Category: Science Poetry

“Inventive, reflective—
Marie Maynard Daly 
Seeks routes mechanistic
For enzymes and cells;
Goals realizing while
Paths catalyzing for 
Students to follow 
Through future, as well.”

The 16 April 2021 Twitter biography briefly recounted the story of Marie Maynard Daly (1921-2003), who was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in the USA.     

“Inventive, reflective— / 
Marie Maynard Daly /
Seeks routes mechanistic /
For enzymes and cells…”

Marie Maynard Daly completed her undergraduate work at Queens College and her master’s degree at New York University.  She then attended Columbia University to earn her doctorate degree, and her thesis was entitled “A Study of the Products Formed by the Action of Pancreatic Amylase on Corn Starch.”  Her dissertation research, completed in only three years, explored “routes mechanistic / [f]or enzymes,” as pancreatic amylase is an enzyme that can break down complex carbohydrates into glucose (sugar).  

Daly graduated from Columbia in 1947, then continued her biochemical research at multiple institutions: as a postdoctoral researcher at the Rockefeller Institute, then as a researcher and instructor at Columbia University, and ultimately as a faculty member at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she taught for more than 25 years.  Her insights were widespread: investigating protein synthesis and illustrating the harmful effects of cholesterol, among many other studies.    

“Goals realizing while / 
Paths catalyzing for /
Students to follow /
Through future, as well.”

A catalyst can speed the rate of a chemical reaction by lowering its activation energy: the energetic barrier that must be overcome for a reaction to proceed.  An enzyme is a catalyst for a biochemical reaction, specifically.

Daly established a scholarship at Queens College in memory of her father, who had also studied chemistry but was unable to complete his degree due to lack of financial support. These last few lines thus highlight the way in which Daly helped students along their paths to graduation, breaking down barriers: “paths catalyzing for / students to follow / through future, as well.”  

“The findings of Somerville, Mary:
Relating the sciences, varied.
Her knowledge, collecting;
The STEM fields, connecting,
In textbook most extraordinary.”

The 15 April 2021 Twitter biography noted the myriad accomplishments of Mary Somerville, an accomplished researcher who published On the Connection of the Physical Sciences in 1858.  

“The findings of Somerville, Mary: /
Relating the sciences, varied.” 

Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was a gifted scientist and author; she wrote articles and books related to astronomy, physics, and other varied STEM fields.    

“Her knowledge, collecting; /
The STEM fields, connecting, /
In textbook most extraordinary.”

While Somerville wrote many books, her most famous text is likely the one cited in the introduction to this post: On the Connection of the Physical Sciences.  It deliberately examines links and connections between scientific topics: defying disciplinary barriers and thus anticipating many of the challenges that still persist in STEM today.  

The book discusses such varied and accessible topics as the moon’s orbit, the processes of photography, and the vibrations of strings involved in music, as well as the underlying scientific concepts, processes, and patterns beneath all of these.  Somerville writes in the book’s introduction: “Science, regarded as the pursuit of truth, must ever afford occupation of consummate interest, and subject of elevated meditation… Our knowledge of external objects is founded upon experience, which furnishes facts; the comparison of these facts establishes relations, from which the belief that like causes will produce like effects leads to general laws.”   

Given the wide range of her academic interests, Somerville was the first person to ever be described via the word “scientist”; this was a term coined by her contemporary William Whewell (1794-1866) in describing Somerville’s varied interests, since job titles such as “astronomer” or “mathematician” alone were disciplinarily insufficient.  (Like Somerville, Whewell was a widely interested researcher, and he gave many useful neologisms to both STEM and the humanities.)

Somerville’s “textbook most extraordinary” is available online via Project Gutenberg. 

I’m flying a kite on the shore of the lake
In the summer before I turn ten.
The weak string grows taut and eventually snaps,
And the kite sails away overhead.   

Though I haven’t let go in the technical sense,
Still my aim plays no longer a role;
Story’s end is the same whether fate takes command
Or the kite’s wind-blown path I control.   

In the decades that pass since that warm summer day,
Expectations will rarely align
With reality; little makes narrative sense
To extent I’ve envisioned in mind.  

