeh, the book is not the best intro-
duction to the subject, but it is distin-
guished by its cryptic dedication, “For
osvvc zytzc kjlqz.” In a 2018 blog post,
Schmeh admitted to not knowing its
plain text, as a solution to a cryptogram
is called, and its mere 15 letters make it
“too short for a meaningful statistical
analysis.” He appealed to readers for
help. I do not know whether he got it.
Gardner also wrote on more sophis-
ticated aspects of cryptography. Among
his 288 consecutive Scientific American
columns was the remarkable one for
August 1977, entitled “Mathematical
Games: A New Kind of Cipher That
Would Take Millions of Years to Break.”
In it he describes what came to be known
as the RSA crypto algorithm, an asym-
metric algorithm invented by Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology cryptogra-
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
phers Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and
Leonard Adleman, all of whom received
Early advances in machine-enabled cryptography were employed at first to deter industrial or
international espionage. The electromechanical machine known as Enigma, created by German
the Association for Computing Machin-
engineer Arthur Scherbius, was used in the 1920s for this purpose. But during World War II, the ery’s 2002 A. M. Turing Award—often
German military used a version of the device to automatically encode and decode communica- referred to as the Nobel prize of com-
tions, by means of a secret code key. Unbeknownst to the Nazi regime, the Allies were able to puter science—for their contributions to
break the code and intercept the encrypted messages. Early computing machines such as Colossus cryptography. The algorithm employs
at Bletchley Park in England (above) were used to decode Enigma-encrypted communications. distinct public and private keys. The

344 American Scientist, Volume 109

private keys. The public one, used to
encrypt a message, is derived from
the product of two prime numbers,
each having 40 or more digits, and
an odd number. A recipient can
use the same public key to encrypt
a reply that is virtually impossible
to decipher without knowing the
prime numbers. To demonstrate this
security, the team gave Gardner a
coded message, which he included
in his column. It remained unsolved
for almost 18 years.
Gardner did not limit his writ-
ing to mathematics. He garnered
equally heady praise for his work
debunking fringe science and pro-
moting word play. His 1957 book
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science exposed practices and be-
liefs that he considered pseudo-
scientific, ranging from flat-Earth
theory to extrasensory perception to
flying saucers, or cultish, such as quack
medicine and food fetishes. The book
became a bible for skeptics. Gardner
also published The Annotated Alice: Al-
ice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through
the Looking Glass, The Annotated Ancient
Mariner, and The Annotated Casey at the
Bat, in which he puts those pieces of
popular literature in context and ex-
plains their more obscure images, allu-
sions, and puzzles.
He approached recreational literature
as passionately as he did mathematics,
editing and writing numerous books
on word play and puzzles of all kinds.
His Oddities and Curiosities of Words and
Literature is an annotated edition of
C. C. Bombaugh’s Gleanings for the Curi-
ous from the Harvest-Fields of Literature.
Its contents range from palindromes to
works written with the typewriter’s E
key rendered inactive, and it has been
described as “the largest collection of
unusual prose and poetry in English.”
Computer scientist Robert A. Hearn
created a “cryptic crossword” in honor
of Gardner. Among its answers are the
honoree’s first and last names, compo-
nents of the name of the magazine with
which he was so long associated, the title
of his column, and the word “hexaflexa-
gon,” as in Gardner’s Hexaflexagons and
Other Mathematical Diversions. It was an
article on those objects made of folded
paper that led to his invitation to write
his column, and the clarity of writing,
combined with the type of drama ex-
hibited in the opening paragraph of the
book, shows why a publisher or any
reader might want to read more:
www.americanscientist.org
opened in the office of the director
of the CIA.
At the sculpture’s unveiling, the
CIA director at the time, William
Webster, told the artist, “We like
to be tested. And we enjoy a chal-
lenge.” And that it was. There were
no publicly known decryptions
until June 1999, when computer
scientist Jim Gillogly announced
that with the help of a computer he
had solved the first three puzzles.
A month later the CIA revealed
that in the previous year its ana-
lyst David Stein, using only paper
and pencil, had cracked the code
for the same three puzzles. The ri-
val National Security Agency also
claimed credit for the solution, and
in March 2000 revealed that it had
been completed by Dennis McDan-
Joe Nickell
This caricature of Martin Gardner, who was iels and Ken Miller with a small
known for his skill at puzzles, also exemplifies team at the NSA.
his fame as a debunker of pseudoscience. Further details were not offered at
the time. It took a Freedom of Informa-
Flexagons are paper polygons, tion Act request by the video game
folded from straight or crooked developer and cryptologist Elonka
strips of paper, which have the Dunin to make public that a small
fascinating property of changing group of NSA cryptanalysts had, ac-
their faces when they are “flexed.” cording to the released documents,
Had it not been for the trivial cir- made attempts to solve the Kryptos
cumstance that British and Amer- puzzle in 1992, following a challenge
ican notebook paper are not the by William Studeman, a former direc-
same size, flexagons might still be tor of the NSA and then the deputy
undiscovered, and a number of director of the CIA, who had asked if
top-flight mathematicians would cryptanalysts in his old agency had the
have been denied the pleasure of “intellectual muscle” to solve the knot-
analyzing their curious structures. ty problem. The documents showed
that by November 1992 the NSA team
Public Challenge had indeed succeeded in solving the
More than just a diversion, cryptogra- first three passages of the sculpture.
phy remains an important component According to the Baltimore Sun, the
of international subterfuge—but those messages involved “a poetic passage
who use it in that manner also appreci- referring to ‘subtle shading’ and ‘the ab-
ate a good game, especially one with sence of light,’ the longitude and latitude
bragging rights. Evidence of this appre- for CIA headquarters, and the breath-
ciation is the puzzle sculpture Kryptos, less account of archaeologist Howard
located on the grounds of the Central Carter on opening King Tut’s tomb in
Intelligence Agency headquarters in 1922.” The artist has indicated that the
Langley, Virginia. Since 1990, this enig- full decrypted messages are themselves
matic work by the artist James Sanborn a riddle that can be solved only on the
has stood outside the campus cafeteria. CIA grounds. But the fourth and short-
Kryptos, which is Greek for “hidden,” est (97-character) message remains un-
is a sinuous artwork of bronze and pet- solved, something for puzzle enthusiasts
rified wood containing four encrypted of the future to look forward to cracking.
passages, the first of which reads: (The number 8,549,176,320 is special
because when it is spelled out as words, its
nmgfihzlrfaxygsdjkzldkrnshgnfivj
digits are arranged in alphabetical order.
yqtqgxqbqvygvlltrnvjyqtmkyrdmfd
The solution to the first Kryptos passage is,
The complete ciphertext consists “Between subtle shading and the absence of
of 865 letters and 4 question marks. light lies the nuance of iqlusion.” The mis-
Collectively, the passages pose a rid- spelling is believed to be deliberate.)
dle, the answer to which remains un- (References are available online.)
2021 November–December 345
 Arts Lab
Artists as Archeologists of Wildfire
Debris from catastrophic fires has become an artistic medium to raise
environmental consciousness.
Robert Louis Chianese
S
o many fires are raging in the
western part of the United States
at any one time that it’s difficult
to keep in memory their names,
locations, intensities, areas consumed,
firefighters mustered, houses and struc-
tures burned, and, sadly, lives lost. Each
new fire in California contends for the
title of the biggest yet. We seem to run
out of hyperbole in describing them
and communicating their horrors.
These fires and their effects are me-
morialized, as disasters often are,
through rescued mementos displayed
as art and apocalyptic imagery in visual
and sculptural form. Scorched salvaged
objects serve as cultural artifacts of the
lands and communities damaged in
fires. They don’t have to be ancient to
hold profound significance to those who
have lost just about everything. Galler-
ies easily fill with fire-seared detritus in
metal, wood, and glass, making their
own grim statement just by being put on
a wall. This sad assortment often gets a
mood lift from photographic images of
rescue, regrowth, and regeneration from
the fire’s aftermath.
However, a new kind of art is emerg-
ing from the flames—art that uses fire
debris in its making. This work differs
from mementos, relics, or objects of
mourning left in the fire’s wake because
it is the construction of a piece from
the very burned elements generated
by sparks, flames, and smoke. Artists
act as fieldwork archeologists, collect-
ing, dredging up, and bringing back the
actual stuff of fire for use as their cre-
ative material. This change shifts viewer
consciousness in a profound way about
the meaning of destruction by wildfire.
It prompts reconsideration about the
transformational power of heat and fire,
and gives emotional substance to both
346 American Scientist, Volume 109
the forging of art by extreme forces and
the painful realities of global warming.
In a strange way, this art humanizes
fire: It takes the threatening blaze and
its aftermath and modifies them, puts
a human signature on them, grasps
them with creative energy, and brings
them into the studio and gallery to be
observed, contemplated, and reflected
upon. Fire in many cultures signifies
creative energy itself. Fire’s fury may
be an artist’s familiar companion, a
muse. It can then reveal a frightening
beauty, the power of nature modified
by our aesthetic imagination.
Such art is still a memento of loss,
but it becomes a reminder of our need
to control fire in the way that artists
control their media. We revisit our
need to prevent it, encapsulated in a
stunning image or object, which may
prompt us, more than a public service
bulletin, to change our ways. Thus, fire
debris art, and narratives generated
by it, can lead to a new understanding
of the realities of drought and global
warming, and expose the contribu-
tions of the human hand and mind to
both its creation and control.
Charcoal Disorder
Artist Hiroko Yoshimoto mixed sal-
vaged charcoal and ash from the 2008
Montecito Tea Fire in Santa Barbara,
California, with other media to produce
the 3-meter-tall watercolor titled Coming
Back #2, capturing the burnt hues and
texture of trees raked by fire. The sen-
suous black tonalities from the charred
trunks and branches give a tortured feel
and funereal look to the jumbled dis-
order of trees—scorched, barren, and
twisted into an almost anthropomor-
phic pose. We take in this large work
through proprioceptive sensations, sub-
consciously bending our own bodies in
response to the image’s twists and turns.
But there is also an evocation of for-
mer vegetal energy in the curves of the
thick trees, as if the fire has exposed
some pattern of growth or some genetic
molecule of arboreal life—broken and
arrested but still evident. The green-
ing of the ground around them points
to the regenerative power that fire can
bring to forests, coating the forest floor
with a delicate living mat that literally
rises from the ashes. Fragile sprouts
emerge from cracks in the bark as a
sign that some forest trees not only can
survive fire but may also depend on it
for renewal. As Yoshimoto said in an
interview with the Ventura County Star,
“I will be satisfied if my art can gener-
ate in the viewing public a sense of awe
and respect of the destructive powers
of wildfires, and at the same time if it
can make them realize, as a metaphor
of life arising from death, the indestruc-
tible force of regeneration of nature that
sprouts green buds out of the ashes.”
Yoshimoto’s tangled trees suggest
our own entangled engagement with
forests, a disastrous one at times, and
make us aware of our complicit role in
wildfires. We also contain the potential
for regeneration of both forests and our-
selves, particularly if we learn to curb
our appetites for fossil-fuel burning.
This work was one in a 12-part series,
and other works in the series convey
the dread intensity of fire and the bone-
like detritus pile of fallen branches—
an all too human metaphor. In this
work, the artist felt the need to give the
forest and us prospects of renewal.
After the Tea Fire, things got worse.
The Camp Fire in Northern Butte
County, ignited by a faulty electric
transmission line on November 8, 2018,
Hiroko Yoshimoto’s Coming Back #2 is an example of art created using fire debris. The artist Taylor turned the drawing side-
collected charcoal from a burn site of the Montecito Tea Fire in Santa Barbara, California, and ways and dripped white paint across
used it to created this large watercolor on paper (measuring 1 × 3 meters). This work was part it, suggesting the unnatural winds that
of her “Rising from the Ashes Series Exhibit,” at Ventura College in November 2009. (All im- drove the fire, called Diablo winds in
ages courtesy of the author, with permission of the artists indicated for each work.)
the north. These broken streaks could
also represent the power lines that ini-
would rage for 17 days until it killed 85 it a ghostly tangle of trunks, branches, tially sparked the fire—our thought-
people, covered 620 square kilometers, and limbs of fire-transformed trees, once lessness streaked across the drawing.
and destroyed 18,804 structures in the again signaling the ecological impact of Such a narrative is only hinted at by
city of Paradise. How to depict this climate change. The white flecks on the her title, but few people who suffered
deadliest and most destructive confla- branches suggest wounds, as this for- the effects of these fragmented power
gration in California’s history? Would est primeval becomes twisted rubble, lines, whose breakage was exacerbated
artists even want to commemorate its a trap. The scale and flowing motion by the high winds, would miss it.
fury, or hint at the potentially beneficial of the trees draw us in so that we are The retrieved charcoal forces us to
effects of wildfires? mesmerized witnesses before this dark rub our sensibilities into the work, feel
Stephanie Taylor makes a strong state- scene, unable to extricate ourselves it, struggle our way into it, as this fire-
ment about this fire’s grim reality in her from this tortured maze of a forest. It’s debris artist brings the basic medium
large Wildfire Wind drawing, measuring almost cartoonish in its exaggerated, car- of burnt wood into the gallery and
3.5 meters across (see page 348). She re- nivalesque contortions, a fun house of makes it display the unpleasant hyper-
trieved charcoal from just one destroyed horror, a bit too threatening to imagine reality of climate change. Whatever
home and smudged it on plastic media, what its victims may have seen or felt or narrative that viewers concoct, it will
creating ominous backgrounds of hash encountered if they had had a chance to likely struggle to match the threaten-
marks and swirls, and then drew onto flee the actual fire. ing power of this image.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 347

Stephanie Taylor’s Wildfire Wind (2018) is 2 × 3.5 meters and uses charcoal from one home burned actuality and in our imaginations—
in the Paradise Camp Fire, applied to Grafix Dura-Lar, a nonwoven plastic drafting material. with the application of Phos-Chek and
the transfiguration of fire into art.
Ash, Visualized as if the painting itself is afire but at the Matsuo extends this aesthetic trans-
Abstract imagery can convey the hor- same time shielding us from danger. figuration of material by fire in a work
rors of destructive fire, but also sug- This abstract rendering of active entitled Bat Cone Ash. With her artistic
gest its subtle unconventional beauty. wildfire forces us to make sense of partner and colleague Brad Monsma,
Amiko Matsuo collected ash debris what is a curiously beautiful design Matsuo coiled locally sourced clay into
from the 2013 Spring Fire near Califor- that she labels as a “landscape,” while the shape of traffic cones, glazed them,
nia State University Channel Islands, the red shimmering foreground could drew traditional Asian designs on them
where she taught at the time, applied entrance or even overwhelm the with ash from local fires, and then fired
it to a large canvas, and added a bor- viewer, as fire often can, and suggests the cones in a controlled outdoor burn.
der made of Phos-Chek, a chemical fire how tenuously we are protected from This process evokes the artist as fiery
retardant that is often sprayed on wild- flames. The red panel scored with re- creator, here making fire serve the ends
fires and colored red for ease of track- peating patterns of black markings of culture. These ideas are ancient, with
ing. Here the fire retardant becomes might also suggest Asian brushwork the Greek god Hephaestus working at
a medium for expressing the threat or wood lacquer art, bringing together the forge, or Agni the Vedic fire god
and power of fire and also serves as a the fierce energies of nature’s fire with who performs transformational rites
symbolic barricade. The red substance the cultural inheritance of sedate and of passage for the purposes of wed-
seems to block the advance of the black sophisticated art. The work suggests dings, cremations, and expanding hu-
and brown smoke of the distant flames, how we might tame such wildfires in man consciousness. More recently than
these ancient gods, poet William Blake
Amiko Matsuo made Landscape: Ash and Phos-Chek (2018), approximately 1 × 2.5 meters in enacts fiery creation itself in his famous
size, by applying ash from the Spring Fire and a red fire retardant onto paper. poem “The Tyger” (1794) in which the
artist recapitulates the act of creation
even as he questions its source:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the
fire? . . .

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain? . . .

