Starts 11 Feb 2025 18:00
Ends 11 Feb 2025 20:30
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The Hidden Force, A Play to Celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Teatro Miela
Piazza Duca degli Abruzzi,3
Trieste
On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, ICTP and the Trieste Section of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) are organizing a public event based on the play "The Hidden Force", which offers an overview of 20th-century physics through the eyes of four of its female protagonists.
Join us on 11 February at 18.00 hrs at Teatro Miela, in Trieste, for a theatrical experience combining science and art.
Attendance is free, but seating is limited and must be reserved ahead of the event at this link. The performance will be in Italian, with English subtitles.
The play will be followed by a Q&A session with the actresses and the director of the play.
The Hidden Force
The Hidden Force is a play that highlights the contributions of women to fundamental physics through the poetic storytelling of the life and work of four significant but only partly recognized scientists of the 20th century: the American astronomer Vera Rubin, the Austrian nuclear physicist Marietta Blau, the Chinese particle physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, and the Italian physicist Milla Baldo Ceolin. Their stories are intertwined with radical social and historical changes in an international context characterized by great upheaval but also by the birth of modern physics and institutions like CERN, INFN and ICTP.
The play was conceived, written, and produced by a group of physicists at the Turin Division of INFN and the Department of Physics of Turin University (Anna Ceresole, Nora De Marco, Simonetta Marcello, and Nadia Pastrone) as a result of their collaboration with a women’s historian (Emiliana Losma), an expert in new technologies (Rita Spada), and a group of theatre artists: Elena Ruzza (actress, drama, Terra Terra Association) and Gabriella Bordin (playwright, director, Alma Teatro). On stage, alongside the actress, soprano Fé Avouglan acts and performs various musical pieces, accompanied by live pianist Gabriele Braga.
The International Day of Women and Girls in Science
The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated every year on 11 February. This date was chosen by the United Nations General Assembly and adopted in 2015 to promote equal access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines to women and girls worldwide. According to the United Nations, despite a shortage of skills in most technological fields, women still account for only 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of graduates in computer science and informatics. Women are typically given smaller research grants than their male colleagues and, while they represent 33.3% of all researchers, only 12% of members of national science academies are women. Female researchers tend to have shorter, less well-paid careers. Their work is underrepresented in high-profile journals and they are often passed over for promotion.
Register here to attend the event.
THE PROTAGONISTS
Vera Cooper Rubin (Philadelphia, 23 July 1928 - Princeton, 25 December 2016) - American astronomer who made fundamental observations on the orbits of stars around the center of their galaxy and on the distribution of galaxies in the Universe, establishing their organization in clusters. She was responsible for the discovery of the anomaly of the motion of stars in galaxies, an experimental evidence in support of the theory of dark matter formulated by Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s.
Marietta Blau (Vienna, April 29, 1894 - Vienna, January 27, 1970) - Austrian nuclear physics was a pioneer in the detection and study of the processes between elementary particles by means of photographic emulsions, establishing a method that was the basis of Nuclear Physics in the 1900s. She explored the properties of cosmic rays and high-energy particles, discovering the phenomenon of disintegrating stars in the nuclear spallation.
Chien-Shiung Wu (Shanghai, May 31, 1912 - New York, February 16, 1997) - Chinese nuclear physics, moved to the United States before the Second World War, and became a reference in the study of beta decay and nuclear physics. She designed and carried out a famous experiment that demonstrated the violation of parity symmetry in processes dominated by weak interactions, opening new scenarios in Physics and the way to the Nobel Prize for Lee and Yang.
Milla Baldo Ceolin (Legnago, Verona, 12 August 1924 - Padua, 25 November 2011) - Italian particle physics, cultured and multifaceted, the first woman to obtain the professorship at the University of Padua in 1963, where she graduated in 1952. Her research on weak interactions ranged from the study of K mesons in cosmic rays, to neutrinos and their oscillations, to the stability of matter. She experienced the transition from the "small science" of the study of particles using nuclear emulsions to the "big science" of large accelerators.
Vera Cooper Rubin (Philadelphia, 23 July 1928 - Princeton, 25 December 2016) - American astronomer who made fundamental observations on the orbits of stars around the center of their galaxy and on the distribution of galaxies in the Universe, establishing their organization in clusters. She was responsible for the discovery of the anomaly of the motion of stars in galaxies, an experimental evidence in support of the theory of dark matter formulated by Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s.
Marietta Blau (Vienna, April 29, 1894 - Vienna, January 27, 1970) - Austrian nuclear physics was a pioneer in the detection and study of the processes between elementary particles by means of photographic emulsions, establishing a method that was the basis of Nuclear Physics in the 1900s. She explored the properties of cosmic rays and high-energy particles, discovering the phenomenon of disintegrating stars in the nuclear spallation.
Chien-Shiung Wu (Shanghai, May 31, 1912 - New York, February 16, 1997) - Chinese nuclear physics, moved to the United States before the Second World War, and became a reference in the study of beta decay and nuclear physics. She designed and carried out a famous experiment that demonstrated the violation of parity symmetry in processes dominated by weak interactions, opening new scenarios in Physics and the way to the Nobel Prize for Lee and Yang.
Milla Baldo Ceolin (Legnago, Verona, 12 August 1924 - Padua, 25 November 2011) - Italian particle physics, cultured and multifaceted, the first woman to obtain the professorship at the University of Padua in 1963, where she graduated in 1952. Her research on weak interactions ranged from the study of K mesons in cosmic rays, to neutrinos and their oscillations, to the stability of matter. She experienced the transition from the "small science" of the study of particles using nuclear emulsions to the "big science" of large accelerators.