CONTENTS - L'Oréal

� FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE 2005: photo gallery 

CONTENTS 

� L’OREAL-UNESCO Awards 2005: The Laureates 

Profiles, Context of the Laureates’ research and Portraits 

� In basic and applied research, imagination is the only limit 

Pierre-Gilles de GENNES, Nobel Laureate 1991 in Physics and President of the International Jury for the 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO 2005 Award in Material Sciences 

� Fellowships UNESCO-L’ORÉAL 2005 

� Seven years of commitment in favor of women 

The L’ORÉAL-UNESCO partnership 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE: Facts and figures 

� Women and Science: Viewpoints 

Does Science need women? 

Christian de DUVE, Nobel Laureate 1974 in Medicine, 

Founding President, L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards 

Women scientists: still pioneers 

Renée CLAIR, Project Manager "Women and Science" 

UNESCO Division of Basic and Engineering Sciences 

For further information or to arrange interviews with the Laureates and Fellows, please contact: 

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March 2005

Africa 

Zohra BEN LAKHDAR 

University of Tunis, 

El Manar 

Tunisia 

"For her experiments and 

models on infrared spectroscopy 

an its applications 

to pollution, detection and 

medicine" 

Asia-Pacific 

Fumiko YONEZAWA 

Keio University, 

Yokohama 

Japan 

FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE 2005: PHOTO GALLERY 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards 2005 Material Sciences - The Laureates 

"For her pioneering theory 

and computer simulations of 

amorphous semiconductors 

and liquid metals" 

Europe 

Dominique LANGEVIN 

University of Paris-Sud, 

Orsay 

France 

"For her fundamental investigations 

of detergents, 

emulsions and foams" 

Latin America 

Laureates photos: Micheline Pelletier / Gamma 

Belita KOILLER 

Federal University 

of Rio de Janeiro 

Brazil 

"For her innovative theoretical 

research on electrons in 

disordered materials such 

as glass" 

North America 

Myriam P. SARACHIK 

City College of New York 

(CUNY) 

USA 

"For important experiments 

on electrical conduction and 

the transition between 

metals and insulators"


L’ORÉAL-UNESCO 2005 Award - International Jury, Material Sciences 

1 st row, left to right: Professors GO, BARBOSA, GOLLUB, BIRSHTEIN, STANLEY, HIGGINS 

2 nd row, left to right: Professors TRIKI, HADJICHRISTIDIS, BILLINGTON, DE DUVE, DE GENNES, WANDIGA, ROBLEDO 

Missing from photo: Professors WEI, RAO 

Founding President 

Professor Christian de DUVE 

1974 Nobel Prize in Medicine 

(Belgium) 

AFRICA 

Professor Shem O. WANDIGA (Kenya) 

University de Nairobi 

Professor Ezzedine TRIKI (Tunisia) 

National Engineers School, Tunis 

LATIN AMERICA 

Professor Marcia BARBOSA (Brazil) 

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 

Porto Alegre 

Professor Alberto ROBLEDO (Mexico) 

National Autonomous University of Mexico 

NORTH AMERICA 

Professor Eugene STANLEY (USA) 

Boston University 

Professor Jerry P. GOLLUB (USA) 

University of Pennsylvania 

President of the Jury 

Professor Pierre-Gilles de GENNES 

1991 Nobel Prize in Physics (France) 

Photo : Patrick Aventurier / Gamma 

Honorary President 

Mr Koïchiro MATSUURA 

Director-General, 

UNESCO 

ASIA-PACIFIC 

Professor Yu WEI (China) 

Southeast University, Nanjing 

Professor C. N. R. RAO (for UNESCO) (India) 

Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced 

Scientific Research, Bangalore 

Professor Mitiko GO (Japan) 

Nagoya University 

EUROPE 

Professor David BILLINGTON (for L'ORÉAL) 

(United Kingdom) 

L’Oréal Recherche, Paris 

Professor Nikos HADJICHRISTIDIS (Greece) 

University of Athens 

Professor Julia HIGGINS (United Kingdom) 

Imperial College of Science, Technology and 

Medicine, University of London 

Professor Tatiana BIRSHTEIN (Russia) 

St. Petersburg State University

Applications for a UNESCO-L’ORÉAL fellowship are posted directly through the UNESCO National Commissions 

who can each recommend two candidates. 