348 American Scientist, Volume 109

 Blake’s speaker interrogates an ab-
sent creator without diminishing the
terrors of the awful process or its prod-
uct. Wildfire holds its terrors for its
human victims and vulnerable nature,
while at the same time providing prac-
tical energy for making things and in-
spiring art. Nature and culture come
together in many of these artists who
plunder fire debris for sources of their
artistic media.
Conceptual artist Christine At-
kinson goes a step further and turns
wildfire into an arresting sculpture.
She mixes salt and epoxy with field-
collected debris and forges a square
block, placing its stark geometries in
front of us on a polished wood table,
as if it were a laboratory specimen of
her excavations. Her complete remold-
ing of natural fire materials might sug-
gest the formation of coal, or scruffy
gemstone, or the Earth’s core or its lay-
ers. As a seemingly unearthed quar-
ried solid, it evokes a time capsule of
earlier, ancient fires or the tragic ac-
cumulations of recent conflagrations.
There’s a gouge or two in her Frag-
mentation, variation II, a fault line of
sorts, reminding us that this cubed
remnant can crack, break apart, and
become even more fragmented, as it
does in the third variation of her series
of wildfire solids. Thus fire detritus is
hardly solid at all, but fragile and eas-
ily crumbled—an insubstantial ground
cover that blanks out living things.
This ash is what the forest, trees,
leaves, and roots become through our
reckless alchemy. Atkinson‘s cube con-
fronts our refusal to look at what cli-
mate change has wrought.
Fire has always been considered a
source of spiritual transformation, but
here the deadened solidified materials
of fire suggest the coldness of space,
emptiness, a blank otherness, without
reference to the living natural world
that makes up its substance. We stare
and wonder what to say. Who or what
is transformed? Metamorphosis here
has led to something inert, lifeless, a
chunk of frozen soot. The work almost
checks our urge to locate it in a world
we think we know. Our narrative im-
pulse has no place to start or end. Such
a reaction may do more to force recog-
nition of the dangerous pointlessness
of our environmental violations.
Fire, Exposed
In a complete shift of media, photog-
rapher Luther Gerlach employs early
www.americanscientist.org
Amiko Matsuo and Brad Monsma’s Bat Cone Ash (2016) is shown here in the remnants of the
controlled outdoor burn used to fire the clay. The artists coiled locally sourced clay into the
shape of traffic cones, glazed them, drew traditional Asian designs on them using ash from
local fires, and then fired them in the outdoor burn.
photographic methods to capture the
harrowing aftermath of contemporary
wildfires. He takes a large wooden
camera and portable darkroom into
the field, in this case the woods burned
from the 2017 Thomas Fire near his
home in Southern California. He coats a
Christine Atkinson’s Fragmentation, variation
II (2020) is a 14-centimeter cube made from
wildfire debris mixed with salt and epoxy.
glass plate with wet collodion, a syrupy
light-sensitive medium, and creates a
negative, which takes about 10 minutes
of exposure. He prints it and then sprin-
kles fire-debris ash and sulfur-laden
water from a nearby warm spring di-
rectly on the print (see page 350). By
some uncanny process, this treatment
produces preternatural effects, resulting
in shadowy afterimages of mysterious
forms, here appropriately called “ghost
trees.” The remnants of once-living
trees seem to give off smoky emana-
tions of their former lives, as if the fire
has released them.
That substances from fire-damaged
woods can generate gloomy, mysteri-
ous imagery gives new resonance to
the alchemical power of fire and water,
as if we have been missing the magical
powers that fire debris contains within
itself. The emanations suggest some-
thing otherworldly, alien, perhaps
from the lower depths, from where the
underground sulfurous waters might
also be said to flow.
This different view of fire effects
provokes new reflections on its im-
pacts, and these strange images also
project a stunning kind of beauty. The
shadowy sepia scrim floating over the
trunks and delicate branches suggests
a hidden, earlier world we get only a
glimpse of, as if the artist pulls back
the curtain ever so slightly from the co-
vert reality of fire. The technologically
sophisticated but antique photograph-
ic process produces fantasy reflections
that can only puzzle us about what
else we are missing and what kind of
ephemeral, dark beauty we are being
asked to contemplate.
Fire-debris art seems to be able to
take so many extravagant forms depen-
dent on the imagination and ingenuity
of the artist. Kim Abeles takes this art
form to a new level. Over the years,
2021 November–December 349

Luther Gerlach’s Ghost Trees, from his series Poignant Portfolio no. 6 (2018), uses a historical wet-
plate process with a wooden field camera, modified with fire-debris ash and sulfur-laden water.
she has made stencils that allow smog
and air pollution particulates to filter
through and leave gray images on vari-
ous backgrounds. Her Smog Collectors
series includes commemorative ceram-
ic plates with images made from smog
particulates depicting the visages of
various U.S. presidents and other glob-
al leaders, whose speeches and policies
have affected, positively or negatively,
the quality of the planet’s air.
In recent “smog paintings,” Abeles
stenciled images of the deck chairs from
the RMS Titanic and set them on the
roof of her mother’s house in Pasadena
during the dark days of the 2020 Bobcat
Fire. It burned for nearly a month in
the Angeles National Forest north of
Los Angeles, clouding skies and sift-
ing ash over a huge area that had not
seen such air pollution since the worst
days before modern emissions controls.
The Titanic chairs make the point about
our global ship about to be sunk not
by an iceberg but by the warming of
the whole planet beset with wildfires,
while for Abeles most actions to combat
climate change must seem aspirational.
Abeles’s conceptual art is direct,
makes its environmental statement
Kim Abeles’s Titanic Deck Chairs are shown in the process of collecting ash and
other particulates on a Pasadena, California, rooftop during the Bobcat Fire, on
September 6, 2020. Her Smog Collectors series uses airborne particulates filtered
through stencils to form images.
350 American Scientist, Volume 109
unsparingly, and through its elaborate
multidisciplinary processes, turns the
fires themselves into artists of inter-
national protest.
A Reawakening
Fire-debris art reveals human ingenu-
ity in transforming the wreckage of fire
into profound sources of understand-
ing. As archeologists of fire, these art-
ists become field-workers, collecting
and bringing back speci-
mens, making us look at
them in different contexts,
using them in new ways,
and experimenting with
their textures, colors, and
substances. Science and en-
vironmentalism can explain,
illustrate, and document the
sources and consequences of
anthropogenic global warm-
ing, but what these intrigu-
ing works of art bring to the
discussion are images and
objects that call on our need
to interpret them on our
own, in the private world of
our troubled consciousness
and emotional awareness.
These artists make new forms of
both beauty and terror from the waste
of catastrophe. They leave records
of extreme occurrence, an encounter
with the uncanny, and put their own
personal mark on it, using the human
hand to leave a sign on gallery walls
of something magically experienced.
They can serve as modern cave paint-
ings or pictographs.
These works place us front and cen-
ter in our human-caused fiery oblit-
erations, exposing us, we might say, as
slow-acting arsonists. Our all too ap-
parent transformations of the planet’s
environment get both mirrored and
ameliorated by these artists of wild-
fire rubble, soot, dust, and ash. They
significantly suggest the transforma-
tion we must perform on ourselves
and the planet if we are to curb these
conflagrations and give the planet a
chance to recover from and adjust to
what we have wrought. We must, like
them, become environmental activists
and artists of transformation, working
our damages into new forms of insight
and ecological health.
Robert Louis Chianese is an emeritus professor of
English at California State University, Northridge,
a 1979 Mitchell Prize Laureate in Sustainability, a
Fulbright Senior Specialist, and past president of the
American Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence, Pacific Division, the only humanities professor
selected in its 100-year history. He continues to
offer symposia at annual AAASPD conferences on
connections among the arts, the humanities, and the
sciences. Website: www.islandviewmedia.net
 2020 Award Recipients (clockwise from bottom left):
Charles A. Kamhoua, Marcetta Y. Darensbourg, Gerard L. Coté, Bonnie J. Dunbar, and Pamela K. Kerrigan

Sigma Xi Prizes and Awards

Call for Nominations
Deadline for Nominations: January 31, 2022
William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement
Presented to a scientist who has made an outstanding contribution to scientific research and
demonstrated the ability to communicate their research to scientists across disciplines

John P. McGovern Science and Society Award

Recognizes achievements by a scientist or engineer that transcend their career as a researcher

Walston Chubb Award for Innovation

Honors and promotes creativity in science and engineering

Young Investigator Award

Honors outstanding early career researchers across life, physical, and social sciences

Evan Ferguson Award

Recognizes outstanding service to Sigma Xi and its mission

Honorary Membership
Recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to science,
but are not eligible for membership in Sigma Xi

For more information, visit sigmaxi.org/awards

Nominations should be sent to awards@sigmaxi.org

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 351

Bird Brain Evolution
Avian smarts run the gamut from ostriches to crows. Why do large brains and
high intelligence emerge in some lineages?
Daniel T. Ksepka
B
irds are capable of a breath-
taking range of behaviors.
Alex, the famous gray parrot,
learned to count and accumu-
lated a vocabulary of more than 100
words that he combined into phrases
and questions. Ravens can solve com-
plex puzzles. In lab experiments, they
have figured out that dropping a spe-
cific key into a tube will earn them a
tasty reward. Some birds can even use
simple tools: Woodpecker finches use
twigs or cactus spines to extract in-
sects from crevices, and puffins have
recently been filmed rather comically
using sticks as back scratchers. On the
other end of the intelligence spec-
trum, ostriches will mistak-
enly swallow golf balls,
and while walking
the streets of New
York City, I have
personally seen a
pigeon eat a cigarette
butt. Although birds confusing artifi-
cial objects for potential gizzard grit
or food items should not be labeled
“stupid,” it seems fair to say that the
range of avian intelligence is about as
wide as that in the mammal world if
we exclude humans from the scale. A
natural question arises: Why are some
birds so intelligent while others remain
“simpleminded”?
If surviving and reproducing came
down simply to intelligence, the clev-
erest birds would quickly outcom-
pete their slower-witted counterparts.
Things aren’t that simple, though, be-
cause intelligence isn’t “free.” Large
brains are expensive to maintain, be-
cause brain tissue requires much more
Birds are the only vertebrates whose
brains have expanded over the course of evo-
lution at levels that approach those seen in
mammals, particularly in primates.
352 American Scientist, Volume 109
metabolic energy to sustain at rest
than do most other tissues. Our own
brains, for example, account for 2 per-
cent of our body weight on average,
but consume around 20 percent of our
metabolic energy. Having a large brain
burning up fuel can be a detriment
in environments where the ability
to escape predators quickly or over-
power rivals is more important than
figuring out how to count
to three or solve a
puzzle. In some
Courtesy of Larry Witmer’s Lab, Ohio University
Corvids such as the New Caledonian crow
(Corvus moneduloides) have larger brains
and larger bodies than other songbirds. But
their brains are disproportionately large, re-
sulting in some of the largest relative brain
sizes among birds. What could be driving
their rapid expansion in body size and even
more rapid expansion in brain size?
cases, intelligence can even become
a liability. Carolina parakeets formed
social bonds that contributed to their
extinction. Humans once hunted these
birds for feathers and because they
were perceived as crop pests. When
one Carolina parakeet was shot, others
would rally to the fallen bird and be
QUICK TAKE
Large brains are metabolically costly. This
trade-off has led to a vast range of brain sizes
among birds. Corvids and parrots stand out
as having remarkably large relative brain sizes.
killed as well, doomed by their own
advanced social behavior.
This trade-off has led to a vast range
of brain sizes in the vertebrate world.
Perhaps the most extreme example
is the bony-eared assfish. The bearer
of this unfortunate name has a brain
about the same size as the brain of a
baby trout—despite being 60 times
larger. The bony-eared assfish has
adapted to life in the slow lane,
hovering in the darkness of
deep ocean waters where
it feeds on small prey
such as gastropods. Be-
cause only a few simple
behaviors are required
for this fish to survive,
it needs to retain only a
minimum amount of brain
tissue. Humans occupy the
opposite end of the spectrum.
Large brains allowed our lineage to
develop language, complex tools, art,
and agriculture—the things that make
us “human.” One theory holds that the
more efficient bipedal gait of our an-
cestors allowed them to invest extra
energy in larger brains.
In 2014, I joined forces with sever-
al colleagues: Amy Balanoff of Johns
Hopkins University, one of the fore-
most experts on dinosaur brains;
Adam Smith of Clemson University,
a scholar of the fossil record of auks;
and Jeroen Smaers of Stony Brook Uni-
versity, a pioneer in new methods for
quantifying changes in brain size. Our
goal was to put together a task force
to map out the big picture of avian
brain size evolution. Despite being the
only vertebrates with brain expansion
Mapping relative brain size onto the avian
evolutionary tree reveals when brains became
smaller or larger, relative to body size and
ancestry, and thus how intelligence may arise.
 Elsa Loissel

A New Caledonian crow fashions a tool from a twig. This bird, like other corvids, displays the more than 10,000 species of birds
many hallmarks of greater intelligence, such as capacity for learning, tool use, and complex alive today.
social behavior. Their brain evolution stands out as unique among birds.
Scaling Brains
To understand the history of avian
levels that approach those observed such as “The Selfish Gene Salon,” de- brain evolution, it is first necessary
in mammals, birds had long garnered bating theories. Our team gathered one to consider the relationship between
only a fraction of the research effort. sunny May morning, arriving one by brain size and body size. Comparing
So we organized a large gathering of one from as far away as Scotland and the raw brain size of each species is
scientists interested in brain evolution, Argentina. After copious amounts of not very useful because all else be-
biological imaging techniques, and the coffee, we started mapping out brain ing equal, a larger animal will have
fossil record for a Catalysis Meeting at data from dinosaurs, extinct birds, a larger brain. Nor can we simply di-
the National Evolutionary Synthesis and modern birds. The conversations vide brain size by body size, because
Center (NESCent). often stretched late into the evening the relationship between the two is
NESCent was the perfect place for and sometimes hopped venues to a not constant. Smaller animals tend
this project. Housed in a converted whiskey bar or Durham Bulls base- to have proportionally larger brains
mill building in Durham, North Car- ball game. By the end of the weeklong than their larger relatives. A mouse
olina, the center served as a super- meeting, we had laid the groundwork brain weighs less than 0.5 gram but
collider for evolutionary biology, for a suite of analyses pinpointing how is quite large compared to the overall
bringing together people with differ- brain size shifted along the remark- size of the mouse. A mouse scaled up
ent perspectives to accomplish projects able evolutionary journey from fero- to the size of an elephant would have
none of them could do alone. On any cious theropod dinosaurs to the first an enormous 60-kilogram brain, about
given day at NESCent, one might find birds, and untangling which selective 14 times larger than the brain of an
scientists, writers, and artists gathered pressures may have led to the startling actual elephant. Despite the mouse’s
around tables in cleverly named rooms diversity in relative brain size among proportionally larger brain, elephants

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 353


A woodpecker finch uses a twig as a tool to extract insects from tree crevices for food.
are considered to be much more intel-
ligent than mice.
Biologists hypothesize that larger
vertebrates tend to have proportionally
smaller brains, on average, because of
NOAA Okeanos Explorer’s 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas./CC by Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
The unfortunately named bony-eared assfish (Acanthonus armatus), filmed by a remotely
operated underwater vehicle in the Western Indian Ocean, has a brain that is about the same
size as that of a baby trout, despite being 60 times larger. Because this fish lives in a deep-sea
environment where only a few simple behaviors are required to survive, it needs to retain
only a minimal amount of brain tissue.
354 American Scientist, Volume 109
Ole Jorgen Liodden/NaturePL/Science Source
their slower metabolism and the physi-
cal limits on the size of the brain during
growth. Larger animals are not neces-
sarily less intelligent, however, because
only a certain amount of brain cells are
needed to control basic functions such
as breathing and heart rate. Thus, an
elephant doesn’t need a 60-kilogram
brain to achieve higher cognitive abili-
ties than a mouse. On the other hand,
the 7-kilogram brain of a blue whale
does not convey quadruple the intel-
ligence of the 1.5-kilogram brain of an
average human, because the whale has
a lot more body to control.
When attempting to estimate “in-
telligence” from brain size, biologists
look not at the raw size of the brain,
but rather at how much larger or
smaller it is than the expected size for
a species of that body mass. By this
measure, our brains are about seven
times larger than would be expected
for a mammal in our size range (50 to
100 kilograms), whereas mouse brains
are a bit smaller than expected and
elephant brains are just slightly larger
than expected.
Accounting for these scaling effects,
relative brain size is often used as a
proxy for intelligence. Quantifying in-
telligence in animals is a difficult task,
but larger relative brain size is posi-
tively correlated with many signs of
greater intelligence, such as capacity for
learning, tool use, and complex social
behavior. For extinct species, relative
brain size is often the only variable that
can provide insight into intelligence,
because fossil evidence of behavior is
rare. Scientists have thus devoted much
effort to studying the evolution of brain
size, especially in primates.
Here’s where things get complex,
and fascinating: It turns out that not
all vertebrates share the same brain-
body scaling slope. Each time a new
brain-body scaling slope arises, it sig-
nifies a major evolutionary or devel-
opmental shift. These changes can tell
us something about the way adapt-
ing to new environments, locomotion
strategies, or diets affects the brain-
body relationship. In groups with low
slopes, the brain size expands slowly
as body size increases. In groups with
high slopes, brain size scales up more
rapidly as body size increases. This
relationship means that the long-held
practice of treating all vertebrates as
if they shared a common slope might
cause us to miss out on how the brain
is really evolving. For example, the ex-
tinct dodo is much maligned as a dim-
witted species. However, the dodo
was a flightless relative of doves and
pigeons, which have a low brain-body
scaling slope. Considered in this con-
 Stephanie Freese

The relationship between brain size and body size is not constant. Smaller animals tend to sediment during the fossilization pro-
have proportionally larger brains than their larger relatives. A mouse brain weighs 0.5 gram cess. I became familiar with this tech-
but is quite large compared to the overall size of a mouse. A mouse scaled up to the size of an nique about 15 years ago when I was
elephant would have an enormous 60-kilogram brain, about 14 times larger than the brain of a student. Back then, when paleontolo-
an actual elephant. Despite the mouse’s proportionally larger brain, elephants are considered gists were interested in the brains of
to be much more intelligent than mice. When attempting to estimate “intelligence” from brain
extinct species, we would often ask a
size, biologists look not at the raw size of the brain, but rather at how much larger or smaller
the brain is than the expected size for a species of that body mass.
friendly hospital technician to slide a
few skulls through a medical CT scan-
ner during the slow hours of the night.
text, the small brain of the dodo can be as silt or mud fill up an empty brain- I fondly recall getting Sharpie-marked
explained mostly by the fact that it is a case and then harden into rock. On oc- DVDs handed to me with fresh new
scaled-up pigeon, rather than a species casion a fossil skull can break apart (or scans of dinosaur or bird skulls at a
that lost its evolutionary marbles. be broken open by a paleontologist) hospital in New York. In another case,
and reveal a natural endocast, much my colleagues and I brought the skull
Looking at Ancient Brains
Because birds evolved from theropod
dinosaurs, we need to consider thero-
pod brains to truly understand how For extinct species, relative brain size is
the avian brain evolved. Doing so
meant delving into the fossil record. often the only variable that can provide
Brains are fairly gooey and tend to
be destroyed by decomposition long
before they have a chance to fossil-
insight into intelligence.
ize. However, we can still use fossil
evidence to infer brain size in long-
extinct species. The brain occupies a like a walnut shell cracking open to of a remarkable Peruvian spear-billed
bony box within the skull that is aptly reveal the nut. Restricted to such for- penguin fossil to a hospital for scan-
named the braincase. Determining the tuitous discoveries, paleontologists ning. We were promptly booted from
volume of a modern bird brain is fair- learned very little about the brains of our seats when a patient from a car
ly straightforward: One can simply extinct species such as dinosaurs for a accident was rushed into the scanning
remove the brain from the braincase, long time. Natural endocasts are rare, room. An hour later, with the emer-
measure it, and plop it in a jar for pos- and no curator in their right mind gency handled, we sent the penguin
terity. For those who prefer to keep would allow a paleontologist to crack skull through the machine.
their hands clean, a reliable alternative open the skull of an ancient bird such Medical scanners provided won-
is to fill the empty braincase with tiny as Archaeopteryx. derful new images of the braincases
lead shot pellets and then measure the Since the 1980s, technology has of long-extinct species. But the qual-
amount used. Things get more com- opened a new, nondestructive way ity of early scans was rough; the low-
plicated when we bring fossils into the to look at ancient brains. Virtual en- resolution images made fossil brain
equation. For about two centuries, our docasts are digital models of the brain scans look blocky, as if they were made
only glimpses into the sizes and forms created by scanning the fossil skulls of Lego bricks. The fuzzy borders be-
of the brains of extinct species came with computed tomography (CT) and tween the bone and rock were due
from unusual fossils called natural en- mapping out the boundaries of the to the low power of the x-ray beam.
docasts that form when sediments such braincase, typically infiltrated with Medical scanners use weaker beams

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 355

 chicken Archaeopteryx

Courtesy of Catherine Early Courtesy of Larry Witmer’s Lab, Ohio University

Determining the volume of a modern bird brain, such as the chicken
on the left, is fairly straightforward: One can simply remove the brain
from the braincase and measure it, or one can fill the empty brain-
case with tiny lead shot pellets and then measure the amount used.
Things get more complicated when measuring fossil braincases. No
one wants to crack open precious fossilized skulls. Since the 1980s,
technology has opened a new, nondestructive way to look at ancient
brains. Virtual endocasts are digital models of the brain created by
CT-scanning fossil skulls and mapping out the boundaries of the
braincase. Early on, medical scanners were used, but their resolution is
lower, because they use weaker x-ray beams so as not to harm patients.
Today, paleontologists often use industrial micro-CT scanners, which
are typically employed for tasks such as testing for cracks in engines.
These high-powered scanners would be lethal to humans, but are per-
fect for producing crisp, high-resolution images of fossil braincases,
such as the image on the right of the early bird Archaeopteryx.

for a reason: so as not to kill patients.
Low-power beams can image human
bones and organs without causing
harmful radiation damage, but they
are too weak to fully penetrate solid
rock without distortion. Today, pale-
ontologists often use industrial micro-
CT scanners, which are typically em-
ployed for tasks such as testing for
cracks in engines. These high-powered
scanners would be lethal to humans,
but are perfect for producing crisp,
high-resolution images of fossils.
At NESCent, we took advantage
of the rapidly growing collection of
virtual endocasts from both fossil
and modern birds. Our team pooled
CT-scan data sets that we had gener-
ated for our own individual research
projects, and assembled a comprehen-
sive data set of brain scans from di-
nosaurs, fossil birds, and rare extant
species sampled from museum skulls,
covering everything from Tyrannosau-
rus rex to the dodo. We added in data
from thousands
of modern species
published in previ- moa
ous papers. Then
we were ready to
start looking at how bird brains had
evolved, from the Jurassic period to
the present day.
Mesozoic Origins of the Avian Brain
Reconstructing brain evolution in
birds starts with understanding pat-
terns in their dinosaurian ancestors.
The gap between dinosaurs and birds
once seemed so wide that it was hard
(Dinornis robustus)

Courtesy of Larry Witmer’s lab, Ohio University

The now-extinct moa evolved tremendous

body sizes, with their brains lagging be-
hind until they ended up with the smallest
relative brain sizes of all birds. This pattern
resulted in moa attaining somewhat comical
proportions, with tiny heads perched on the
end of long necks that were in turn attached
to stout bodies with legs as thick as small
tree trunks.

