Isaac Newton's Tree Lives On as Does the Academic Family Tree

My husband, who has a PhD in physics from Brown University, shared with me today that department's annual 2011 newsletter and, in particular, a fabulous article on Isaac Newton, his discovery of gravity, falling apples, and even the bubonic plaque and the role that it played (or legend has it) .

The article is featured above with the photos, compliments of the newsletter.

What is truly amazing, is that there is an apple tree outside of the Barus and Holley (B&H) building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, that has a graft of a tree that was a descendant of a tree from Newton's orchard! I had my office in B&H when I was a graduate student in Applied Math at Brown, specializing in Operations Research.

Every year, Professor Humphrey Maris distributes the fruit from this apple tree to his physics students in order to inspire them.

According to the article: On October 7, the Physics Department gathered to commemorate the legendary fall of an apple. A dozen years ago, Humphrey Maris planted a graft of a descendant of the apple tree believed to have inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s universal law of gravitation. The tree, located near the steps of Barus & Holley, is an antique strain called “Flower of Kent.” Each fall, Professor Maris harvests the fruit it bears to share with his students.

Legend has it that the bubonic plague played a peripheral role in Newton’s seminal moment. Newton was a student at Trinity College in Cambridge when the plague swept across Europe, reaching Cambridge in 1665 and forcing the university to close. He returned to Woolsthorpe Manor, his family’s home in Lincolnshire,
England, where he observed apples falling in the garden.

I had earlier written that I could trace my academic genealogy back to Newton, with the help of Professor Mike Trick's great research.

Nice to know that we can not only go back to Newton in terms of our academic lineage and academic family tree but also forward in terms of Newton's apples!

Going Back to My Alma Mater -- Brown University

This past weekend I spent at Brown University, my alma mater, which is in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown University is one of the oldest universities in the United States and had the first undergraduate engineering program in the country. I have four degrees from Brown and my husband has two. Brown's President is Dr. Ruth Simmons, who is the first African American female to lead an Ivy League University. Her story is truly amazing -- the daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, she is one of eleven children. She has been the President of Brown since 2001 and, under her leadership, Brown has reached new heights in scholarship and education.

For once, I was the "trailing spouse." My husband was invited to be on a career panel, organized by the Department of Physics at Brown. The Saturday program brought back alumni of the Physics Department, from undergraduates through doctoral alumni. The program was the initiative of President Simmons, who also made an appearance, and declared that the physics career event was one of the most successful ones to-date. Alumni from industry, including IBM, and from academia, including Williams College and Johns Hopkins University, spoke on their experiences to an audience of students, faculty, and administrators. Physics Brown alums that returned to campus and participated in this special event also included venture capitalists, employees of national research labs and of financial firms on Wall Street. My husband discussed his experiences, as a tenured professor at the University of Hartford in the College of Engineering.

Of course, a visit to Brown enabled me to see my former dorms, from Andrews Hall on the Pembroke Campus, to Diman House next to the Sharpe Refectory, to the Russian House. Brown has expanded its medical school and Life Science building and its athletic facilities but has managed to preserve its historical buildings and unique layout and design. Walking on the East Side of Providence, where Brown is located on College Hill, brought back so many wonderful memories. Coincidentally, yesterday, April 5, 2009, was the anniversary of my doctoral dissertation advisor's death. My advisor, Dr. Stella Dafermos, was the first female to hold an appointment in the Divisions of Applied Mathematics and Engineering at Brown. I was her first doctoral student. She passed away in 1989 and her work continues to be cited to this day and to make an impact in fields from transportation science to computer science. We stopped by the Swan Point Cemetery on Blackstone Boulevard, where Stella is buried, to pay our respects.

Walking through the Brown Green, I visited the statue of the Brown mascot, the Brown bear, with the inscription that contains the terrific phrase: "To Symbolize those Qualities of Strength, Courage, Endurance, which go Far to Make Men Invincible."

Brown and Providence have changed since I graduated but the beauty of the architecture and landscaping, plus the friendliness of the people remain! As for the food -- it is hard to top an Italian meal on Atwell's Avenue in the Federal Hill district of Providence!