The UNESCO-L’ORÉAL FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE Selection Committee meeting in Paris names the 15 beneficiaries 

from among the candidates. In most cases, the project is pursued outside the beneficiary’s home country. 

The 2005 Committee chair was Professor Françoise DIETERLEN, Emeritus Director of Research at the CNRS 

(National Center for Scientific Research), France. 

AFRICA 

KIRAKOYA Fati 

Burkina Faso 

Public Health 

Host Institution: School of Public Health, 

Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium 

ARAB STATES 

DRICI Habiba 

Algeria 

Molecular Biology/Genetics 

Host Institution: Université Claude 

Bernard, Villerbanne, France 


UNESCO-L’ORÉAL Fellows 

BONI-CISSE Cho N'Din Catherine 

Côte d'Ivoire 

Microbiology 

Host Institution: Hôpital de la Pitié- 

Salpêtrière, Paris, France 

TAYYEM Reema Fayez 

Jordan 

Clinical Nutrition 

Host Institution: Division of Health 

Promotion Sciences, Arizona College of 

Public Health and Arizona Cancer Center, 

Tucson, USA 

ABDULWAHAB Aisha Abubakar 

Nigeria 

Public Health 

Host Institution: Seale Hayne College, 

University of Plymouth, United Kingdom 

ALLACH Mariam 

Morocco 

Plant Biology 

Host Institution: Department of Plant 

Physiology, University of Grenada, 

Spain

ASIA & THE PACIFIC 

MICHIE Katharine Arwen 

Australia 

Biochemistry and structural biology 

Host Institution: MRC Laboratory of 

Molecular Biology, Cambridge, 

United Kingdom 

EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA 

KESKIN Ozlem Zehra 

Turkey 

Computational Biology and bioinformatics 

Host Institution: Laboratory of 

experimental and computational Biology 

National Cancer In 

LATIN AMERICA & THE CARRIBEAN 

LARA Maria Valeria 

Argentina 

Environmental Biology 

Host Institution: School of Biological 

Sciences, Washington State University, 

USA 


UNESCO-L’ORÉAL Fellows 

KYE Yong Sun 

Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea 

Molecular Biology 

Host Institution: Nankai University, Tianjin, 

China 

SADOWSKA Agnieszka Elzbieta 

Poland 

Neurobiology 

Host Institution: Cavalieri Ottolenghi 

Scientific Institute of Neurobiology, Turin, 

Italy 

de OLIVEIRA Michelle Lucinda 

Brazil 

Medical Science 

Host Institution: University Hospital of 

Zürich, Switzerland 

KUESENG Ketsiri 

Thailand 

Polymer Science 

Host Institution: Aaechen University of 

Technology, Germany 

ZANNA Paola Tiberia 

Italy 

Biochemistry/Molecular Biology 

Host Institution: Faculty of Medicine, 

University of Murcia, Spain 

MIRANDA CONA Marlein 

Cuba 

Nuclear Medicine 

Host Institution: European Institute of 

Oncology, Milan, Italy

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE 2005 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO AWARDS 2005: The Laureates 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO AWARDS 2005: THE LAUREATES

AFRICA 

Zohra BEN LAKHDAR 

“For her experiments and models on infrared spectroscopy and its applications to pollution, detection and medicine” 