356 American Scientist, Volume 109

to decipher how sharp-toothed, stiff-
tailed theropods could have possibly
given rise to beaked, fluffy-winged
birds. As feathered dinosaur fossils be-
gan to be unearthed at the turn of the
century, an ever-growing list of fea-
tures once considered unique to birds
was shown to have evolved in thero-
pod dinosaurs. This list now includes
incipient wings, hollow bones pneu-
matized by an air sac system, a furcula
(“wishbone”), a gizzard, pigmented
eggs, and even behaviors such as con-
tact incubation. Brain evolution seems
to be no exception.
One might expect there would have
been a major shift in brain-body ratio
coincident with the evolution of flight
roughly 150 million years ago, given the
dual pressures of expanding the neural
circuitry needed for aerial maneuvering
and reducing body size to make takeoff
easier. Surprisingly, advanced theropod
dinosaurs, the early bird Archaeopteryx,
and early-branching modern birds such
as ostriches and pheasants all shared
the same brain-body scaling slope in
our results. The brain of Archaeopteryx is
no smaller or larger than expected for a
small dinosaur, and indeed earlier work
by Balanoff and her colleagues suggests
that many theropod dinosaurs had al-
ready evolved features previously asso-
ciated with flight, such as an expanded
cerebrum.
Avian brain evolution seems to have
been shaken up by one of the worst
extinctions of all time, the Cretaceous-
Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction that
took place 66 million years ago. Our
team found evidence for only one shift
in brain-body scaling during the Cre-
taceous (a minor change in ducks), but
found a rapid burst of brain evolu-
tion leading to new brain-body scaling
slopes in nine different groups during
the Paleocene epoch (the first 10 mil-
lion years following the mass extinc-
tion). A pervasive trend is the shift to
higher slopes and decreasing body
mass, a pattern observed in groups
such as swifts, sandpipers, parrots,
and songbirds. Other groups such as
birds of prey went in the opposite di-
rection, shifting to lower slopes and
larger body sizes. These changes set
the stage for the astounding variation
in avian ecologies we see today, from
the simple lifestyles of doves to the
complex social behavior of parrots.
How could a mass extinction trig-
ger such a diversification? One classic
explanation for the evolution of large
www.americanscientist.org
higher slope: brain size scales
more rapidly than body size
brain Size
pe
slo
ne
w pe
ral
est
anc
body size
Not all vertebrates share the same brain-body scaling slope. Each time a new brain-body scal-
ing slope arises, it signifies a major evolutionary or developmental shift. Corvids not only
have a high brain-body scaling slope, but also the highest rate of brain-body evolution. Much
like humans, corvids evolved larger bodies and larger brains at the same time, but their brains
expanded even faster than their bodies.
brains is the cognitive buffer hypothesis,
which posits that large brains provide
a buffer against frequent or unexpect-
ed environmental changes by allow-
ing more flexible behavioral responses.
Studies of modern birds have shown
that island-dwelling species tend to
evolve larger brains than their main-
land relatives to cope with their need
to survive in dramatically fluctuating
Corvids took the same path that we
humans did. They evolved larger bodies
and larger brains at the same time.
environments. For example, main-
land birds might simply migrate out
of an area as a hurricane approaches,
whereas island species must deal with
whatever havoc the storm wreaks on
their habitat. One can imagine the
aftermath of the K-Pg mass extinction
was akin to waking up the morning
after a hurricane, a forest fire, and a
volcano all hit on the same day. Global
ecosystems may have taken hundreds
of thousands of years to recover. At the
same time, the mass extinction opened
new opportunities for modern birds.
Many competing groups, including
the winged pterosaurs, archaic toothed
larger average brain
size at same body size
slo
Daniel T. Ksepka
birds, marine reptiles, and small di-
nosaurs were wiped out. Surviving
bird lineages evolved to take advan-
tage of newly opened niches, and the
fossil record documents early adap-
tors ranging from tiny tree-dwelling
mousebirds to diving penguins radiat-
ing rapidly in the early Paleocene. (See
“Flights of Fancy in Avian Evolution,”
January–February 2014.)
Scaling Across the Avian Family Tree
Most species of the Palaeognathae—
a group that includes large flightless
birds such as ostriches and emus, as
well as the volant tinamous—inherited
the ancestral brain-body slope shared
by nonavian theropods and Archaeop-
teryx. However, two palaeognath lin-
eages shifted in new directions. The
now-extinct moa evolved tremendous
body sizes, with their brains lagging
behind until they ended up with the
smallest relative brain sizes of all
birds—so their brain-body slope was
flatter. This pattern resulted in moa at-
taining somewhat comical proportions,
2021 November–December 357
 Relative Brain Size across the Avian Family Tree

Shorebirds Swifts and Hummingbirds

Cranes and Rails Nightbirds

Waterbirds Cuckoos and Allies

Doves, Pigeons, and Allies

Hawks and Eagles

Flamingos

Bird silhouettes from phylopic.org: Lauren Anderson, Nevit Dilmen, Dori (dori@merr.info), Patrick Fisher, Rebecca Groom, T. Michael Keesey, Liftarn, Sharon Wegner-Larsen, Ferran Sayol, L. Shyamal, Emily Willoughby
and Grebes

Owls
Neoaves Waterfowl
Rollers and Allies

Landfowl
Woodpeckers
and Allies

Palaeognathae
Dinosaurs
Falcons

Parrots

Other Songbirds

Flycatchers and Allies

Bowerbirds Crows and Ravens

small large
relative brain size

Mapping data on the brains of several thousand species of dinosaurs, relatively small-brained pigeons and turkeys to large-brained parrots
extinct birds, and modern birds across their evolutionary tree span- and ravens. The picture becomes even more complicated when one
ning over 125 million years shows the big picture of avian brain considers theropod dinosaurs, the closest extinct relatives of birds.
evolution. There is a wide range in brain sizes among birds, from (From D. Ksepka, et al., 2020)

with tiny heads perched on the end of
long necks that were in turn attached to
stout bodies with legs as thick as small
tree trunks. A nearly opposite pattern
occurred in the lovable long-beaked
kiwi, in which body size decreased
while brain size stayed nearly the same.
In other words, the slope between brain
size and body size was steeper. This
pattern left the nocturnal, soccer ball–
sized kiwi at the pinnacle of palaeog-
nath relative brain size.
Although these two cases are in-
triguing, most of the burst of post-
extinction diversification in brain size
is concentrated in Neoaves, the most
species-rich part of the avian evolu-
tionary tree. In Neoaves, we observed
that many different groups evolved
higher brain-body scaling slopes not
so much because of the brain itself
changing size, but because body size
decrease outpaced brain size decrease
as different groups evolved smaller
overall sizes. Swifts and humming-
birds provide one example of this pat-
tern. These birds evolved very small
sizes that allowed new specialized
flight styles. The hovering flight of
hummingbirds, for example, would
be impossible for a crow-sized bird.
Hummingbirds ended up with a high-
er brain-body scaling slope, but the
driving factor was likely selection for
shrinking body size.
Predatory birds, also members of
Neoaves, provide another example of
stronger selection for body size than
brain size. The early evolution of a
carnivorous diet in owls, hawks, and
falcons is marked by an increase in
both brain size and body size. Yet there

358 American Scientist, Volume 109

seems to have been stronger evolu-
tionary selection on body size. Perhaps
this result was because of selection
pressure related to hunting. Smaller
species may have been better able to
survive on a diet of rodents, versus
larger individuals better able to pick
off large prey such as adult ducks,
with selection reinforcing these size
patterns. Owls themselves turn out to
have relatively large brains compared
to hawks and falcons. However, it is
doubtful whether this large brain size
equates to wisdom. Research delving
into the finer partitioning of the owl
brain shows its size is due in large part
to expansion of brain regions dealing
with visual acuity rather than higher
reasoning.
Crows and Parrots Reach the Peak
Two groups stand out from all the oth-
ers when it comes to avian brain size:
crows and parrots. Parrots are widely
considered the most intelligent birds,
in large part because of their ability
to mimic—or sometimes even learn—
human language. Like the flightless
kiwi, parrots achieved a higher brain-
body slope by decreasing body size
rapidly while retaining relatively large
brains. They took this pattern to a
much greater extreme than kiwis did,
resulting in one of the highest brain-
body scaling slopes in the bird world.
This high slope means larger parrots
especially tend to have expanded
brains, a trend borne out in remark-
ably brainy macaws and gray parrots.
As interesting as parrots are, it is
Corvidae—the family that includes
crows, ravens, and jays—that exhibit
the most intriguing pattern of brain
size evolution. Corvids belong to the
songbird group, but they are much
larger than most songbirds. This size
disparity is on display every day at
backyard bird feeders: Just compare a
blue jay to some smaller fellow song-
birds such as house sparrows and
black-capped chickadees. Corvids are
also very intelligent birds. That same
backyard blue jay is clever enough to
spy on squirrels burying nuts for the
winter and then go back and steal their
cached supplies after they leave. What
makes corvids fascinating is this com-
bination of large brain size and large
body size.
Our results indicated that corvids
have not only a high brain-body scal-
ing slope, but also the highest rate of
brain-body evolution. Corvids are
www.americanscientist.org
fascinating because they took the
same path that we humans did. They
evolved larger bodies and larger brains
at the same time, but their brains ex-
panded even faster than their bodies.
Corvids can rightly be considered the
hominids of the bird world.
Parrots and corvids achieved ex-
tremely large relative brain size by
taking two different evolutionary
pathways. Yet there may be at least
one factor that propelled them in the
same direction. Parrots and corvids are
both vocal learners, able to memorize
and repeat sounds. The idea that vo-
cal learning might be related to brain
expansion is compelling. However,
the story is not clean-cut. Corvids ac-
count for only about 120 of the roughly
5,000 living species of songbirds, but
most other songbirds share a lower
brain-body slope. Another complicat-
ing observation is that hummingbirds
are now also known to be vocal learn-
ers, but share the same slope as swifts,
which are incapable of vocal learning.
Delving Deeper
Combining fossil and modern data
illuminates major patterns in the
timing of avian brain evolution. The
emerging big picture is that the first
birds arose during the Jurassic pe-
riod and had fairly typical theropod
brains. The K-Pg mass extinction set
the stage for the explosive radiation
of modern birds, both in terms of spe-
cies diversification and rapid shifts in
brain size that helped birds adapt to
environments as diverse as tropical
rainforests and Antarctic ice shelves.
Despite so much of the exciting stuff
happening early, it seems that birds
reached their pinnacle in brain size
evolution relatively recently, because
the last common ancestors of modern
parrots and modern corvids appeared
between 10 million and 20 million
years ago. Given that birds have only
recently reached this peak, it is pos-
sible that even larger-brained birds
could evolve over the next 10 million
years, provided we give them the op-
portunity by preventing catastrophic
extinctions from climate change and
deforestation.
Much remains to be explored. Al-
though the NESCent study sampled
2,020 species, we considered only
overall brain size. Future work may
gain more insight into the specific neu-
rological adaptations of birds by con-
sidering the volumes of different re-
gions of the brain, such as the olfactory
bulbs, optic lobes, and cerebellum. It
may be possible to go even deeper
than that to the cellular level. Corvids
and parrots exhibit high neuron den-
sities in the cerebrum (the region of
the brain associated with higher cog-
nitive function), and in some species
these densities are so high that they
approach the raw number observed in
primates. As new methods emerge for
imaging modern bird brains and infer-
ring brain region boundaries in fossil
endocasts, we hope to probe deeper
in the minds of birds and nonavian
dinosaurs alike.
Bibliography
Balanoff, A. M., G. S. Bever, T. B. Rowe, and M.
A. Norell. 2013. Evolutionary origins of the
avian brain. Nature 501:93–96.
Iwaniuk, A. N., K. M. Dean, and J. E. Nel-
son. 2004. A mosaic pattern characterizes
the evolution of the avian brain. Proceed-
ings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
271(Suppl 4):S148–S151.
Jerison, H. 1973. Evolution of the Brain and Intel-
ligence. New York: Academic Press.
Ksepka, D. T., et al. 2020. Tempo and pattern of
avian brain size evolution. Current Biology
30:2026–2036.
Lefebvre, L., N. Nicolakakis, and D. Boire.
2002. Tools and brains in birds. Behaviour
139:939–973.
Olkowicz, S., et al. 2016. Birds have primate-
like numbers of neurons in the forebrain.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci-
ences of the USA 113:7255–7260.
Sayol, F., P. A. Downing, A. N. Iwaniuk, J. Ma-
spons, and D. Sol. 2018. Predictable evolu-
tion towards larger brains in birds coloniz-
ing oceanic islands. Nature Communications
9:2820.
Sayol, F., J. Maspons, O. Lapiedra, A. N. Iwa-
niuk, T. Székely, and D. Sol. 2016. Envi-
ronmental variation and the evolution of
large brains in birds. Nature Communications
7:13971.
Smaers J. B.,  et al. 2021. The evolution of
mammalian brain size.  Science Advanc-
es 7:eabe2101.
Witmer, L. M., R. C. Ridgely, D. L. Dufeau,
and M. C. Semones. 2008. Using CT to peer
into the past: 3D visualization of the brain
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Towards a New Morphology, eds. H. Endo
and R. Frey, pp. 67–87. Tokyo: Springer.
Daniel T. Ksepka received his PhD from Colum-
bia University through the American Museum
of Natural History joint fellowship program in
2007. He is a vertebrate paleontologist and has
published over 60 scientific papers, including work
on avian brain evolution and the neuroanatomy of
extinct penguins. He currently serves as curator
at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. E-mail:
dksepka@brucemuseum.org
2021 November–December 359
The Curse of E = mc 2
The most famous equation has a history that goes far beyond Albert Einstein,
and a meaning that is far less straightforward than is commonly believed.
Tony Rothman
H
ollywood stars, one imag-
ines, receive at breakfast
each morning cartons
overflowing with letters
from adoring fans—or, more likely
these days, collections of emails,
Facebook posts, and Instagram
comments—sorted by personal assis-
tants into relevant categories: “gushing
praise”; “everlasting devotion”; “mar-
riage proposals”; and “autographed
photo request (price list sent).”
Physicists occasionally get mail, too.
The most popular topics are “Einstein
was wrong”; “Einstein was a fraud”;
“Attached find my unified field the-
ory correcting Einstein.” Sometimes
UPS delivers the proposals as entire
crates of self-published books on why
relativity is incorrect. Those of us who
receive such submissions tend to file
them under “Prophets and Cosmic
Visionaries” or “Delete,” or we may
silently excuse ourselves by forward-
ing the submissions of one author to
another, and vice versa, allowing them
to debate matters intelligently among
themselves. Letters from prophets in-
variably conclude with, “I expect your
positive evaluation within three days.”
Einstein’s defenders are as zealous
as his deniers. The smallest publica-
tion by a physicist that touches upon
relativity invariably elicits responses of
the form, “You claim Einstein made a
mistake. In fact, Einstein was anointed
by God, and you are an idiot.” It is
sometimes the case that such letters
are signed by colleagues.
To the public, if not to scientists them-
selves, the focal point of Einstein fixa-
tion is E = mc2. No other equation in the
Attempts to establish the equivalence be-
tween mass and energy long preceded Albert
Einstein’s special theory of relativity, with early
investigations going back to the 1880s.
360 American Scientist, Volume 109
history of the world has a more compact
and ironclad biography or a more suc-
cinct meaning: In 1905, several months
after completing his special theory of
relativity, Albert Einstein perceived that
mass and energy were equivalent and
proved that the energy content of any
body is equal to its mass times the speed
of light squared, E = mc2. Thus the story
of the equation has come to symbolize
Einstein’s entire body of work, if not all
of modern physics, and has firmly em-
bedded itself into pop culture.
But as is generally the case with
isolated-genius science stories, this one
is a fairy tale, or at least it veers strongly
in that direction. Einstein was not the
first physicist to suggest that energy be-
haves as if it possesses mass, and if he
was indeed the first to write down the
correct general expression, a professor
grading the 1905 paper in which he gave
his derivation of the mass–energy rela-
tionship would deduct points for un-
justified and incorrect assumptions. In-
deed, Einstein wrote half a dozen further
papers to patch up his argument, never
succeeding. Debate continues today
over the proper approach to establishing
the relationship, over whether relativity
is necessary, and even over whether the
equation is correct in all circumstances.
The mail being inexorable, a physi-
cist well knows what he is in for if he
ignores Will Rogers’s immortal adage,
“Anyone who speaks aloud of E = mc2
is a blockhead.” But let us go ahead and
be a fool, or a blockhead, and outline
the history and conflicts surrounding
E = mc2, attempting to steer between ex-
tremists on the left and the right. Bear
in mind that, mathematical proofs not-
QUICK TAKE
Einstein’s famous 1905 relativity paper is
valid only for low velocities, and in six further
attempts he never succeeded in producing a
universal derivation of E = mc2.
withstanding, physics is ultimately an
experimental science and the correctness
of any proposal is decided by trial and
error. E = mc2 is by now used daily in sit-
uations ranging from subatomic physics
to bomb simulations to black hole accre-
tion disks, and no one seriously doubts
that it will endure forever as one of the
foundations of our description of nature.
Fields and Fluids
With the advent of James Clerk Max-
well’s theory of electromagnetism in
the 1860s, natural philosophers were
faced with two towering, competing
worldviews: Newtonian mechanics,
which had dominated scientific think-
ing for two centuries, and the Scottish
physicist’s nascent theory. The former
interpreted nature in terms of parti-
cles and forces. The latter described
the behavior of waves and fields, in
particular electromagnetic fields that
propagated as light waves. Which was
the more fundamental?
The answer was not obvious. Max-
well himself had developed electromag-
netism with analogies to Newtonian
hydrodynamics. He imagined space to
be filled with fluids that contained vor-
tices and elastic stresses that transmit-
ted radiation from one place to another.
His successors pushed such analogies
to extremes, enlisting vortex springs
and even vortex sponges embedded
into seemingly empty space to explain
wave propagation. From that view-
point, Newtonian mechanics was surely
the more fundamental theory. On the
other hand, a philosopher who viewed
the world as composed of charged par-
ticles each carrying its own electric and
In extended systems, one often gets the
equation as E = 3/ 4 mc2, and debate continues
even to this day on the best way to interpret
or fix this strange result.