Recalling today that long-past afternoon—
Freed kite framed against vivid blue sky—
Though I mourned in that moment the loss of my toy,
I’ll remember now letting it fly.  

As winter break quickly passes by, I will take a few minutes today to write a brief post, to note the disappearing month and year.  This non-Twitter poem was one I wrote in a creative writing course a few years ago, for which the pertinent day’s prompt was considering the act of “letting go.” 

I’m flying a kite on the shore of the lake /
In the summer before I turn ten. /
The weak string grows taut and eventually snaps, /
And the kite sails away overhead.   

Though written in meter, this initial depiction is relatively prosaic.  I still remember standing by the side of a lake in a state park, many years ago: watching, befuddled, as a colorful diamond soared far into the distance.    

Though I haven’t let go in the technical sense, /
Still my aim plays no longer a role; /
Story’s end is the same whether fate takes command /
Or the kite’s wind-blown path I control.   

This stanza veers the closest of any here to a chemistry theme, lining up with the discussion of state functions and path functions I’ve mentioned before.  Mathematically, state functions and path functions are approached differently; a state function simplifies much accompanying math because it can be defined by taking the final state minus the initial state.  To use my perennial example of a mountain climber’s odyssey, the altitude achieved in the climb is a state function, since it can be calculated simply by taking the final height reached minus the initial height at ground level; the distance traveled is a path function, since it requires information about the specific route to determine.     

Here, “story’s end”– the altitude of the lost kite; its final state– would have been the same whether the string broke or I let go of it: “whether fate takes command / or the kite’s wind-blown path I control.” 

(I wrote a potential addition to this portion at one point, making the point gratingly clear as a chemistry lesson: “Now the altitude reached by the diamond afloat / Is a state function, neatly defined: / Final height of the kite is the same in both versions / Of story I’ve held in my mind.” I ultimately preferred the simpler phrasing.)

In the decades that pass since that warm summer day, /
Expectations will rarely align /
With reality; little makes narrative sense /
To extent I’ve envisioned in mind.  

These lines extend the mathematical metaphor to the idea of life as a path function that I’ve written about previously.  The path is unexpected and often challenging: expectation and reality can differ sharply; many events can seem bewildering, at best, when experienced in real time. While to look only at the initial and final states is to miss the entire story, the intervening path still might not make a great deal of “narrative sense,” as one walks it.

Recalling today that long-past afternoon— /
Freed kite framed against vivid blue sky— /
Though I mourned in that moment the loss of my toy, /
I’ll remember now letting it fly.  

However, the act of writing about challenges can sometimes reframe and reclaim them, as related in this small-scale example. 

On that day, years ago, I was disappointed to lose my kite. In writing this poem, I “remember[ed]… letting it fly,” a phrase which can refer either to an intentional release of the kite string (as referenced above) or, more generally, to the experience of kite-flying on the day itself.  The former didn’t happen, but through the writing process, I found the latter to be increasingly true.  When I looked back, I could envision the details vividly; I’m not sure I would have been able to, had the string not broken and the kite not departed so notably.

Several interesting tensions exist between this careful reassessment of memory and the “letting go” of the prompt that first inspired the verse.  That’s a balancing act fleetingly noted in the poem’s last few lines– and one that would be useful to revisit in a future essay!

A painting will react within the air,
The timescale long but resolutely strict;
I learn to my chagrin, almost despair,
And note the harm that passing years inflict. 
To H₂O and CO₂, paints age,
Convert o’er time; their final state is thus
The same as that for any on this stage. 
(See also: “Ash to ash and dust to dust.”)  
A sobering realization in its time;
I find a new perspective eight years on.
From songs and stories, portraits, prose, and rhyme,
The mem’ries of ancestral homes now gone…
I offer what I can the powerful play,
Take up the pen ‘gainst Time, and join the fray.

This is a non-Twitter poem, and it was a first poetic effort after many years of academic-only writing, as part of a creative writing course I was fortunate to find in Summer 2018.  The course involved daily writing prompts ranging from non-fiction to fiction and finally to poetry.  