PROFILE 

Atomic and Molecular Physics 



Professor of Physics 

Laboratory of Atomic-Molecular Spectroscopy and Applications 

Department of Physics - Faculty of Sciences 

University of Tunis El Manar 

Tunisia 

Professor Zohra Ben Lakhdar has greatly furthered the 

development of optics and photonics as a scientific 

discipline in Tunisia and all of Africa, making a number of 

valuable contributions to optical science and its 

applications in many different areas, from the 

environment to biotechnology. After her studies at the 

University of Tunis, she earned a PhD in Atomic 

Spectroscopy from the University of Paris VI. Although 

she could have remained in Europe, she chose to return 

to Tunisia, where there were almost no scientific 

research facilities, and began to focus on purely 

theoretical research concerning molecular interactions. 

At the interface between physics and chemistry, atomic 

and molecular physics represent an essential field, 

© Micheline Pelletier / Gamma 

especially for developing countries. One of Professor Ben 

Lakhdar’s main career objectives is to carry out applied 

research to meet national needs in Tunisia. During her 

scientific career she has developed advanced theoretical 

(ab-initio) and experimental spectroscopic methods to 

study the influence of pollutants, such as methane and 

metals, on the quality of air, water, and plants. Her 

studies are important starting points for potential 

applications in a wide range of fields, from astrophysics 

to agriculture, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and the 

chemical industry. 

At the University of Tunis, where she has been a 

professor of physics since 1978, she served as Director of 

the Spectroscopy Laboratory and supervises graduate 

and postgraduate students. She is the author of 

numerous papers in scientific journals and has 

contributed to several university textbooks. She is a 

founding member and president of the Tunisian Optical

Society. Because there are no astronomical 

observatories in Tunisia, theoretical scientific research is 

conducted on interstellar molecules and stellar plasmas. 

In 1994 Professor Ben Lakhdar was elected to the Islamic 

Academy of Sciences. Since 2001, she has been a senior 

associate member at the Abdus Salam International 

Centre for Theoretical Physics-ICTP. She has chaired 

international conferences in her field of specialization, 

atomic spectroscopy, and has organized many 

cooperation programs with European laboratories. Most 

recently she chaired the Sixth International Workshop on 

Laser Physics and its Applications, held in Tunis. 

Context of the Laureate’s research 

A luminous physics 



“Light is the messenger of the Universe.” This was the 

title of a lecture given by Professor Ben Lakhdar, and it is 

a very vivid illustration of a miracle of physics which is 

continually renewing itself: light informs us about the 

state of matter throughout the universe and even about 

the universe’s past. Zohra Ben Lakhdar’s work falls 

completely within the ambit of analyzing bodies 

according to the spectrum of light they emit or absorb. 

We use light to detect the existence of atoms and the way 

they combine to form molecules, as well as their speed, 

temperature, energy state, and the way they associate 

with surrounding molecules. 

Light informs knowledge 

What a distance we have traveled! The philosopher 

Auguste Comte denied the possibility that we would ever 

come to know the composition of the Sun, the stars and 

the planets. It is a harsh lesson: you should not always 

believe the defeatist utterances of philosophers, because 

just a few years after Comte’s statement the German 

physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer showed that a body’s 

light emission was characteristic of the nature of the 

emitting element, and that one could therefore find out 

the composition of the stars. 

When she was a student in Paris, Zohra Ben Lakhdar was 

familiar with the prestigious Kastler-Brossel Laboratory 

where Alfred Kastler demonstrated for the first time the 

phenomenon of stimulated emission Einstein had 

predicted. Light falling on an atom in a particular state 

could be amplified by that atom through a chain reaction. 

This has given us the laser, which is now used 

everywhere: there are fewer and fewer homes in the 

developed and developing world that do not contain at 

least one laser, whether it is in a CD or DVD player, in a 

printer or in a diode. Then, after they had been produced 

in the laboratory, the phenomena of laser-type light 

amplification were observed in nature, in interstellar 

space. One of Zohra Ben Lakhdar’s most important 

pieces of research is the calculation of the conditions 

under which this laser effect could manifest itself in 

space matter.