magnetic fields might well regard elec-
tromagnetism as the basis of nature.
Toward the close of the 19th century,
probably more physicists were Max-
wellians than Newtonians. As Austrian
physicist Ludwig Boltzmann remarked
in 1897, “The advantage of deriving
the whole science of mechanics from
conceptions, which anyhow are indis-
pensable for the explanation of electro-
magnetism, would be as important as if
conversely electromagnetic phenomena
were explained on the basis of mechan-
ics. May the former succeed.”
A cornerstone of the belief that all
mechanical phenomena could be re-
duced to electromagnetism was the
idea that mass itself was a property “in-
duced” by the interaction of charges
and fields. The first attempt to demon-
strate that claim was made in 1881 by
a 25-year-old J. J. Thomson, the British
physicist who later achieved renown as
one of the discoverers of the electron.
www.americanscientist.org
Tom Dunne
Many minds contributed to the concept of the mass–energy relationship. English physicist J. J.
Thomson explored how an electromagnetic field might change the mass of a moving, charged
sphere; his calculations were later corrected by his countryman Oliver Heaviside. French phi-
losopher Henri Poincaré investigated electromagnetic energy as a “fictitious fluid.” German
physicist Max Abraham linked an electron’s mass to its interaction with its own field. Aus-
trian physicist Fritz Hasenöhrl developed a thought problem that related radiation and mass,
which anticipated some of Einstein’s grand insights.
Thomson reasoned along the fol- ball, you have to add exactly one-half
lowing lines. When you drop an inflat- the mass of the displaced air to the mass
able beach ball to the sand, you see of the ball. You can imagine the beach
that it falls much more slowly than ball pushing a virtual ball ahead of it
it would were gravity the only cul- whose mass is one-half the mass of the
prit at work. You might think that the air contained in the real ball. Because the
drag produced by the air on the ball drag on the ball itself is zero, the slowed
accounts for the discrepancy, but this falling of the ball must be a purely in-
is far from the whole story. Even if the ertial effect: Due to its motion, the ball
ball were perfectly smooth, with zero behaves as if its mass has increased, and
drag, it would still have to push the air hence its acceleration has decreased. The
ahead of it out of the way. The mass of effect of this additional, or induced mass
that air must somehow figure in the becomes significant when the density of
ball’s inhibited motion. the surrounding fluid is comparable to
How much air is being pushed? It the density of the accelerating object. For
turns out that for air flowing without example, the density of water is com-
turbulence around a perfectly smooth parable to the overall density of a ship,
2021 November–December 361

Ideal Falling Ball
A falling ball acts as if it has addition-
al “induced” mass (meff) even when its
drag (Fd) is idealized and set to zero, a
concept utilized by English physicist J. J.
Thomson. In 1889, English physicist and
electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside cor-
rected Thomson’s calculation of induced
mass for a charged ball passing through
its own electromagnetic field and de-
rived a value of m = ( 4/ 3 ) E/ c2, where E
is the electric field energy. Rearranging
the terms we get E = ( 3/ 4 ) mc2. The equa-
tion was a significant early stage in the
concept of mass–energy equivalence.
Any calculation attempting to find the
relationship between mass and energy
is bound to give an answer of the form
E = Amc2, where A is a number, like 3/ 4 .
This is just a matter of units, or dimen-
sions as physicists say. The equation for
kinetic energy is KE = ( 1/ 2 ) mv2, which is exactly of this form. The c2 enters
because c is the velocity of an electromagnetic wave. The number A is what
physicists call a geometric factor. The 3/ 4 (or 4/ 3 ) is a sign that some aspect of
the system under consideration is spherically symmetric; for example, the
volume of a sphere equals 4/ 3 πr3.
and the water must be pushed out of the
way as the ship plows forth, so nautical
engineers are well aware of the induced-
mass phenomenon.
By analogy, Thomson imagined a
charged sphere moving through space.
Because the sphere is charged, it car-
ries an electric field, and because it is
moving, it generates a magnetic field.
There was a widespread idea that
mass was a property “induced” by the
interaction of charges and fields.
Thomson argued that this self-generated
magnetic field must impede the charge’s
motion just as the air impedes a fall-
ing ball. If it accelerated the charge, the
charge’s energy and velocity would in-
crease, further increasing the magnetic
field, further accelerating the charge
. . . ad infinitum. Perpetual motion ma-
chines are forbidden in physics, so the
magnetic field must act to decelerate the
charge. Because there is no friction in this
system, the sphere must slow down as if
362 American Scientist, Volume 109
mbg – Fb– Fd = (mb + meff)a
meff is “induced” mass
Tom Dunne
its mass were increasing, like the beach
ball moving through the air. Thomson’s
calculations showed that the sphere’s
mass should increase by what amount-
ed to (8/15) E/c2, where E represents the
electric field energy. For Earth, Thomson
estimated the induced mass to be “about
650 tons .  .  . quite insignificant when
compared with the mass of the earth.”
Couched as it was in slightly hypo-
thetical language, it’s not entirely clear
how seriously Thomson took his result,
but the multifaceted English physicist
and electrical engineer Oliver Heavi-
side certainly did. Heaviside appar-
ently believed that induced mass was a
genuine physical phenomenon, writing
in an 1889 paper of the “electric force
of inertia.” His version of Thomson’s
calculation gave for the sphere’s mass
( 4/ 3 ) E/ c2 [see box above]. If one accepts
the line of reasoning, then Thomson
and Heaviside had established by then
that mass can be associated with the
energy of the electromagnetic field.
Any account of the early history of
relativity inevitably runs into the uni-
versal French mathematician, engi-
neer, physicist, and philosopher Henri
Poincaré, who in particular contributed
penetrating thoughts concerning the
inertia of energy. Since Newton’s day,
physicists had asserted that nature
obeys conservation of momentum. In
other words, an isolated system’s total
momentum (the sum of all the particle
masses multiplied by their velocities)
always remains constant. Energy, of
course, is also conserved for material
systems, and in 1884 John H. Poynting
extended this idea with a famous theo-
rem that expressed the law of energy
conservation for the electromagnetic
field. Poincaré realized that Poynting’s
theorem had an important implication:
that the electromagnetic field also car-
ries momentum.
In 1900, Poincaré published a paper
in which he proposed that the field and
particle momenta should be conserved
together, which was problematic, be-
cause the momentum of particles was
happily conserved on its own. Never-
theless, by enlisting Poynting’s theo-
rem, Poincaré could achieve his goal of
a unified conservation law if he regard-
ed electromagnetic energy as a fluid
traveling through space with a density
such that E = mc2. That did the trick,
as long as the electromagnetic energy
density remained constant. As there
was no obvious reason for this to be
the case, he regarded his analogy as a
fluide fictif (fictious fluid), a mathemati-
cal construct allowing the system’s total
momentum to be conserved.
Nevertheless, in broadening the realm
of momentum conservation, Poincaré’s
proposal represented a significant con-
ceptual advance, one that his German
colleague Max Abraham pushed further
in his theory of the classical electron. His
calculation of the electron’s mass, due
to the particle’s interaction with its own
electric field, again gave ( 4/3 ) E/c2 [see box
on opposite page]. The persistence of the
4/ 3 factor, which looks decidedly weird
to modern eyes, is made inestimably
odder by the fact that it refuses to go
away under straightforward relativistic
calculations. The correct way of dispos-
ing of it is debated even today, but for
the moment we gently tiptoe around the
notorious 4/3 problem.
Cylinders and Blocks
A substantially different approach to
the relationship between mass and
energy was taken by Fritz Hasenöhrl.
Largely forgotten today, Hasenöhrl
was considered one of the lead-
ing physicists in Austria of the early
20th century. Born in 1874, he stud-
ied physics under two luminaries,
Franz Exner and Ludwig Boltzmann,
at the University of Vienna. In 1907,
after Boltzmann committed suicide,
Hasenöhrl succeeded his teacher as
professor of physics and soon count-
ed quantum physics pioneer Erwin
Schrödinger among his students.
In 1904, Hasenöhrl made what was
to become the most publicized pre-
Einsteinian attempt to establish the
equivalence of mass and energy—
perhaps too publicized. Years later,
the physicist and virulent anti-Semite
Philipp Lenard, who became Hitler’s
Chief of Aryan Physics, attempted to
discredit Einstein by awarding the dis-
covery of E = mc2 to Hasenöhrl. Since
then, crackpots and anti-Semites of the
world have latched on to Hasenöhrl,
adding their conspiracy theories to
physicists’ mailboxes.
Nevertheless, credit is due the man. In
a trilogy of papers published under the
collective title “On the Theory of Radia-
tion in Moving Bodies,” the final two of
which appeared in Annalen der Physik in
1904 and early 1905, Hasenöhrl asked
whether heat energy—blackbody radiation
to physicists—emitted by the endcaps
inside a moving, cylindrical cavity mani-
fests inertia. He answered his question
in the affirmative, stating that blackbody
radiation has “an apparent mass equal
to ( 8/ 3 ) E/ c2,” which in his final paper
he corrected to ( 4/3 ) E/c2 [see box on page
364]. The similarity of his result to Abra-
ham’s is not surprising, given that the
underlying physics in both analyses is
Maxwell’s theory. However, Abraham
was considering an electron, whereas
Hasenöhrl was considering heat radia-
tion contained in a moving cylinder. In
the former, the relevant energy is that of
the electron’s field; in the latter, it is the
thermal energy of the heat.
It should be emphasized that
Hasenöhrl was working from a New-
tonian worldview, in which scientists
imagined that light could travel at
varying speeds through the univer-
sal medium of the light-bearing ether,
and that different clocks always
measured the same time when their
springs were functioning. Moreover,
www.americanscientist.org
Abraham’s Electron
German physicist Max
Abraham believed that all
properties of particles, in- electromagnetic
cluding their mass, must stresses
have an electromagnetic
origin. Remembered large-
ly for his opposition to
Einstein’s theories of rela- Poincaré
tivity, he considered the stresses
possibility of gravitational
waves before Einstein did,
discovered the Schwarzs-
child radius (the size of Tom Dunne
a black hole) before Karl
Schwarzschild, and in 1903 developed the theory of electrons still taught
today. To Abraham, the electron was a tiny charged ball, which if accelerated
emitted electromagnetic radiation as demanded by Maxwell’s theory. That
radiation, in turn, exerted a reaction force on the electron, pushing it in the
opposite direction, just as a rocket’s exhaust does to the rocket. Believing he
knew the reaction force, Abraham calculated the resulting momentum of
his ball in terms of the electric field energy E and the electron’s final veloc-
ity. That momentum turned out to be [ ( 4/ 3 ) E/c2 ] v. Equating his result to the
momentum for a particle (mv) showed that the mass is ( 4/ 3 ) E/c2, or E = 3/4 mc2.
How a spherical electron could remain stable was unknown at the time;
French physicist and philosopher Henri Poincaré postulated it is held to-
gether by stresses that counter its internal electromagnetic repulsion (above).
the cylinders of Hasenöhrl’s thought bursts of light in opposite directions.
experiments are macroscopic objects, He then assumes that the block’s mass
making the problem far more difficult must decrease after this emission of
than those involving idealized point radiation. The question is, how much?
masses. And although Hasenöhrl’s Einstein answers by asking how the
first experiment was modeled on situation appears to an observer who
a cavity moving at constant veloc- is moving at some velocity v with re-
ity, he made his own life infinitely spect to the block. To that observer, it is
more miserable by next considering the block that is moving—at the same
cavities undergoing acceleration, for speed but in the opposite direction. Be-
which he also found m = ( 4/ 3 ) E/ c2. fore the burst of radiation, the moving
Despite the handicaps, Max Planck block has an energy of motion, kinetic
and Wolfgang Pauli—two other lead- energy, given by the standard formula
ing figures in the development of ( 1/ 2 ) mv2. After the bursts of radiation,
quantum physics—acknowledged this energy must change [see box on
Hasenöhrl as the first to point out that page 365]. Einstein equates the change
blackbody radiation possesses inertia. in kinetic energy to his recently de-
With Hasenöhrl’s publications, rived formula for the energy E inher-
the stage was set for Albert Einstein. ent in a beam of light. In a few short
Compared to his colleague’s trilogy, lines, he reaches the conclusion now
Einstein’s paper, “Does the Inertia of chiseled in eternity, E = ∆mc2, where ∆m
a Body Depend on Its Energy Con- represents the change in mass.
tent?” received by Annalen der Physik However, in 1905, Einstein did not
in September 1905, is a masterwork know the relativistically correct expres-
of simplicity, only three pages long. sion for kinetic energy, which was pro-
After summarizing his new theory of posed by Polish-German mathemati-
relativity, in which the speed of light is cian Hermann Minkowski only in 1908.
constant, Einstein wisely considers the Einstein thus resorted to the Newtonian
simplified case of the classic introduc- equation for kinetic energy, essentially
tory physics mass: a block. He imag- approximating away the relativistic bits
ines that the block, sitting contented- of his calculation to arrive at an answer
ly at rest, suddenly emits two equal that is attainable using Newton’s and
2021 November–December 363
Maxwell’s physics. Arguably, the quint-
essential equation of relativity contains
no relativity. And by the way, E = mc2
never appears in the paper. Einstein
writes, “If a body gives off the energy L
in the form of radiation, its mass dimin-
ishes by L/c2.” He didn’t write the equa-
tion in its famous form until his 1912
“Manuscript on Special Relativity.”
Einstein did not prove that all
forms of energy possess mass, nor
did he explain how mass–energy
conversion comes about.
On the one hand, Einstein’s concep-
tion of mass–energy equivalence was
a definite conceptual leap from the
Maxwellians: No longer was mass tied
to a charge’s motion through an elec-
tromagnetic field. On the other hand,
contrary to popular belief, Einstein did
not prove that all forms of energy pos-
sess mass. That’s what he conjectured
at the close of his paper. In his calcula-
tion, mass is converted specifically into
light (electromagnetic radiation), which
is only one form of energy. As heat is
also a form of electromagnetic radia-
tion, in that respect it is not obvious that
Einstein’s result was more general than
Hasenöhrl’s. Moreover, Einstein never
explains how mass–energy conversion
comes about; if it cannot take place,
then the famous result holds no content.
Nevertheless, the conjecture that mass
should change under emission of any
sort of energy was probably Einstein’s
greatest contribution to the problem.
Neither the Maxwellians nor Hasenöhrl
had considered such a possibility.
Einstein was well aware of the de-
ficiencies of his proof of mass–energy
equivalence, and over the next 40 years
he wrote six further papers attempting
to correct it. Physicist Hans Ohanian at
the University of Vermont persuasively
argues that they all contain errors. It
was not until 1911 that German physi-
cist Max von Laue, using mathematical
methods unfamiliar to Einstein in 1905,
showed that if E = mc2 holds for an ideal-
ized point mass, such as a basic physics
block, then it also holds for an extended,
static system as long as the system is
“closed,” meaning that no external forc-
es act upon it. In 1918, German math-
ematician Felix Klein extended Laue’s
result to systems that weren’t static but
changed with time. With the Laue–Klein
theorem, most physicists came to accept
that E = mc2 had been satisfactorily estab-
lished, at least theoretically.
Inevitably one wonders whether Ein-
stein knew about Hasenöhrl’s work.
Lacking a time machine, we cannot de-
finitively answer this question. Without
ever explicitly mentioning Hasenöhrl,
Einstein always insisted on his priority
regarding the discovery of mass–energy
equivalence. Still, it is hard to believe
he was unaware of a series of award-
winning papers published by a promi-
nent colleague in the leading German
physics journal, to which he himself had
been contributing since 1901. It seems
likely that Einstein saw Hasenöhrl’s pa-
pers and they inspired him to do better;
the similarity of their thought experi-
ments only strengthens that suspicion.
At some point, Einstein certainly
became aware of Hasenöhrl, as evi-
denced by a famous photo of the first
Solvay Conference, held in Brussels
in 1911. There seem to have been no
hard feelings, at least on Hasenöhrl’s
part. According to Hasenöhrl’s stu-
dent Hans Thirring, after the debut

Hasenöhrl’s Cylinder
Austrian physicist Fritz Hasenöhrl developed a thought
experiment to investigate the relationship between mass
and energy. In this simplified version, a perfectly reflect-
ing cavity is fitted with endcaps that serve as heaters. At a photon photon
certain instant, both heaters are switched on, emitting heat
in the form of photons. The photons exert a reaction force reaction force
on the endcaps, which are free to move independently. If of photon
the cavity is initially at rest (top), two equal and opposite
external forces, F1 and F2, must be applied to the endcaps to blueshifted redshifted
keep them motionless and attached to the cavity. But if the
cavity is moving to the right with velocity v (bottom), some-
one on the ground would see right-moving photons blue-
shifted due to the Doppler effect and left-moving photons
redshifted. Red photons are less energetic than blue pho-
tons and exert a smaller reaction force. Keeping the caps motion (relative to observer)
moving at constant velocity and in position requires that
F1 be greater than F2 for the time it takes light to cross the Tom Dunne

cavity. Combining the standard equations for the work W

performed during this time, light pressure, and the Doppler effect, one finds that in this toy model W = 4Ev2/ c2, where
E is the total radiation energy in the cavity. By equating the work to kinetic energy, 1/2 mv2, one gets E = ( 1/ 8 ) mc2.
Hasenöhrl’s full treatment gives E = ( 3/ 4 ) mc2.