In this particular day’s prompt, we were asked to rewrite a Shakespearean sonnet.  I found that reading a few of them and considering the strict rules of their structure helped me to frame an interesting image I’d encountered in a teaching workshop several years before. 

A painting will react within the air, /
The timescale long but resolutely strict, /
I learn to my chagrin, almost despair, /
And note the harm that passing years inflict.  

To H₂O and CO₂, paints age, /
Convert o’er time; their final state is thus /
The same as that for any on this stage. /
(See also: “Ash to ash and dust to dust.”)   

The poem, drafted in a creative writing class, references another welcome educational opportunity.  

Days after my first year of tenure-track teaching ended in 2010, I flew across the country to a wonderful workshop on Chemistry and Art, held that year in the state of Washington.  It turned out to be the restorative week I needed after the utter exhaustion of that first year.  Working with other scientists and artists, I listened to lectures and completed projects in which I considered the interdisciplinary overlap of chemistry and art more directly than I ever had before: synthesizing a solid pigment as an example of a precipitation reaction; dyeing a fabric to demonstrate interactions between the molecules of the fabric and the molecules of the dye.     

This poem originated from one particularly vivid takeaway point from an art conservation lecture: “[a] painting will react within the air.”  Any painting hanging on a museum wall is hanging in a reactive environment, since the oxygen in the air will cause oxidation reactions to occur.   (Important artifacts are sometimes displayed under inert atmospheres, to avoid these unwanted chemical reactions; certainly, factors such as temperature, lighting, and humidity are carefully controlled in a museum setting more generally.)  

When an organic compound undergoes a combustion reaction (oxidation), it is converted to water and to carbon dioxide.  The binders in oil paints are mixtures of organic compounds (containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen).  I had known both of these points, detachedly, for years, and yet I could point to the seat in the classroom where I was sitting when the implication truly clicked.  

The end products of a such a compound’s combustion reaction, even if that reaction doesn’t end for hundreds of years, will be water (H₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂), in terms of the molecular formulas of the thermodynamically stable, final compounds.  “[T]he timeline [is] long,” but the reaction pathway is “resolutely strict.”  In other words, the final state of a painting is not the painting… but these ephemeral reaction products, easily borne away on the air.  

I found this idea reminiscent of the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” phrase found in religious texts and framed it here as an academic note, via the “see also” directive.  

A sobering realization in its time; /
I find a new perspective eight years on. /
From songs and stories, portraits, prose, and rhyme, /
The mem’ries of ancestral homes now gone…

An inflection point, in computational chemistry (or mathematics generally), is where the curve of the mathematical function of interest changes sign.  An inflection point, in a story, is where the plot changes direction.  These lines mark an “intra-poem” inflection point, as I shift here from my chemistry discussion to a line of thought it helped inspire.   

The Chemistry and Art workshop was in Summer 2010.  “[E]ight years on,” at the time of my 2018 writing course, I was dealing with several recent losses within my immediate and extended family.  I had found myself unable in the time immediately afterward to consider any of the family memories that had once meant so much, via so many different media: music, stories, photographs.  Meanwhile, my writing had calcified into an academic, disciplinary-jargon-informed voice in the years after college.  

This writing exercise was thus an inflection point of its own, as I found that I had finally achieved enough fluency with chemistry material to be able to write about it in a more creative way.   This in turn led easily to the more personal reflection, supported by the structure of the sonnet form.

I offer what I can the powerful play, /
Take up the pen ‘gainst Time, and join the fray.  

The closing couplet provides an homage to Walt Whitman and William Shakespeare.  Whitman’s “O Me! O Life!” famously queries and responds: “The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? /  Answer. / That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Shakespeare’s Sonnet 15 addresses the inevitability of Time’s arrow and the writer’s resolute effort against it: “And all in war with Time for love of you, / As he takes from you, I engraft you new.”     

I remember where I sat at the workshop when I first connected the dots about the finite lifetime of a work of art.  I remember a morning in my living room years later, as these allusions fell into systematic syllabic place alongside those images from chemistry and, finally, a tribute to my family: the strict rules of the sonnet fit the myriad puzzle pieces into a coherent image. The pertinent turn back towards creative writing has led to a rewarding routine in the years since, including the regular use of this website space.