Database and theoretical calculations 

The analysis of space matter is undertaken on the basis of 

the properties of the light we receive. But in order to do 

that the light transmitted by the atoms and molecules has 

to be associated with the corresponding atomic or 

molecular constituents. In other words, the optical 

signatures of the elements have to be catalogued. This 

compilation of spectroscopic data is an essential element in 

the process. Zohra Ben Lakhdar is contributing to the 

vital task of compiling this database. 

But there are cases of atoms being so extremely rare in 

space that the conditions necessary for their presence 

cannot be replicated in the laboratory. So how is one to 

identify the light coming from those regions? By calculating 

the spectrum emitted by the atoms and molecules in these 

conditions that are non-reproducible in the laboratory. 

The calculation is a difficult one, because it presupposes 

light-matter interactions in unknown conditions. This is 

another aspect of the fruitful work of Zohra Ben Lakhdar. 

Spectroscopic measurements have been used by Zohra 

Ben Lakhdar to measure air pollution with a tunable diode 

laser in the absence of a LIDAR. This apparatus focuses a 

beam of light on a region of the atmosphere and an optical 

instrument observes the light re-emitted by the gas in the 

region excited by the laser light; physicists can then 

determine its composition, possible pollution and the 

presence or absence of greenhouse gases. 

Difficult research 



Zohra Ben Lakhdar’s work has always been done under 

very difficult conditions: there is no observatory in Africa 

and her teams have to make their measurements in 

Europe and then interpret them in Tunis. Until the early 

1990s there were no calculating facilities in Africa. 

Professor Ben Lakhdar’s determination ironed out the 

obstacles and kindled the enthusiasm of physicists even in 

these difficult environments. She displays unparalleled energy 

and conviction in her supervision of young research physicists. 

Her entire activity as a research scientist is a testimony to 

Professor Guy Taieb of the University of Orsay, France. 

Portrait 

Zohra Ben Lakhdar has been Professor of Physics at the 

University of Tunis since 1992. Educated at the Universities 

of Tunis and Orsay (France), she is the author of dozens of 

scientific papers on spectroscopy and a founding member 

of the Tunisian Physics and Astronomy Societies. She has 

established cooperative links with a number of European 

laboratories and chaired international conferences in her 

special area of study, atomic spectroscopy. 

“Shooting for the Moon? There are more difficult things 

to do! When Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, in July 

1969, the pictures he shot were on television screens all 

over the world. But it took another twenty years to 

photograph a single stationary atom! The world of the 

atom is difficult to explore, but possibly more rewarding. 

Manned space exploration has stopped, whereas 

research into the atom is continuing at full speed. It is 

where our future knowledge of the world lies. I enjoy 

belonging to this community of diligent research 

scientists who are working at the cutting edge of 

microscopic science.”

There is no difference between men and 

women when it comes to studying science 

“When I was young, everyone used to say that science 

was difficult for men, and impossibly difficult for women. 

Only men were supposed to be any good at calculus, and 

the only goal for a woman was to get married and have a 

family. Since I enjoyed mathematics, physics and science 

in general, I wanted to show that there was no difference 

of ability between men and women, and to demonstrate 

to the world that I could work in science. I dreamed of 

having the same status in the scientific community as 

men. I did my primary schooling, in the 1950s, in cities 

(Mahdia and Jemmal) where the highest diploma women 

obtained was the Certificate of Primary Studies 

(Certificat d’études primaires), and none of the girls I was 

with obtained it. There were very few girls in my primary 

school: about 25 of us in the first year, but only 6 made it 

to the final year. In those days, girls went to school for 

three, four or maybe five years, and then got married at 

the age of 15. No girl thought of going on to secondary 

school. That meant going to another city. For me the nearest 

city was Sousse, which was 25 kilometers away, and that 

was quite a trip when there were no buses or cars.” 