364 American Scientist, Volume 109

 Einstein’s Block
Albert Einstein’s mass–energy thought experiment was similar to
Fritz Hasenöhrl’s (previous page), although much simpler. Einstein
imagines a mass that emits two equal bursts of light in opposite direc-
tions (top), which carry off energy, and he assumes that in the process
the object’s mass decreases by an amount ∆m. As the bursts are equal burst of
photons
and opposite, to someone standing on the mass, it never moves. To
find ∆m, Einstein considers a second observer (bottom) moving with
respect to the mass at a velocity v. Because to the first observer the
block’s motion is constant (zero), its velocity must remain constant
for the second observer. If the block’s mass has decreased, though,
its kinetic energy will have as well. The moving observer thus sees a redshifted blueshifted
photon photon
change in kinetic energy given by 1/2 ∆mv2. Einstein also realizes that
to the second observer the light will be Doppler shifted, with the blue
beam carrying more energy than the red. Einstein argues that the
energy difference must be the object’s change in kinetic energy. From
his relativistic formulas for the Doppler shift, he then arrives at the
— ———
equation 1/2 ∆mv2 = Eγ ( 1/√1 −v2 /c2 − 1 ). For low velocities, v/c is much motion (relative to observer)
less than 1 and the equation can be approximated to give Eγ = ∆mc2.
But Einstein used the Newtonian expression for kinetic energy, which
is correct only at low velocities; the famous equation of relativity can Tom Dunne

be derived using only Newtonian physics and the energy inherent in

a light beam, given by Maxwell’s equations.

of special relativity, Hasenöhrl be-
came one of its first exponents. Tragi-
cally, Hasenöhrl never got to tell his
side of the story. At the outbreak of
World War I, he enlisted in the Austro-
Hungarian army and was killed dur-
ing the Isonzo campaign in what is
now Slovenia, in 1915.
While the Laue–Klein theorem put
E = mc2 on a firmer theoretical footing,
experiments involving the particles and
energies released during the radioactive
decay of atomic nuclei were starting to
Photograph by Benjamin Couprie, 1911/Wikimedia Commons
lend empirical confirmation to Einstein’s
prediction. James Chadwick’s 1932 dis-
covery of the neutron, whose mass was
consistent with that predicted by E = mc2,
was a significant signpost along this
road. Within a few more years, mass–
energy equivalence became regarded as
an experimentally confirmed law of na-
ture. But it was undoubtedly the atomic
bomb, whose enormous destructive
power is a direct result of the conversion
of mass into energy, which welded Ein-
stein’s name to E = mc2 once and for all.
The Nagging 4/ 3
Yet our tale is hardly done. You have
undoubtedly been wondering where
Hasenöhrl went wrong, and how to get
rid of the damned 4/3 that figures in his
cylinders and Abraham’s electrons. Inso-
far as quantum field theory—a framework
for understanding the interaction of
light and elementary particles—was de-
veloped largely to deal with the patholo-
gies inherent in Abraham’s model of the
electron, the problem actually becomes
central to 20th-century physics. You may
have also been wondering why Abra-
ham’s electron doesn’t fly apart under
the mutual repulsion of its negatively
charged parts. Poincaré wondered the
same thing, and suggested that the tiny
ball could be glued together by elastic
forces, which oppose the pressure aris-
ing from the electrical repulsion.
Hasenöhrl’s thought experiments

manifest a similar dilemma. Hasenöhrl

imagined his radiation to be confined in
a cylinder, which must manifest stresses
to counteract the radiation’s pressure,
just as the elastic stresses in a balloon

The influential first Solvay Conference on

Physics, held in Brussels in the autumn of
1911, focused on “the theory of radiation
and quanta.” Einstein appears second from
the right; Fritz Hasenöhrl is in the back cor-
ner, head upturned. Einstein never discussed
Hasenöhrl’s influence on his own ideas, but he
was probably aware of his colleague’s work.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 365


Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper (top) presented his revolutionary conjecture that the mass of
an object should change under emission of any form of energy. He did not prove that rela-
tionship at the time, however. The initial formulation of his equation also looks unfamiliar
to modern eyes. Einstein first wrote his equation as E = mc2 in his unpublished 1912 notes
(bottom). In subsequent papers, he never succeeded in producing his own definitive proof.
confine the air inside. Such stresses pos-
sess energy, and if one accounts for that
energy properly using the Laue–Klein
theorem (which deals with extended
systems), the result should come out to
a clean E = mc2. At least, that is, according
to physics folklore, which turns out to
366 American Scientist, Volume 109
HathiTrust Digital Library
Lynne Sladky/Associated Press/AP Images
be . . . folklore. Laue and Klein had as-
sumed that no external forces act on the
system, but Hasenöhrl explicitly enlisted
external forces to hold the endcaps of
his cylinder in position, like the fingers
of God, and therefore the Laue–Klein
theorem is not applicable.
What, then, explains the 4/ 3 factor?
Because the endcaps in Hasenöhrl’s cyl-
inder are radiating heat, they must be
losing mass—something that Hasenöhrl
failed to realize. He calculated only the
apparent mass inherent in a parcel of
radiation, never considering the con-
version of mass into energy. If you take
the mass loss into account, you do get
a result consistent with relativity. Suc-
cess? Not so fast. Believe it or not, you
still apparently get m = ( 4/ 3 ) E/ c2. But
once again, Hasenöhrl’s cylinders do
not represent a closed system, and so
it is not a foregone conclusion that the
final result must be E = mc2. If Einstein
could have performed a complete rela-
tivistic analysis in 1905, he would have
had to concede that Hasenöhrl’s result
was compatible with his new theory of
special relativity.
Einstein would, but Enrico Fermi
wouldn’t. Indeed, the Italian physicist
would reject everything just said as
complete nonsense. In one of his earli-
est papers, Fermi attempted to elimi-
nate the vexing 4/ 3 from Abraham’s
electron and, with his colleague Aldo
Pontremoli, subsequently applied the
procedure to Hasenöhrl’s cavity as
well. Fermi’s point was, firstly, that
Poincaré’s stresses, designed to glue
the electron together, are entirely fic-
titious, invented merely to solve the
problem. Secondly, Fermi understood
that time may be universal in New-
ton’s world, but in Einstein’s world
it is not. If, to someone riding astride
Hasenöhrl’s cavity, two forces are ap-
plied at the same time to the cylin-
der ends, then relativity implies that
someone who sees the cavity moving
also sees the forces applied at different
instants. During the interval between
those moments, the velocity or radia-
tion pressure, for example, may have
changed. Therefore, the two observers
are essentially describing two differ-
ent physical systems. The Laue–Klein
theorem cannot provide the proper ba-
sis for resolving the paradox, because
it adds up all the energy contributions
across the cylinder at a single instant
of time, and the contributions at that
instant don’t correspond to those in
another observer’s reference frame.
By correctly transforming the times
between reference frames, Fermi and
Pontremoli claimed to rid the world of
4/ 3 and restore E = mc2. Unfortunately,
even in those days authors apparently
cited papers they hadn’t read. Their
solution required that the system be

E = mc2 took a long time to enter popular culture—more than a half century after J. J. Thomson
began considering the possibility that the mass of a moving body might change. One of the
earliest public appearances of the equation was in Science Comics #1, published in January
1946. The depiction of Einstein is predictably simplistic, but the key ideas are present.
accelerating, which was simply not the
case in Hasenöhrl’s initial thought ex-
periment. Furthermore, to make the
difficult problem of accelerating ex-
tended systems tractable, Fermi and
Pontremoli (like Hasenöhrl) made
simplifying assumptions, in particular
that the system is accelerating slowly.
Not all objects are accelerating slowly,
however, so their proofs are hardly
universal. What’s more, the Italians
left completely unexplained why the
electron doesn’t fly apart, consigning
the resolution of that problem to quan-
tum field theory, in which the electron
is merely assumed to be stable.
The Invincible 4/ 3
Thus swords clang into the sunset. Yes,
it’s true: To this day, there is no uni-
versally accepted resolution to the 4/ 3
problem, and when it’s not completely
forgotten, papers debating the subject
now and again continue to appear in
technical journals. Members of Fermi’s
corps attack the Poincaré-Laue-Klein
camp because their methods seem to
violate the spirit and letter of relativity.
The Poincaré-Lauists counterattack by
pointing out that Fermi-ists simply do
not explain why Abraham’s electron is
stable, or that while performing rela-
tivistic transformations between refer-
ence frames, they pay no attention to
how a cavity physically confines the
radiation inside it.
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The vituperative exchanges amply
confirm the sage warning to those who
dare speak of E = mc2. One reason why
the 4/ 3 problem triggers such intense
emotions is that it touches not only on
the foundations of physics, but also
on what all physicists think they un-
derstand in the marrow of their bones.
When someone proposes an amend-
ment to that understanding, the first
reaction is that whoever has suggested
it must be a fool or a buffoon. What’s
more, the mathematics of special relativi-
ty may be well suited to idealized blocks
traveling at constant velocity, but it is not
as well suited to problems involving ex-
tended objects and accelerations, where
4/ 3 rears its head. As a result, consider-
able effort is required to attach a physi-
cal picture to the equations, which are
always smarter than we are.
The moral is that history is richer
than its sound bites and the theory of
relativity is richer than its classroom re-
ductions. It is much more complicated,
certainly, than relativity extremists seem
to believe. Focusing on icons may shine
a spotlight on one scientific superstar
or one notable equation, but tracing the
development of an idea illuminates a
far more satisfying landscape—one that
inspires participation rather than wor-
ship, and one that perhaps even sparks
a new thought or two of your own. As
commonly taught today, relativity is a
world of a few basic equations applied
to pat scenarios. It is a world where, sim-
ply and obviously, E = mc2. But the early
years of relativity were an unfamiliar
borderland where accelerating cylinders
and spinning wheels stretched intuition,
leading to paradoxes that forced physi-
cists to ask even whether special relativ-
ity was the best theory to handle such
conundrums.
Today’s physicists would do well,
from time to time, to go back to basics
and walk the same terrain as relativity’s
early investigators. There they would
soon encounter a famous puzzle only
slightly less perplexing than the 4/ 3
problem. According to the basic pre-
cepts of relativity, someone watching a
spinning wheel will see its circumfer-
ence shrink, but not its radial spokes.
If the wheel is perfectly rigid, then, it
must snap, no? Is there such a thing as
a perfectly rigid object in special rela-
tivity? Or, if the circumference of the
wheel has shrunk, does that mean that
the ratio of the circumference to the di-
ameter of a circle is no longer π? In that
case, have we crossed from the territory
of special relativity to Einstein’s theo-
ry of gravity, general relativity, whose
province is non-Euclidean geometry?
Do accelerating cylinders and spinning
wheels produce artificial gravity, or in
fact have they produced the real thing?
With respect to what is the cylinder ac-
celerating?
These should be legitimate ques-
tions to ponder in academic offices,
not just in random letters. In filing
away problems such as Hasenöhrl’s
cylinder as quaint artifacts, or forget-
ting them entirely, both history and
physics have become the poorer.
Bibliography
Boughn, S., and T. Rothman. 2011. Hasenöhrl
and the equivalence of mass and energy.
arXiv:1108.2250.
Boughn, S. 2013. Fritz Hasenöhrl and E = mc2.
European Journal of Physics H 38:262–278.
Ohanian, H. 2009. Did Einstein prove E = mc2?
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern
Physics 40(2):167–173.
Ohanian, H. 2012. Klein’s theorem and the
proof of E = mc2. American Journal of Physics
80(12):1067–1072.
Rothman, T. 2021. Addendum to “Hasenöhrl
and the equivalence of mass and energy.”
arXiv: 2105.09997.
Tony Rothman is a cosmologist who has taught
at Princeton, Harvard, and New York Univer-
sity. His next book is A Little Book about the
Big Bang, forthcoming from Harvard University
Press. Email: tonyrothman@gmail.com
2021 November–December 367
Insect Decision-Making
Combining virtual reality and fieldwork yields insights into the mind of the
apple fly, teasing out how the brain translates information and patterns.
Shannon B. Olsson and Pavan Kumar Kaushik
T
he flies in our study flew to
the same pattern of digital
clouds again, to our amaze-
ment. We had placed these
tiny insects into a digital world, a vir-
tual reality that surrounded them and
that was made of screens showing only
images of grass, sky, and clouds. We
had tethered them to fly in place in the
center of this setup, and our system
shifted the digital world around them
in response to the beat and position of
their wings, making it look to the flies
as though they were moving. With
no other object in sight and nowhere
to land, these apple flies nevertheless
oriented repeatedly toward a specific
pattern of digital clouds. Thinking that
something must be wrong with our
virtual reality (VR) calibration, one of
us (Kaushik) rotated the virtual sky
on its axis by 90 degrees. This instan-
taneous world-tilting seemed so sur-
real to us that we wondered whether
the flies would succumb to dizziness.
Yet the rotation made no difference
to them. The flies simply shifted their
course by 90 degrees to reorient to-
ward the same cloud pattern. Their
fixation on these virtual cloud patterns
abated only when we added to our
simulation the digital versions of their
known objects of interest: apples hang-
ing from apple trees.
VR may be commonly associated
with entertainment, but we are not
putting flies in VR worlds to amuse
them. We have used fieldwork on
apple flies (Rhagoletis pomonella)—a
well-studied pest species with a long
history in evolutionary and behavioral
research—to inform the creation of this
Apple flies are a frequent subject of field
studies, but controlled environments creat-
ed using virtual reality can provide a deeper
understanding of how their brains work.
368 American Scientist, Volume 109
unique VR setup as a controlled en-
vironment to better understand how
flies interpret stimuli and make deci-
sions in the natural world. And we
hope that understanding, in turn, will
lead to better knowledge of how all
Harvey Schmidt
The apple fly’s survival depends on locating
and identifying objects in its environment.
By placing the insect in virtual reality arenas,
researchers can break down its mental pro-
cesses into discrete steps.
brains work, even human ones. After
all, despite a difference of almost 80
billion neurons, the fly brain and the
human brain serve the same primary
function: to make sense of the world in
order to survive in it.
Identifying and locating objects
of interest are the most fundamental
tasks an animal can perform. To iden-
tify objects, the animal brain must re-
ceive a large amount of sensory infor-
mation and correctly interpret it. This
process means that brains must be ad-
QUICK TAKE
A virtual arena created for the flies presents
visuals, wind, and odors in 360 degrees. The
digital world can be moved around the flies in
response to their wing movements.
ept at recognizing patterns in the en-
vironment, but brains can sometimes
recognize patterns in seemingly mean-
ingless information. This experience is
known as pareidolia, the incorrect per-
ception that a pattern has meaning.
But whatever made our apple flies re-
approach the same virtual clouds also
enables them to find apples—and also
enables human beings to do every-
thing from identifying their own home
on a street of similar houses, to infer-
ring erroneous elements of conspiracy
theories. So our unexpected result of
the flies’ repeatedly reorienting to the
same digital cloud pattern is another
step in understanding the brain’s pro-
cess of pattern recognition.
Like humans, flies need to eat, rest,
fight, flee, reproduce, and survive as
long as possible—and they manage to
do all that while also flying. So how does
this process work when cranial real es-
tate is minimal? How does an animal
possessing 1/200,000 as many neurons
as humans make sense of its world?
With these questions in mind, we
are studying how flies process stimuli
to identify and locate objects that they
need for survival. At distances greater
than 10 meters, insects cannot clearly
see objects such as fruits or leaves. Our
goal is to learn exactly which additional
stimuli—such as wind direction, odors,
orientation toward the sky and ground,
perspective, and motion parallax—flies
use and how they dynamically inte-
grate those stimuli while flying through
a complex three-dimensional environ-
ment. This process requires an inter-
disciplinary confluence of natural his-
tory and technology.
New data from the virtual reality studies
provide insights into how the flies process
stimuli and make decisions, which can in turn
inform and advance further fieldwork.
 Pavan Kumar Kaushik
Poised on the tip of a needle and set in the center of a virtual sensory “world,” an apple fly ronment is an empathetic process. We
beats its wings in pursuit of virtual objects, such as apples hanging from trees. Virtual reality humans have a difficult enough time
arenas provide controlled environments and stimuli, leading to advances in understanding empathizing with one another. How
how flies use their separate senses and how they combine these sensory inputs while in flight can we empathize with an animal
to form appropriate responses to stimuli.
that has wings, six legs, and several
hundred lenses through which to see
Thinking Like a Fly deadly chitinous weapon. As the only the world? But we must consider the
Inspiration for this work started ear- scientist in her family and a first- fly’s perspective to delve into how its
ly in our careers, but developed over generation college graduate, Olsson brain makes sense of things. The first
time. At the end of one of our (Ols- looked to Eisner for advice about her step may be to understand the sensory
son’s) first year of graduate school in upcoming doctoral research. But Eis- stimuli that it processes.
2001, she sat in her advisor’s office at ner tended to speak in parables. His Although insects can find objects,
Cornell University. Thomas Eisner, one primary piece of advice was to “think such as food and mates, in the cha-
of the world’s leading entomologists, like a fly.” It would be nearly 15 years otic natural environment and over
had an office full of insect-themed before this statement truly made sense. distances many orders of magnitude
“Easter eggs.” A pinned specimen Eisner’s advice led us to realize that larger than themselves, their small size
could immerse one in an exotic rain- understanding how an animal such limits the acuity of their senses. For
forest. A photograph could reveal a as a fly identifies objects in its envi- example, the insect compound eye has

