The discovery of gravitational waves—predicted but not seen by Albert Einstein—made headlines last week. One of the key members of the team that found them is not only a brilliant scientist, but also a lesbian mom of color.
Dr. Nergis Mavalvala, the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at MIT, has worked on detectors for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) for 25 years. She explains on her website, “The LIGO interferometers are 2.5 mile long instruments that use laser beams to precisely measure the positions of mirrors separated by long distances. These measurements can tell us if a gravitational wave is passing by.”
What’s the big deal about gravitational waves? The Pakistani-born Mavalvala writes, “Directly detecting gravitational waves will open a new window to further our understanding of Universe. Gravitational waves will tell us about Black Holes that gobble up light, but radiate gravitational waves, and about the earliest moments after the Big Bang, when light could not escape the birth throes of the Universe.” They were predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but not detected until now.
In 2010, Mavalvala won a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant” for her “fundamental contributions to physics at the intersection of optics, condensed matter, and quantum mechanics.” She told Science magazine in 2012 that her outsider status as an “out, queer person of color” has its advantages: “You are less constrained by the rules.”
Some of the rules she’s trying to work around are the rules of the universe itself. “Quantum mechanics limits the performance of the LIGO detectors,” she tells us. “Our goal is to find ways to get around these quantum limits.”
Mavalvala and her partner are raising their eight-year-old child, who, presumably, is just as capable of testing limits. (I’ve had an eight-year-old; I know.)
Mavalvala is also a graduate of the Wellesley College Astronomy Department, as am I. She graduated two years after I did and we didn’t really know each other (my graduate work was in the history of science rather than scientific research), but I have a special sense of alumnae pride in watching her make headlines.