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   Hilda Bastian (hildabast@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 17:22:59 JST Hilda Bastian

   This is Toshiko Yuasa (1909-1980). She was the first woman physicist from Japan. It's 1940 & with her science prospects at home blocked by gender prejudice, she'd managed to get into wartime Paris to do physics research...

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   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiko_Yuasa

   #tbt #WomeninSTEM

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     Hilda Bastian (hildabast@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 17:23:01 JST Hilda Bastian

     in reply to

     ...The drawcard for Yuasa in Paris was Marie Curie's daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie & her husband Frédéric. Yuasa was inspired by their papers on artificial radioactivity.

     More about Irène: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ir%C3%A8ne_Joliot-Curie

     Here's Toshiko & Irène at the Joliot-Curie home in 1941...

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     Hilda Bastian (hildabast@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 17:23:06 JST Hilda Bastian

     in reply to

     ...Yuasa was born in downtown Tokyo in 1909, the next-to-youngest of 7 children.

     Her mother came from a long line of poets, in the family of a renowned 19th century scholar, Tachibana Moribe.

     Her father was an engineer & inventor who worked at the patent office...

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     Hilda Bastian (hildabast@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 17:23:12 JST Hilda Bastian

     in reply to

     ...In 1931 she became the first woman to study physics in Japan, at the only university that accepted women students.

     Yuasa graduated in 1934, publishing her first paper that year too.

     She had applied to get to Paris before the war started & gained a degree there...

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     Hilda Bastian (hildabast@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 17:23:15 JST Hilda Bastian

     in reply to

     ...As a citizen of an enemy country, Yuasa had to leave France when the Allies landed at Normandy in 1944.

     She went to Berlin, where she built a double-focusing beta-ray spectrometer.

     Yuasa got back to Japan, via Trans-Siberian Railway with her spectrometer. It was just before the atomic bombs fell...

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