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 369

 magnetic
polarization field

visual
target
horizon
landmarks

wind

odor plume

ultraviolet
temperature light
electric
humidity
field

Stephanie Freese

Insects use many different cues to identify and locate objects in the noisy natural world. For apple fly, and he turned his orchard
long-distance searching, they use large landmarks, the horizon, sky polarization, and magnetic into a research field station focused on
fields. For localizing objects in the environment, they use visual, wind, and odor cues. For this species.
reaching the object of interest, they use short-range ultraviolet, electric field, humidity, and The apple fly is remarkable for both
temperature cues. its unwavering attention to ripe apples
and for its nonexistence until about 200
fantastic motion-detection capabilities above). Together with all these cues, in- years ago. European colonists intro-
(as anyone wielding a flyswatter can sects must balance their internal states, duced domesticated apples to North
attest), but the individual eyes (called such as mating status, hunger level, America. After apple trees were planted
ommatidia) are so small that the laws of and other physiological parameters that in abundance across the new land, this
physics prevent the high spatial acuity modulate their likelihood of approach- tiny fly, which formerly specialized on
that larger eyes achieve. ing a particular object. hawthorn berries as host plants, began
Insects compensate for these limita- to form a new population on apples.
tions by combining their senses. Visual Living Like a Fly In 1867 Benjamin Dann Walsh, the first
cues help them navigate in flight. Touch After one understands the stimuli that official state entomologist of Illinois,
cues help them sense the wind and insects process to locate and identify noted the host shift as an example of
maintain course. Their exquisite sense objects, the next step is to understand what is now called speciation. Walsh
of smell—a million times more sensitive the objects in which they are interest- promptly informed his former school-
than humans’—helps them locate ob- ed. To do so, one must not only think mate, who then added this and other
jects of interest. But even smell is tricky: like a fly, but also live like one. In 1974, cases of host shifts to later editions of
The ever-changing air currents caused entomologist Ronald J. Prokopy, who a rather famous book that he had re-
by wind and advection create turbu- would soon after begin a long career cently published on the subject. That
lence, which breaks up odors into tiny, at the University of Massachusetts schoolmate was Charles Darwin. The
meandering packets of information that Amherst, began this step. He moved apple fly has since been known as one
insects must follow to their source. For his spouse and newborn son to the of the clearest examples in evolutionary
this reason, other cues—such as color, tiny town of Baileys Harbor, Wiscon- biology of ecological speciation.
sound, vibration, polarization patterns, sin, where he lived in a trailer in his One reason that the apple fly could
and temperature—help an insect find new apple orchard. He was interested accomplish this evolutionary feat was
and identify an object (see the figure in the fruit and its archnemesis, the its specialization on a single fruit. The

370 American Scientist, Volume 109

flies mate on the fruit, the females lay
their eggs under its skin, and the larvae
feed on the flesh. Consequently, any
change in fruit preference—from haw-
thorn berries to apples, for example—
would keep apart each fruit-specific
population, eventually leading to their
evolution into separate species.
This concept fascinated Prokopy. He
spent the next several years trying to
understand what drove this preference
for specific fruit (see the figure at right).
Prokopy’s data showed that the flies
used a combination of color, shape,
size, odor, and more to identify apples;
he learned enough to create sticky
wooden decoys that could diagnose
apple maggot infestations. By living
among these tiny flies, he was able to
discern the cues that they use for ob-
ject identification more precisely than
scientists have for most of the roughly Prokopy, R. J., and B. D. Roitberg. 1984. American Scientist 72:41–49.
seven million species of insects esti- Through a series of elegant field experiments beginning in the 1970s—which involved fake,
mated to be on this planet. And yet, sticky, wooden fruit, along with cardboard trees, buckets of paint, and what must have been
questions remained that were difficult amazing eyesight—entomologist Ronald J. Prokopy observed that tree and fruit shape, color,
to answer in the uncontrolled environ- size, and odor are all important to the apple fly for locating fruit.
ment of an apple orchard.
moment. Wearable sensors for flying response means that some fundamental
Insects’ Uncertainty Principle insects have been attempted in a few questions remain unanswered: From
In 1927, German physicist Werner cases with larger species. In the 1990s how far away can an insect respond to
Heisenberg published his landmark University of Utah biologist Neil J. an object of interest? Do flying insects
uncertainty principle. It asserts that one Vickers and Pennsylvania State Uni- use depth perception? Do they process
cannot measure both the position and versity entomologist Thomas C. Baker multiple types of sensory information,
the momentum of a quantum parti- mounted a third antenna on the head such as vision and smell, simultaneous-
cle with absolute precision. Nearly 80
years later, one of us (Olsson) sat in a
conference in Barcelona, Spain, where
Heisenberg’s son Martin, a neuro-
Although insects can find objects,
biologist and geneticist, lamented a
similar notion: When observing a fly’s such as food and mates, in the chaotic
behavior, the researcher cannot simul-
taneously and precisely know the fly’s natural environment and over distances
position and what information the fly
is processing—the Dipteran uncertainty many orders of magnitude larger than
principle, so to speak.
Martin Heisenberg was correct, and themselves, their small size limits the
our own fieldwork on insects, follow-
ing in Prokopy’s footsteps, has reached
the same conclusion. Although Pro-
acuity of their senses.
kopy’s fundamental insights identi-
fied the stimuli that the apple flies can
perceive, as well as the nature of the of a moth to study its puzzling zig- ly, or do they process them serially? We
world where they behave, the criti- zag flight response to pheromones. cannot monitor the insect while it flies
cal question remains: How do these Nevertheless, researchers remain years in the world, but what if we could mon-
flies—or any flying insects, for that away from developing wearable sen- itor the world while it revolves around
matter—respond to those stimuli dur- sors small enough to accurately detect the insect? These questions ushered VR
ing the search process itself? stimuli for tiny insects such as flies. into this entomological scene.
Although the technology for real- As with Werner Heisenberg’s quan-
time tracking of tiny insects is rapidly tum particles, researchers can, at best, Virtual Surreality
improving, researchers can neither calculate probabilities for where stimuli The first insect VRs, often called VR
track insects over long distances, nor are and how flies will behave when the arenas, were created about 60 years ago
identify precisely what insects are see- stimuli are detected. Despite such ad- to examine the use of motion vision
ing, smelling, or feeling at any given vances, the decoupling of stimulus and (optomotor reflexes) for flight. These VRs

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 371


Early virtual reality (VR) arenas surrounded tethered insects with rotating drums that pre-
sented stripes, dots, or other patterns, enabling researchers to understand how flying insects
respond to moving visual stimuli. This first insect VR arena, built by Peter Kunze in the early
1960s, was designed to tether a bee at its center.
consisted of simple geometric patterns
on a drum that rotated around a teth-
ered insect (see the figure above). These
arenas helped researchers assess the
insect’s visual processing system as it
responded to only one mode of highly
artificial stimuli.
At first, when the flies had to choose
between two identical virtual trees
set side by side, the flies nevertheless
always approached the same one.
Present-day computational and
display capabilities enable color, 3D,
polarization, and visual scenery while
recording activity in the creature’s
brain. With advances in 3D printing as
well, VR setups can now provide air-
flow and odor. Using stereo speakers,
researchers can also examine audio
source localization, and they can even
present magnetic fields to understand
372 American Scientist, Volume 109
Springer Nature, from P. Kunze, 1961.
how insects use the Earth’s magnetism
for navigation.
Our VR arena, created in our Na-
tional Centre for Biological Science
lab in Bangalore, India, builds on
past VR work but also incorporates
insights from fieldwork and behav-
ioral studies, calibrating the system to
the investigation of insect stimulus-
response and search behavior as ob-
served in the field. It is the only arena
designed to present visual, airflow,
and odor cues simultaneously, in 360
degrees, using a series of surrounding
computer screens and glass capillary
tubes (see the figure on the next page).
Previous arenas were designed pre-
dominantly to assess sensory process-
ing (such as motion vision), whereas
our system is designed to evaluate the
search process itself.
Marrying ecology and virtual reality
is easier said than done. Although Pro-
kopy gave us the stimuli and others
gave us the technology, trying to make
a virtual world for an apple fly is like
trying to answer the title of Philip K.
Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream
of Electric Sheep? We learned firsthand
just how hard it is to think like a fly. It
quickly became clear that many of the
concerns that we had while building
our VR arena were not actually issues
for the flies, whereas many other is-
sues that we failed to consider nearly
derailed our experiments.
Because our system is designed to
evaluate the fly’s search process itself,
we spent less time calibrating our are-
na for the flies’ sensory systems, and
more time calibrating their behavior
to that which has been observed in
apple orchards. For example, insects
are known to have a high flicker fu-
sion frequency, a measure of the way
that the brain can perceive continuous
motion from a sequence of images. In
humans, we see smooth motion from
images flashing at a rate faster than
24 hertz (in essence, motion pictures).
Insects such as the apple fly have a
flicker fusion frequency greater than
200 hertz, which means that even
our 187 frames-per-second monitors
would flicker for them. Our flies did
not seem to mind the flicker, however.
Even at 20 frames per second—the
speed of a PowerPoint presentation
for flies—they would repeatedly ap-
proach virtual 3D-rendered trees in a
field of grass and sky.
Even though our virtual apple trees
were calibrated for our human vision,
not insect vision, the flies “wove” in
and out of the virtual branches and
“looped” around them as has been ob-
served of free-flying flies approaching
real trees. When approaching virtual
objects at closer range, the flies even
responded with their stereotypical
landing or obstacle-avoidance position
by throwing their legs out in front of
them (see the figure on the next page).
Whenever the fly behavior in the arena
matched fly behavior previously ob-
served in the field, we judged the VR
setup a success.
Nevertheless, we encountered, di-
agnosed, and resolved some unex-
pected initial VR issues. Ultimately,
 Pavan Kumar Kaushik
The authors’ multimodal VR arena positions an apple fly midair at the tip of a needle
(above). Computer monitors and glass capillaries provide 360-degree visual, wind,
and odor cues. The virtual world’s viewpoint shifts in response to the fly’s wing
movements, giving it the impression of moving around the world. Flies placed in the
arena virtually approach an apple tree, weave in and out of its branches, and loop
around it, in the same manner as free-flying flies approaching real trees. When ap-
proaching a virtual object at close range, the flies move into their landing or obstacle-
avoidance position by throwing their legs out in front of them as they would do with
an actual object (right).

Shoot for Science

however, what began as problems
yielded new understanding of flies’
use of vision, wind, and odor to pur-
sue objects of interest.
When we had the flies choose be-
tween two identical trees set side by
side, for example, the flies always ap-
proached the same one (see the figure
on the next page). This observation per-
plexed us until we realized that the vir-
tual Sun’s placement made the light-
ing of one tree slightly different from
the other. To offset this effect, we re-
moved the flies from Earth and placed
them on Star Wars’ planet Tatooine, so
to speak, where the two “suns” could
light up the virtual world from both
sides evenly. This solution showed us
that subtle details such as lighting can
affect fly behavior.
Still, the flies showed a slight bias
as they neared one tree or the other.
The trees were digitally identical, but
we gradually realized that they were
not symmetrical; therefore, as
a fly approached a tree, one
tree would appear bigger or
differently shaped than the
other because of the fly’s momentary
perspective. This result was the first
hint that flies pay attention to the 3D
nature of their objects of interest. To
correct for the effect of asymmetry,
we presented two trees as mirror im-
ages of each other so that a fly equi-
distant from both objects would view
the same perspective.
Another problem emerged when we
tried to introduce wind and odor into
our VR experiment to learn whether
flies rely on these cues in combina-
tion with vision to identify and locate
apples. In the natural world, a fly can
encounter wind and odor from any
angle, so we first created a rotating air
nozzle that could travel around the fly.
But no matter what we blew through
the nozzle—pure air, the smell of ripe
apples, or a repelling solvent—the flies
always flew downwind away from
the stimulus. We eventually realized
that the flies perceived the nozzle as a
predator and would try to escape it no
matter how we tried to conceal it. One
of us (Kaushik) therefore created a sta-
tionary series of capillaries that subtly
dispense airflow and odor every 15
degrees around the fly (see the figure
on the next page). While three moni-
tors created the photorealistic scenery
in 360 degrees, this system presented
panoramic wind and odor cues to our
flies. We worried that the capillary de-
vice’s obstruction of the visual field
would disturb the flies, but because it
did not move, the flies ignored it.
Once we overcame these issues in
our VR setup, we used our arena to

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 373

 National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
The authors observed that apple flies presented with two virtual trees consistently chose one
because of uneven lighting. To correct for this unintended bias, the authors added a second
virtual sun to the simulation so that both trees were illuminated equally (left). Because a slight
bias for one tree continued after this lighting adjustment, the authors revised the tree forms
so they had mirror-image symmetry (right). Subsequent experiments showed that the flies use
motion parallax, a way of judging the relative positions of objects in space, to identify and
navigate to the closer of two presented apple trees.
mirror-image trees so that one tree was
two times larger and two times farther
away than the other one. At the start,
both trees looked identical in size,
even to humans, so a fly should have
no reason to choose one or the other. It
is only through movement toward or
around the trees that one could discern
a difference in how quickly the tree
seemed to approach or change size.
The flies clearly could discern motion
parallax, because they always chose
the closer tree even when it was much
smaller than the farther tree. Although
Pavan Kumar Kaushik this result may seem obvious, depth
In the insect VR arena, a series of stationary perception in flight requires quite
glass capillaries emits air and odors. Even
complex processing of visual features.
though the capillary system is in the flies’ field
of view, the flies seem to ignore it because it is
Artificial systems such as drones still
immobile. The authors had previously tried a struggle to discern foreground from
single rotating nozzle, but the flies perceived it background and to compare such vi-
as a predator and tried to flee from it. sual features accurately.
In addition, while presenting the
address some fundamental questions odor of ripe apples with visual cues,
whose answers were previously un- we found that apple flies must simul-
known for almost all flying insects. We taneously encounter airflow, odor, and
wanted to know how close an apple visual cues to track odors. We conclud-
fly must be to apple trees to identify ed that flies use all three cues at the
them, for example, and whether the same time to locate objects by smell at
flies use depth perception to navigate. a distance.
By placing virtual apples in digital ap-
ple trees set at different distances, we New Horizons
found that the maximum distance at Much remains unknown about how
which a typical apple fly will respond flies perceive the world. We still do
to a tree in an open field is approxi- not know precisely why our flies were
mately 24 meters. so strongly attracted to our digital
We were also able to show that mov- cloud patterns and what they inter-
ing insects can discern the size and dis- preted them to be—whether apples,
tance of objects relative to each other— mates, a patch of trees, or something
a phenomenon known as motion else. Similarly, although we now
parallax, which humans also use for know that insects perceive depth in
depth perception. We presented two flight, we still do not understand pre-
374 American Scientist, Volume 109
cisely which visual stimuli they use
to do so. They may be using loom-
ing cues, the sense that closer objects
expand across our visual field faster
than more distant objects. Or they
may be using scrolling cues, the sense
that closer objects move sideways
faster than more distant objects. Or
they may be using both cues. Parsing
these two mechanisms would require
nearly impossible manipulations of
the real world; fortunately, such in-
vestigations are simple in VR, where
we can make objects stay one size no
matter how close they come to the
observer, or objects can move along
with the observer. Someday, with VR,
we may even be able to address semi-
philosophical questions, such as what
a tree is to a fly, by sequentially re-
moving the dimensional complexity
of an object until the fly no longer re-
sponds to it. These experiments may
eventually help us understand why
our flies repeatedly flew toward the
same VR cloud pattern.
Although studying our planet’s
most specious multicellular taxa
brings its own rewards, understand-
ing how tiny brains with limited
computational power complete com-
plex tasks—such as rapid aerial ma-
neuvers, long-distance tracking, and
intercontinental migration—may have
profound implications for agriculture,
medicine, and artificial systems. Be-
ing able to predict insect movement
can help us develop more precise pest
management strategies for our crops,
and more accurately attract pollina-
tors to our fields. Knowing how small
brains detect and respond to their
environments could help address
neurological disorders, as well as in-
spire smarter computer algorithms
and bio-based solutions for robotics.
Indeed, no robot in existence today
can autonomously navigate the real