A scientific awakening 



“When Tunisia became independent in 1956 my family 

moved to Tunis, where I spent six years in a secondary 

school which was very good for French and Arabic but 

unfortunately not very good for the sciences. After 

independence, education became the Tunisian 

Government’s main concern, and in 1963, with my 

baccalauréat in mathematics, I went to the University of 

Tunis’s newly built Science Faculty. We were 200 

students, but only five of us were girls. At the time, for 

example, Tunisia did not have a single female engineer. 

Luckily for me, my family gave me their backing, clearly 

judging that any choice I had made was an act of will, and 

therefore good. 

“At the end of June every year a university professor 

would come from France to supervise our examinations. 

The Government would award fellowships to the best 

students - three, four or five a year - so that they could 

pursue engineering studies or do fundamental research 

in France. In 1967 I was nominated by the president of 

the jury and given the chance of studying for a Diploma of 

Further Studies (Diplôme d’études approfondies, DEA) in 

atomic spectroscopy in Paris; later I returned to earn a 

doctorate. Every Tuesday I would go to the Collège de 

France to attend lectures on quantum mechanics by 

Claude Cohen-Tannoudgi. He was a great teacher, who 

would guide you step by step into the world of the atom. 

Atomic physics seemed crystal clear when you listened to 

him! Abdus Salam was another Nobel laureate I 

admired. It was he who created the International Centre 

for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, where research 

physicists from developing countries can study alongside 

fellow scientists in a stimulating atmosphere and 

with the use of a well-resourced library. Travel and 

accommodation are provided. My husband - who is also a 

physicist - and I both had job offers in France, and were 

tempted to continue our careers there, but we chose to 

return to our country in spite of the fact that it lacked a 

scientific environment. It was hard, but we do not regret 

our decision. One has to be where one is most useful. At 

each stage in my career my mother would say, ‘Yayia el 

Elm’ (‘Science be praised’).”

Much to be grateful for 



Zohra Ben Lakhdar is grateful for what science has 

brought to people’s lives. Her mother had open-heart 

surgery, and her life was saved. Use of the contraceptive 

pill has given Tunisian women their freedom: marriage 

can be delayed and now the children they have are 

wanted. The decision is now not only the man’s. There is 

also less hunger in Tunisia with the development of a 

food industry. 

Zohra Ben Lakhdar thinks nothing should be impossible. 

When she is asked about her scientific dreams, she says 

she longs to build a center for optics and photonics for 

African research scientists in Tunisia, just like the Trieste 

center. But she has wilder dreams - of using science to 

control the climate, create rain, make deserts fertile, and 

get drinking water cheaply from sea water. 

Advice to the would-be female physicist 

Professor Ben Lakhdar’s advice reflects her struggles 

and the difficulties she has had to overcome. “Be aware 

of the importance of culture; be open-minded as a 

scientist and as a person. Seek independence. 

Understand how important it is to be a responsible 

citizen. And be optimistic: more and more women are 

becoming involved in the sciences, especially biology. 

Women are now more independent. Women’s careers are 

becoming more important and more highly valued by 

society. The average age of marriage is now higher: 27 

compared to 15 when I was that age. Be of good heart 

and be confident.”

ASIA-PACIFIC 

PROFILE 



Fumiko YONEZAWA 

“For her pioneering theory and computer simulations of amorphous semiconductors and liquid metals” 

Physics of Disordered Systems 

Professor Fumiko Yonezawa’s scientific career began in the 

mid-1960s when, as part of her master’s thesis, she 

proposed a new method for calculating the electronic 

density of states in disordered systems. This research field 

was in its infancy at the time, but has since grown to include 

the study of non-crystalline solids, amorphous materials, 

glass, alloys, and liquid metals. 

In 1968, she was one of four young scientists who, working 

independently, developed a groundbreaking theory called 

coherent potential approximation, or CPA, described as "a 

quiet but radical revolution" that provided a compelling 

explanation for various physical properties of disordered 

systems from a theoretical viewpoint. 