The authors return to living among and studying the behavior of insects in their natural habitat—
here in North Sikkim, a state in the Eastern Himalayas of India. Fieldwork and lab studies work to
inform each other in series, with one advancing the next development of the other.
world with nearly the capacity of the
humble apple fly.
That being said, field and labora-
tory studies work hand in hand, with
each advancing the other. Our next
step is therefore to take what we have
learned and apply it to fieldwork
so that it can in turn inform future
steps in our laboratory research, in-
cluding VR. In our current VR arena,
for example, we would watch our
flies track an odor for hundreds of
meters. The flies would follow the
odor plume for several meters, veer
off, and catch it again several meters
ahead. We did not observe the consis-
tent straight-arrow plume pursuit that
we see in flight tunnels, but those tun-
nels are only 3 to 5 meters long. What
an insect does with many football-
field lengths of odor to track remains
unknown. So we head back to the
field to find out more.
Much of our field research happens
in the forests and mountains of India,
such as the Himalayas (see the figure
above). Like Prokopy, we live among
the insects there and try to understand
the world from their perspective. Im-
mersed in their world, we can better
www.americanscientist.org
define the stimuli that they detect and
when they detect them, before we
bring more insects to the lab. Natu-
ral history is an essential part of biol-
ogy. Without it, we scientists, like our
flies, would be forever chasing elusive
cloud patterns and wondering why we
are not reaching our destination.
Bibliography
Aluja, M., and R. J. Prokopy. 1993. Host odor
and visual stimulus interaction during in-
tratree host finding behavior of Rhagoletis
pomonella flies. Journal of Chemical Ecology
19:2671–2696.
Darwin, C. R. 1866. On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, or the Preserva-
tion of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,
fourth edition. London: John Murray.
Kaushik, P. K., and S. B. Olsson. 2020. Using
virtual worlds to understand insect naviga-
tion for bio-inspired systems. Current Opin-
ion in Insect Science 42:97–104.
Kaushik, P. K., M. Renz, and S. B. Olsson.
2020. Characterizing long-range search
behavior in Diptera using complex 3D
virtual environments. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.
117:12201–12207.
Kunze, P. 1961. Untersuchung des Bewe-
gungssehens fixiert fliegender Bienen.
Zeitschrift für vergleichende Physiologie
44:656–684.
Shannon B. Olsson
Prokopy, R. J., and B. D. Roitberg. 1984. Forag-
ing behavior of true fruit flies: Concepts
of foraging can be used to determine how
Tephritids search for food, mates, and egg-
laying sites and to help control these pests.
American Scientist 72:41–49.
van Breugel, F., and M. H. Dickinson. 2014.
Plume-tracking behavior of flying Drosoph-
ila emerges from a set of distinct sensory-
motor reflexes. Current Biology 24:274–286.
van Breugel, F., J. Riffell, A. Fairhall, and M. H.
Dickinson. 2015. Mosquitoes use vision to
associate odor plumes with thermal targets.
Current Biology 25:2123–2129.
Vickers, N. J., and T. C. Baker. 1994. Reiterative
responses to single strands of odor promote
sustained upwind flight and odor source lo-
cation by moths. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 91:5756–5760.
Walsh, B. D. 1867. The apple-worm and the
apple-maggot. American Journal of Horticul-
ture 2:338–343.
Shannon B. Olsson is a chemical ecologist and as-
sociate professor at the National Centre for Biological
Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, in
Bangalore, India. She is a co-principal investigator
of the Biodiversity Collaborative and global director
of the echo network, an international social innova-
tion partnership for increasing scientific engagement
with India’s human and environmental ecosystems.
Pavan Kumar Kaushik is a recent PhD graduate
from the National Centre for Biological Sciences,
Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, who loves
to tinker, from robots to insects. Using multimodal
virtual reality, his doctoral research deconstructed
the decision processes in insects. Email for Olsson:
shannon@nice.ncbs.res.in.
2021 November–December 375
 S c i e n t i s t s’
Nightstand
The Scientists’ Nightstand,
American Scientist’s books
section, offers reviews, review
essays, brief excerpts, and more.
For additional books coverage,
please see our Science Culture
blog channel, which explores
how science intersects with other
areas of knowledge, entertain-
ment, and society.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
GRAND TRANSITIONS: How the
Modern World Was Made. By
Vaclav Smil.
page 379
ONLINE
On our Science Culture blog:
americanscientist.org/blogs
/science-culture
An Interview with Hakeem M.
Oluseyi
Astrophysicist Hakeem M.
Oluseyi, author (with Joshua
Horowitz) of A Quantum Life: My
Unlikely Journey from the Street to
the Stars (Ballantine Books, 2021),
speaks candidly with digital
media specialist Kindra Thomas
about his experiences as a Black
scientist. Topics covered include
finding belonging, being oneself,
teaching and mentoring, backyard
astronomy, and the overlaps
between music and science.
2021 Holiday Gift Guide
STEM books make excellent gifts
for young and old alike. In early
December, we will begin posting
brief reviews that can help you
find the right book for a recipient
of any age.
376 American Scientist, Volume 109
Mythmakers in
the Market for
Perfection
Sheila Jasanoff
THE CODE BREAKER: Jennifer Doudna,
Gene Editing, and the Future of the
Human Race. Walter Isaacson. xix + 536
pp. Simon and Schuster, 2021. $35.
CRISPR PEOPLE: The Science and Ethics
of Editing Humans. Henry T. Greely. xiii
+ 380 pp. MIT Press, 2021. $27.95.
H
enry Kissinger, Benjamin
Franklin, Steve Jobs, Albert
Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci:
Giants in their fields and times, these
men also have the distinction of hav-
ing received full biographical treatment
from Walter Isaacson, America’s most
prolific recorder of lives of creative ge-
nius. Jennifer Doudna is the first wom-
an to join Isaacson’s centuries-spanning
pantheon, and though she does not
quite rate a banner with her own name
on top, she is the anchoring presence of
his latest book, The Code Breaker: Jennifer
Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of
the Human Race, a sprawling account
of scientific sleuthing, discovery, and
competition for stardom.
In Isaacson’s previous work, it was
the outsize personalities of his male
protagonists that bestowed time-
less standing on their work; Steve
Jobs, who was famous for his abil-
ity to distort the reality of others, is
the most iconic instance. But Isaacson
presents Doudna more as a case of
the work having made the woman,
as the title The Code Breaker implies.
Much of Isaacson’s storytelling is de-
voted to developing the breathtaking
claim that Doudna’s “code breaking,”
which centered on the chemistry of
RNA, was the key to remaking the
“future of the human race.” Finding
the secret of gene editing with RNA-
based CRISPR technology becomes
for Isaacson a feat second only to the
cracking of the genetic code by James
Watson and Francis Crick in 1953,
and he wants us to believe that this
advance will be far more consequen-
tial in changing our understanding of
what it means to be human.
CRISPRs (clustered regularly in-
terspaced short palindromic repeats)
were a biological puzzle when they
were first noticed in the late 1980s
and 1990s by a handful of scientists
around the world who were studying
the DNA of bacteria and other micro-
organisms. They found mysterious
repeating sequences of DNA (the “re-
peats” in the CRISPR acronym) with-
in the genomes of these organisms.
Between these stuttering repetitions
were bits of more familiar DNA se-
quences, which they called spacers. In
most bacteria, the CRISPR sequences
were flanked by a CRISPR-associated
(Cas) gene that encoded a Cas en-
zyme. Scientists eventually discovered
that the CRISPR-Cas system was an
adaptive immune response that these
bacteria were using to protect them-
selves from invading viruses. The
spacers are transcribed by the host cell
into short CRISPR RNAs that associ-
ate with Cas enzymes to guide them
to new invading viruses harboring the
specific spacer sequence. Those virus-
es are subsequently inactivated by the
guide enzyme complex, which cuts up
their targeted genetic material.
Public awareness of CRISPRs in-
creased dramatically in 2012, when
Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpen-
tier (with whom Doudna eventually
shared a Nobel prize) published a
seminal article in Science explaining
in detail the underlying mechanisms
of a particular bacterial CRISPR-Cas
system that involves the Cas9 enzyme.
The article also showed that the Cas9
enzyme can be combined with mol-
ecules of synthetic guide RNA and de-
livered into a cell to find and cut, or
“edit,” strands of any organism’s DNA
at the specifically targeted sites.
Often likened to the spell-check
function of a word processor, CRISPR
gene editing quickly gained recogni-
tion as a faster, cheaper, and more effi-
cient alternative to traditional genetic
engineering. The versatility and pre-
cision of the RNA-guided molecular
mechanism promised revolutionary
improvements in biotechnology. Ac-
cording to Stanford lawyer and bio-
ethicist Henry Greely, the author of
CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics
of Editing Humans, CRISPR “leapt far
beyond the existing tools—perhaps
not as far as a chain saw leapt from a
stone axe, but close.”
Like many science writers, Isaacson
and Greely are kibitzers, delighting in
their ringside seats close to the cen-
ters of discovery and their capacity
to open up the arcane world of the
lab to eyes less privileged than their
own. In vignettes that loop back and
forth in time, Isaacson presents him-
self as a scientist among scientists, as
much at home in their workplaces as Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer Doudna, Martin Jinek, and Krzysztof Chylinski, shown
the principals themselves. His book here (left to right) in a Berkeley Lab photo taken in 2012, are coauthors with Ines Fonfara and
bursts with people and is illustrated Michael Hauer of a seminal article published in Science that year showing how the CRISPR-
with images of every scientist, major Cas9 system could be used to edit genes. From The Code Breaker.
and minor, who played a role in trans-
forming CRISPR from an idea into an its potential for curing genetic defects, stigma that attaches to AIDS in China.
instrument. To make Doudna stand for perfecting and even improving on Implantation of those embryos result-
out in this kaleidoscopic array, he nature. They view CRISPR as having ed in the birth of twins in 2018 and a
sometimes shortchanges her competi- put control of our heredity into our third baby in 2019.
tors. Charpentier is a prime example. own hands for the first time, and they Three connected conclusions emerge
Isaacson presents her as shy, stylish, appear to accept, against compelling forcefully from these two books. First,
and very French, a far cry from the biological and social arguments to the He Jiankui was a rogue scientist who
gutsy, gender-conscious, market-savvy, contrary, that genes will determine hu- stepped far outside the existing norms
ethically aware, strategic persona he mankind’s future. The authors thus of science; Greely dismisses him as
attributes to Doudna. If Charpentier converge on a central claim: CRISPR is “an outlier as well as an out-and-out
has her own scientific vision and pas- a game changer for life on our planet, liar.” Second, if science has given us
sionate commitments, Isaacson does and it will be used to alter our spe- the means to improve our genetic en-
not tell us about them. cies profoundly. The only question is dowment, then the only ethical choice
Greely keeps a greater professional whether there should be any limits on is to use that power. (What constitutes
distance from his characters, but he its use. Neither Greely nor Isaacson improvement is mostly left unexam-
too is at pains to establish his familiar- shows great appetite for caution, so ined.) Third, the best people to craft
ity with the players in his story. Brief, long as players they view as respon- the rules governing the uses of CRISPR
gossipy boxed inserts about CRISPR sible are in charge. are the scientists who took the lead in
scientists appear along the way in his Irresponsibility, in both books, is developing it.
narrative; in these, he explains how easily personified in a specific miscre- How readily should readers fall in
he came to know each character, and, ant, who happens not to be an Ameri- line with these confident assertions?
more curiously, he describes his per- can: He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher All three require critical reappraisal.
sonal attitudes toward them. (He “did who carried out experimental, heri- He’s behavior was almost universally
not immediately take to” David Balti- table, germline gene edits of human condemned by the leaders of West-
more, for instance, but has “come to embryos with the goal of ensuring ern science, and China went along.
quite like and respect him.”) that children produced through this Following a closed-door investiga-
Among CRISPR’s many uses, Isaac- procedure would be protected from tion and trial, Chinese authorities
son and Greely are most fascinated by the AIDS virus and thus spared the convicted He of violating regulations

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 377

 tists in the CRISPR commu-
nity took his transgression
as a sign that the barriers
to germline gene edit-
ing were down, and what
had seemed unthinkable
just three years earlier was
now not merely possible
but even a moral impera-
tive. Somewhat incongru-
ously, Isaacson deploys the
biohacker Josiah Zayner, a
man who by definition op-
erates outside of science’s
normal ethical codes, to
make the argument that
“our humanity” was
“changed forever” when
an embryo’s genome was
intentionally edited. Isaac-
son compares Zayner with
Steve Jobs reciting lines
from Apple’s “Think Dif-
ferent” commercial about
“misfits and rebels and
troublemakers” who “push
the human race forward.”
But if He simply imbibed
and acted upon this very
American vision of prog-
Kin Cheung/AP/Shutterstock
ress through disruptive in-
Chinese researcher He Jiankui strides onto the stage at the novation, what exactly was
Second International Summit on Human Genome Edit- his crime?
ing, which was held in Hong Kong in late November of That question calls for
2018. He spoke there about the recently leaked news that
serious reflection on what
babies had been born whose genomes he had edited in
embryo. From The Code Breaker.
improvement and progress
mean in terms of human
genetics. Yet neither Isaac-
and ethical principles, and he was sen- son nor Greely explains why editing
tenced to a hefty fine and three years sequences of genetic code should be
in prison. Yet all indications are that seen as equivalent to moving human-
He was operating with high-level state ity forward. Neither addresses the
approval until public opinion turned scientific and ethical limits of genetic
against him. He was deeply enmeshed determinism or the increasingly signif-
in the competitive global game of icant role of private money and power
high-stakes science that Isaacson viv- in American science. Perhaps this ac-
idly describes. Young, naive, and a counts for the relative complacency
cultural outsider, He had interacted with which both regard the idea that
with America’s biological elite and felt scientists themselves should make the
encouraged by them to take risks in his rules that guide the directions and ap-
research. I met him briefly in 2017 at a plications of their research, even when
meeting in Berkeley that was hosted that research involves tinkering with
by Doudna and featured other impor- human heredity.
tant scientists in the field. From that For Isaacson, the case is simple. All
meeting, He appears to have taken the parents want the best for their chil-
message that ends justify means, and dren. Isaacson’s heroine, Doudna,
that it is a scientist’s duty to dare to made an “ethical journey” at meetings
break with convention when the re- she organized, and parents desper-
sults could benefit humanity. Sadly for ately seeking cures for their children
him, he overestimated his power to get helped overcome her early, visceral
away with playing the rule breaker. sense that human germline gene
The irony is that, while deploring editing was unnatural. She is well
He’s individual actions, many scien- equipped to guide us, Isaacson sug-
378 American Scientist, Volume 109
gests, because she now feels comfort-
able both as a scientist and as a hu-
manist. He glancingly acknowledges
that our collective choices might make
us “less flavorful, like our tomatoes.”
There is no hint that parental prefer-
ences with regard to greater height,
eye color, or even intelligence may be
biased by culturally entrenched atti-
tudes toward race, class, or gender.
Greely knows that things are more
complicated. As his book documents,
law matters, but mostly as an arcane
system that must be got around with
experts like him as knowledgeable
guides. To be sure, scientific discovery
does not unfold in a vacuum. There are
background rules in place, including
the as-yet-untested ban on the implan-
tation of genetically modified embryos
in the United States, but these do not go
far enough. Greely advocates national
legislation on editing the human germ-
line on largely pragmatic grounds. He
prefers clear rules, and he painstakingly
educates his readers on the vagaries of
the Food and Drug Administration’s
jurisdiction—its limits, its ambiguity,
and its failure to assign accountability.
This is a formally correct but soulless
picture of the reasons for regulating
the uses of CRISPR, doing scant justice
to the social, cultural, and ethical argu-
ments for holding back. I suspect that
Greely’s account would only encour-
age the libertarians who think that Sci-
ence, with Greely’s capital S, should
be left to chart its own ways forward.
These breezy books are easy reads,
but they barely skim the surfaces of
a technoscientific revolution—they
focus more on what we can do with
new technology than on why we
should or shouldn’t do it. They illus-
trate the dangers of going native in
science writing. To probe CRISPR’s
threats and promises for humanity, we
need more than celebratory tales of
brave new worlds. We need deeper
explorations of two questions: “Whose
knowledge counts?” and “Toward
what ends should that knowledge
guide us?”
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science
and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy
School. She is the author of a number of books,
including Can Science Make Sense of Life?
(Polity, 2019); The Ethics of Invention: Tech-
nology and the Human Future (W. W. Norton,
2016); and Designs on Nature: Science and
Democracy in Europe and the United States
(Princeton University Press, 2005).

Humanity’s
Prospects on a
Finite Planet
Ruth DeFries
GRAND TRANSITIONS: How the Modern
World Was Made. Vaclav Smil. xi +
363 pp. Oxford University Press, 2021.
$34.95.
A
sked to name the disruptive
technologies that have shaped
the modern world, most peo-
ple might mention the internet, air-
planes, the internal combustion engine,
or the printing press. But Vaclav Smil
chooses to focus on the technologies
that have improved our ability to ex-
tract food and energy from the planet’s
biosphere—an ability that underpins
humanity’s existence. Technologies that
can produce abundant food produce a
small component of the gross domestic
product in industrialized economies,
but they are a defining feature of the
modern world, as are the technologies
that enable energy to be extracted from
the long-buried biomass of fossil fuels.
In his latest book, Grand Transitions,
Smil explains that the modern world—
the one that began to emerge around
1500 CE—arises from the interactions
of transitions in agriculture and energy
with transitions in populations, econo-

mies, and environments.
the way people get food, how they use
energy, and how they work. The first
chapter describes the five types of inter-
dependent epochal transitions—in pop-
ulations, agricultures and diets, energies,
economies, and the environment—and
lays out the chronology of those transi-
tions in various places. Smil emphasizes
that for most of human history, in the
premodern world that existed before
the 16th century, sons and daughters ex-
perienced the same living standards as
their parents. But in the modern world,
change occurs within the time frame of a
single generation.
Subsequent chapters provide data
from countries around the world that
capture the marked accelerations that
have taken place. Death rates have
fallen with the introduction of sani-
tation and other public health mea-
sures, and fertility rates have declined.
In agriculture, yields have risen and
labor requirements have fallen; diets
have become less starchy and richer
in animal-sourced foods. The amount
of energy available for travel, indus-
try, and residences has increased mas-
sively, first as animals replaced human
labor and then as fossil fuels replaced
animal labor.
UNCOUNTABLE

All of these grand transitions have
been encapsulated in structural changes
in economies, which are the subject of a
separate chapter. Graphs that trace the
number of workers employed respec-
tively in agriculture, industries, and ser-
vices depict the fundamental transition
that has occurred in many countries
and is in progress in others. S-shaped
logistic curves of gross domestic prod-
uct over time illustrate the reality that
economic growth has its limits.
The chapter on economies is fol-
lowed by one on the environment,
which takes the reader on a dizzying
tour through the many environmen-
tal insults that the modern world has
inflicted on the biosphere, from defor-
estation and subsequent reforestation,
environmental pollution, and nitrogen
runoff to climate change. In premod-
ern societies, people used fire to clear
land and decimated megafauna, but
the impact of the modern world on the
biosphere has been massive.
Grand Transitions doesn’t entirely suc-
ceed in fulfilling the implied promise of
its subtitle—it doesn’t actually explain
How the Modern World Was Made. The
statistics with which the book is packed
are necessary to capture the arc of
Smil has published dozens of books 
dealing with this subject matter; four of 
them examine “long-term transforma-
tions of global food production and nu- “Ricardo and David Nirenberg,
trition,” four others deal with energy re-
sources and uses, another five are about father and son scholars of
“key technical and material inputs of mathematics and history, have
modern economies,” and three more
focus on the global environment. These teamed up in a breathtaking
books are unapologetically chock-full voyage examining the founda-
of detailed facts and statistics, to the
point of data overload. This latest book tions and limits of knowledge
is no different; the reader must wade in western thought.”
through data showing trends in birth
and death rates in country after country, —JOACHIM FRANK, Columbia
the application rates of nitrogen, and University, Nobel Prize in Chemistry
the proportion of daily calories a person Cloth $30.00
gets from cereals. Grand Transitions is
classic Smil; that is to say, it is the prod-
uct of deep research.
Smil organizes the book by mega-
trends. He focuses successively on
CHICAGO
The University of Chicago Press
sweeping changes in family structures,

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 379


The proportion of total energy produced by various fuels changed dramatically between 1800
and 2020. Coal rapidly replaced traditional biofuels, peaked early in the 20th century, and de-
clined thereafter, replaced by crude oil, natural gas, hydroelectricity, nuclear electricity, wind and
solar electricity, and modern biofuels (the uppermost sliver at top right). From Grand Transitions.
human progress, but statistics don’t suf-
fice as an answer. A more fitting subtitle
might have been A Chronicle of Trends
Leading to the Modern World, or All the
Facts You Need to Try to Make Sense of the
Complex Modern World.
Smil argues persuasively at the
book’s outset that it simply is not pos-
sible to decipher clear cause-and-effect
relationships in the transitions that pro-
pelled humanity as hunter-gatherers
became agriculturalists and then urban
dwellers in postindustrial economies.
Did the expansion of cities result from
technologies that created surplus labor
in the countryside, or vice versa? Did
a shortage of wood spur the Industrial
Revolution, or did the economic ad-
vantages of coal-powered technologies
underlie that transition? In postindus-
trial societies, will an increase in the
proportion of the population made up
of elderly people have the effect of re-
ducing the demand for food? Will the
purchase of convenience food and take-
out food continue to increase? We don’t
know, Smil admits. “Simplifications are
always perilous,” he tells us, and he
cautions that “another strong argument
against generalizations” is the “unpre-
dictable course” of many transitions.
Yes, demographics have changed;
rates of birth and death that were
380 American Scientist, Volume 109
once high have dropped. Urbaniza-
tion, technologies that have increased
agricultural production, advances in
public health, and new energy sources
have enabled previously unthinkable
advances in mobility, industry, and ev-
eryday life. All of these factors have in-
tersected to make the modern world.
Structural transitions in economies from
agricultural to industrial to service-
based have both promoted and been
promoted by these myriad transitions.
But to achieve a deeper understanding
of this complexity, one must journey be-
yond the comfort zone of a natural sci-
entist. Grand Transitions does not delve
into the influences of colonial legacies
and power dynamics on the ways peo-
ple have relied on products of the bio-
sphere. Smil doesn’t unravel the profit
motive as a force that has influenced
the massive increase in food production
and the unceasing extraction of energy
resources, nor does he examine the roles
that family planning and opportunities
for women have played in demograph-
ic transitions. He gives short shrift to the
ability of societies to modify the laws,
regulations, and cultural expectations
that govern use of the biosphere.
It is unreasonable to expect a book
to tidily encapsulate the vast ecologi-
cal, political, and social forces that
have shaped the modern world. Grand
Transitions does provide an overview
of the trends and pivot points in differ-
ent countries. But the story is incom-
plete, because Smil doesn’t dig into the
decisions, cultural changes, economic
settings, and ecological conditions that
have collectively shaped these transi-
tions in health, food and energy sup-
plies, living standards, and opportuni-
ties for mobility and employment in
societies around the world. Given the
rapidity with which transitions are oc-
curring along the future’s untrodden
and uncertain path, useful analyses of
the past must take a more holistic view.
The book’s final chapter is titled
“Outcomes and Outlooks.” Smil
strikes an even tone here, despite his
pessimistic outlook on the environ-
ment. He reiterates that impressive
and undeniable, though unequally dis-
tributed, progress has occurred over
the past century in health, education,
access to information, and living stan-
dards. He does not buy into dystopic
predictions of the downfall of modern
civilization, citing former predictions
of population explosions, famines, en-
ergy shortages, and economic collapse
that have failed to materialize. But he
also does not adhere to the wishful
thinking of techno-optimism, nor does
he assume that progress will be unend-
ing. He challenges the conclusions of
Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker, who
have cited past progress as proof that
improvements will continue.
In the book’s final pages, Smil re-
turns to his main message, that regard-
less of the modern world’s seeming so-
phistication and technological prowess,
the biosphere sets the parameters. “Any
serious historian must acknowledge
that we have been a very adaptable, a
very inventive, and hence a very suc-
cessful species—but surely not a god-
like one,” he writes. The future remains
unpredictable and humanity’s destiny
unknowable, but the foundation for a
promising future is a healthy biosphere.
To have any hope of such a future, hu-
mans must make decisions that curtail
outcomes to the contrary.
Ruth DeFries is Denning Family Professor of Sus-
tainable Development in the Department of Ecol-
ogy, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Co-
lumbia University. She is author of What Would
Nature Do?: A Guide for Our Uncertain Times
(Columbia University Press, 2021) and The Big
Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face
of Natural Crisis (Basic Books, 2014).
 November–December 2021
Sigma Xi Today A NEWSLETTER OF SIGMA XI, THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
Sigma Xi Elections
Begin November 8
Active Sigma Xi members will
receive a ballot on November 8 from
elections@vote-now.com to begin
voting in the 2021 Sigma Xi Elections.
All members who receive a ballot
can vote for the president-elect and
treasurer positions, as well as for
other open positions in their region
and constituency. Voting will end on
November 21.
President-Elect — three-year term
beginning July 1, 2022: the first year
as president-elect, the second year
as president, and the third year as
immediate past president.
Treasurer — four-year term beginning
July 1, 2022.
Directors — three-year terms beginning
July 1, 2022. Director positions up for
election serve the Southwest Region;
North Central Region; Comprehensive
Colleges & Universities Constituency
Group; and the Area Groups,
Industry, State & Federal Laboratories
Constituency Group.
Associate Directors — three-year
terms beginning July 1, 2022. Associate
director positions up for election
serve the Baccalaureate Colleges
Constituency Group, Canadian/
International Constituency Group, Mid-
Atlantic Region, Northeast Region, and
the Research & Doctoral Universities
Constituency Group.
Representatives on the Committee
on Nominations — three-year terms
beginning immediately following the
election.
Learn more about the 2021 election
candidates at sigmaxi.org/elections21.
Sigma Xi Today is managed by
Jason Papagan and designed by
Chao Hui Tu.
www.americanscientist.org
Volume 30 Number 06
From the President
Of Community and Conversation
Much of science is done in solitude and silence.
Think of Jane Goodall, alone in the forests of the
Gombe for months, quietly watching the behav-
ior of chimps. Think of the scientist at the bench,
oblivious to everything but what is happening on a
microscope slide. Even in a group lab, researchers
typically work alone—at the fume hood, hunched
over their pipettes or flasks, or at a computer,
mesmerized in the glow of some SPSS statistical
analysis. Such focused observation and analysis of
evidence is the foundation of science.
But there are times that scientists do come together and converse.
They meet to show off beetles they collected or to demonstrate a curious
phenomenon. They challenge and check each other’s work. They swap
stories of failed experiments. They talk excitedly about the glimmers of
emerging discoveries. These parts of science are done in community and
conversation.
The first word of Sigma Xi’s motto—Companions in Zealous
Research—highlights this collaborative aspect of scientific practice. Sigma
Xi has long nurtured the communal values that support excellence in the
research community. Its Grants in Aid of Research program will celebrate
its 100th anniversary next year. These seed grants have helped many
budding scientists get their start. Its Distinguished Lectureship program
began in 1937 to sponsor talks for local chapters. I was honored to be a
Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer in 2000 and spoke at some two dozen
chapters. The stimulating discussions in these events demonstrated to
me the vibrancy of the community. Many chapters run a Science Café
program to engage the public in the conversation.
This year, Sigma Xi launches two new initiatives to extend the Society’s
program to advance science’s ethical culture. The first is what we are
calling Curious Conversations. Rather than giving a prepared talk,
invited researchers will be interviewed in a conversational format. And
instead of talking about their research findings per se, the discussion
will focus on what motivated their research and the values and character
traits that are important for discovery and innovation. We also aim to
pilot roundtable mentoring meetings that use structured discussions to
explore how the scientific virtues undergird excellence and integrity in
research. We will kick these off at this year’s annual meeting and hope to
find funding that will let us expand them so they can impact a broader,
national audience.
Robert T. Pennock
2021 November–December 381
 PRIZES AND AWARDS
Shirley M. Malcom Receives 2021 Sigma Xi Gold Key Award
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor
Society is honored to announce that Shir-
ley M. Malcom, PhD, is the 2021 recipient
of the Gold Key Award. As the Society’s
highest and most prestigious honor,
the Gold Key Award is presented to a
member who has made extraordinary
contributions to their profession and has
fostered critical innovations to enhance
the health of the research enterprise, to
cultivate integrity in research, or to pro-
mote the public understanding of science
for the purpose of improving the human
condition.
“Dr. Malcom has pioneered and
championed much of the thinking
about diversity and inclusivity in
science that is finally being adopted
today. We are delighted to present her
with the Sigma Xi Gold Key Award,”
announced Jamie Vernon, executive
director and CEO of Sigma Xi.
Trained as a zoologist and ecolo-
gist, Malcom has played many roles
2021 Sigma Xi Award Winners
The Sigma Xi Awards are presented annually by the Society’s Prizes and Awards program. The awards recognize exemplary
achievements in science and engineering, as well as service to Sigma Xi itself. Recipients are presented with the awards at the
Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference, where most will be plenary speakers. This year’s conference will be held
virtually, November 4–7, 2021.
William Procter
Prize for Scientific
Achievement
Baruch Fischhoff
Carnegie Mellon
University
For blazing new ground in risk
perception, risk communication, and
decision science research.
John P. McGovern
Science and
Society Award
Rory A. Cooper
University of
Pittsburgh
For changing the lives of people
with disabilities through his work
in rehabilitation engineering and by
bringing newly separated veterans into
the world of STEM.
382 Sigma Xi Today
in her distinguished career, including
high school science teacher, university
faculty member, and National Science
Foundation program officer. In her
current role as the director for Educa-
tion and Human Resources Programs
of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS),
she heads up programs in education,
activities for underrepresented groups,
and initiatives fostering public under-
standing of science and technology. She
currently leads the AAAS SEA Change The symbolism of the Gold Key
initiative, which focuses on advancing Award pays homage to the early days
institutional transformation in support of Sigma Xi (late 1800s to early 1900s),
of diversity, equity, and inclusion. when induction into the Society was
Malcom has been a pioneer and role often accompanied by the presenta-
model for African American women in tion of a small gold key in the form of
science. Throughout her career, she has a charm. The key represented pride in
advocated for the advancement of sci- the science or engineering accomplish-
ence education for minority students at ments of the holder. Previous recipients
every level, from K–12 through college, of the award include Walter E. Massey,
graduate school, and beyond. (A pod- Gordon E. Moore, and Norman R.
cast is at www.amsci.org/node/4819) Augustine.
Walston Chubb Evan Ferguson Award for Service to
Award for the Society
Innovation Meg Murphy and Jasmine Shah
James J. Collins Sigma Xi Staff
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology
For innovative work in synthetic biology,
leading to novel classes of therapeutics,
diagnostics, and vaccines.
Young Investigator
Award For outstanding service to Sigma Xi and
David E. Olson its mission.
University of
California, Davis Read more about the program and
this year’s recipients by visiting
sigmaxi.org/awards.
For integrating molecular and cellular
neurobiology with the development of Nominations for 2022 Awards can
chemical tools and probes, and for being be sent to awards@sigmaxi.org.
at the cutting edge of neuropsychiatric Deadline: January 31, 2022.
disease drug discovery.
 STUDENT AND CHAPTER GRANTS

Grants in Aid of Research Recipient Profile: Anika Wohlleben

Grant: $500 in Fall 2018
Education level at time of the grant: PhD Student
loads, some have consistently low parasite loads, and others
exhibit extreme variations between years. With the timing
of infection being of great importance in host–parasite sys-
tems, my goal was to investigate the timing of infection by
S. solidus in four Alaskan stickleback populations that natu-
rally differ in their infection rates.
With the help of Sigma Xi’s Grants in Aid of Research
award, I was able to travel to Alaska in August 2019 with
an undergraduate student to study the infection rates in
recently hatched stickleback fish. We found that young-of-
year stickleback harbored S. solidus parasites with infection
rates (percent infected fish) varying between 10 percent and
20 percent in low-infection populations, and between 30
percent and 70 percent in high-infection populations. This
work is an integral part of my PhD research and will inform
future investigations on the topic.

How did the grant process or the project itself influence

you as a scientist/researcher? The support provided
through the grant paid for our travel to Alaska, where we
were able to carry out the research. Organizing this trip
has taught me a lot about the ins and outs of fieldwork,
and I made valuable connections with different agencies
(including the Alaska Department of Fish and Game) and
other stakeholders in Alaska that will prove to be helpful in
the future.

Project Description: In my work, I am taking advantage of
the independent colonization of freshwater bodies by three-
spine stickleback in Southcentral Alaska. Here, they first
encounter Schistocephalus solidus, a trophically transmitted
parasite that is not viable in marine environments. Some
stickleback populations display persistently high parasite
Where are you now? I am still a PhD candidate at Clark
University. Sadly, my two primary advisors both passed
away earlier this year. Though losing two mentors and
friends was hard, I have received amazing support from
my new primary advisor who has helped guide me in gen-
erating many new connections with researchers in my field.

Nova Southeastern University Chapter Awarded Sigma Xi Grant

for Hydroculture Project
The Nova Southeastern University chapter of Sigma Xi has received a $1,500 Sci-
ence, Mathematics, and Engineering Education (SMEE) grant from the Society as
seed funding for the Nova Hydroculture Project. The project will engage Title I
elementary school students in building hydroculture gardens with food plants
such as lettuce, peas, tomatoes, and berries. The project will build a collabora-
tive learning community where students learn STEM concepts as they relate to
the gardens.
Members of the chapter will serve as mentors and work with teams of K–12
students and teachers. In addition to setting up the gardens, the teams will
record and graph water chemistry data, take photos, and make science jour-
nal entries describing the process of making the hydroculture gardens. Each team will work together to test hypotheses
of their choice related to their gardens and will present their results to the larger group. These notes will be assembled
into a project book that will be displayed at the elementary school and posted electronically on the Nova Hydroculture
Project website, with links to all collaborating groups.
The project is a collaboration between the Nova Southeastern University chapter and Science Alive, a nonprofit
organization that provides undergraduate students the opportunity to develop and perform science activities with K–12
students. Sigma Xi chapters are invited to apply for grants by March 1, annually. For grant categories and guidelines,
visit sigmaxi.org/chapter-grants.

www.americanscientist.org 2021 November–December 383

 SIGMA XI FELLOWS
Announcing the 2021 Cohort of Sigma Xi Fellows
Sigma Xi is proud to announce the
2021 cohort of Sigma Xi Fellows.
They will be recognized during the
Annual Meeting and Student Research
Conference, taking place virtually,
November 4–7, 2021.
The distinction of Sigma Xi Fellow
is awarded on a competitive basis to
members who have been recognized
by their peers. Fellows must be an
active (dues-paying), full member for
the past 10 years continuously, or a life
member, with distinguished service to
Sigma Xi and outstanding contribu-
tions to the scientific enterprise.
Learn more about the 2021 Fellows
and how to nominate members for
future cohorts by visiting sigmaxi.org/
fellows.
Donald Beitz, Iowa State University
For significant contributions to Iowa
State University’s research mission
and its chapter of Sigma Xi as secre-
tary and treasurer since 2015.
Stuart Cooper, The Ohio State
University
For distinguished accomplishments,
exceptional contributions to engi-
neering and science, and dedicated
service to the causes of Sigma Xi.
Peter Denning, Naval Postgraduate
School
For distinguished accomplishments
and service to Sigma Xi through the
“Science of Computing” column in
American Scientist, and to the sci-
entific enterprise through research,
teaching, and curricular innovation.
Nancy Elwess, State University of
New York at Plattsburgh
For distinguished achievements and
contributions to science education,
outreach, teaching, and mentorship
in genetics and biological sciences.
Beverly Hartline, Montana
Technological University
For distinguished accomplishments
and tireless efforts to build research
capacity; champion and enhance
diversity, science education, and out-
reach; and promote mentorship and
honor in science.
384 Sigma Xi Today
Maung Htoo, Vassar Brothers
Institute
For distinguished accomplishments;
exemplary membership, energy, and
insight; and promotion of STEM
education at all levels, including
the broader scientific community in
Dutchess County, New York.
Carolina Ilie, State University of New
York at Oswego
For notable accomplishments and
contributions to Sigma Xi and the
chapter at Oswego, which earned the
national Sigma Xi Chapter Program of
Excellence Award in 2013 and 2018, and
the Sigma Xi Chapter Program Award
for distinguished performance for the
“Science Today Lecture on Women in
STEM.”
Loretta Johnson, Kansas State
University
For distinguished accomplishments
and impressive professional record,
which exemplifies the spirit of scientific
research that advances our understand-
ing of the natural world and promotes
an improved human condition.
Henry Petroski, Duke University
For distinguished accomplishments
and for his engaging “Engineering”
column in American Scientist.
Gadi Reddy, United States
Department of Agriculture
For distinguished accomplishments,
dedication to fostering the next gen-
eration of scientific researchers, and
dedication to the Sigma Xi com-
munity through volunteering and
participating in the national confer-
ence and programs.
Allen Sanborn, Barry University
For distinguished accomplishments
and unwavering service to Sigma Xi,
excellence in research, dedication to
mentoring future generations, and
outstanding contributions to advanc-
ing science and scientific literacy.
Marija Strojnik, Centro de
Investigaciones en Óptica
For distinguished accomplish-
ments and contributions to infrared
astronomy and planet detection; for
teaching and curricular innovations;
and for mentorship and leadership in
promoting and assisting women and
minoritized communities.
Joanne Tillotson, Purchase College,
State University of New York
For distinguished accomplishments
and commitment to promoting
scientific excellence through dedica-
tion to cancer research, expanding
approaches to teaching, and cul-
tivating future generations with a
longstanding devotion to Sigma Xi’s
Grants in Aid of Research.
Jeffrey Toney, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
For notable accomplishments, being
a strong proponent of scientific
achievement, being an advocate for
Sigma Xi’s mission, and advancing
efforts in science and human rights.
John Trefny, Colorado School of
Mines
For distinguished accomplishments
and contributions to teaching and
research in areas of STEM education,
and for more than a half-century of
service to Sigma Xi.
 Sigma Xi congratulates the
2021 cohort of Sigma Xi Fellows
Donald Beitz Carolina Ilie
Iowa State University State University of New York at Oswego

Stuart Cooper Henry Petroski

The Ohio State University Duke University

Peter Denning Gadi VP Reddy

Naval Postgraduate School United States Department of Agriculture

Nancy Elwess Allen Sanborn

State University of New York Barry University
at Plattsburgh
Joanne Tillotson
Beverly Hartline State University of New York at Purchase
Montana Technological University
Jeffrey Toney
Maung Htoo Kean University, Massachusetts Institute of
Vassar Institute Technology, and Harvard University

Loretta Johnson John Trefny

Kansas State University Division Colorado School of Mines

Marija Strojnik
Centro de Investigaciones en Optica