Professor Yonezawa’s major projects have focused on topics 

ranging from non-crystalline materials to computational 


Professor Emeritus of Physics 

Department of Physics 

Keio University 

Yokohama 

Japan 

physics and complex liquids. After earning a PhD in physics 

from Kyoto University, she was a visiting researcher at 

Yeshiva University (New York) and the City College of New 

York from 1972 to 1975. Upon her return to Japan, she 

founded a scientific society that continues today to have a 

major impact on research in amorphous semiconductors. 

Her research has helped elucidate the electronic and optical 

properties of amorphous semiconductors with an eye to 

technological applications. She accomplished monumental 

work in the field of glass transition and, in the 1990s, she 

and her graduate students earned international recognition 

for their discovery of a completely new mechanism in 

metal-nonmetal transition. 

As both a researcher and a leader in her field, Dr. Yonezawa 

has organized many international conferences and 

symposia. In 1995, she was elected President of the Physical 

Society of Japan. Of the society’s some 20,000 members, 

only about 600 (roughly 3 percent) are women. This was the 

first time a woman had been elected to head the society in 

its 100-year history.



In Japan, less than one percent of physicists are women. As 

an internationally esteemed pioneer in this discipline, 

Fumiko Yonezawa has served as a singular role model for 

women scientists in her own country and abroad. 


Establishing order in disorder 

Matter is more or less ordered, and the state of order 

determines its properties. In a gas, the atoms and 

molecules are independent, except for occasional 

collisions. In a liquid, the attraction between atoms is weak 

so that they are able to move around. In a crystal, the atoms 

are bonded together in a regular lattice, for example at the 

corners of cubes piled up like a child’s building blocks 

(tessellation). In a glass, the atomic constituents are not 

free to move, but they are disordered as in a liquid that had 

been instantly frozen. 

Ever since her student days, Fumiko Yonezawa has been 

working on the properties of disordered (or amorphous) 

systems. She arrived at this rather complicated area of 

physics on the basis of careful attention to the delicate 

details of simple ideas - an approach that from a cultural 

point of view can be regarded as typically Japanese. For a 

long time, it had been easier to define the amorphous state 

by specifying what it was not, rather than what it was. 

Fumiko Yonezawa felt that disorder was not chaos, and she 

determined distinctions between various types of 

microscopic disorders, such as structural disorder, in 

which the atoms are not in regular positions, and 

substitutional disorder (as in binary alloys), in which the 

geometry is identical to that of a well-ordered crystal but 

where different atoms are randomly placed at regular sites. 

Professor Yonezawa has put some order in disordered 

systems - precisely in order to calculate their properties: 

the approximations made in these different cases have to 

be adapted, and using some “high-wire” mathematics she 

was then able to predict certain properties of amorphous or 

glassy substances such as their conductivity and stability. 

The long instability of glass 

Glass is always unstable, and over time transfers to the 

state of perfect crystal, but this change can take an 

extremely long time. On the windscreens of very old cars 

you can see - near the edges of the frame - blue and white 

circular areas where the glass has crystallized. The 

transformation of the glass into a crystalline form had 

taken a very long time. Nowadays you don’t see that, firstly 

because glass-making has improved and secondly because 

people don’t keep cars that long. 

The properties of glasses depend on the speed of the 

temperature decrease in their manufacturing process, and 

this dependence has been thoroughly investigated by 

Fumiko Yonezawa using computer simulations. 

In recent decades there has been an interest in liquid 

metals such as liquid mercury and liquid sodium. Liquid 

metals are types of liquids whose electrical behaviors are 

metallic. The advantage of studying liquid metals is that it 

is possible to evaluate the changes in their physical 

properties over a wide range of densities. These properties 

have been calculated by Fumiko Yonezawa using 

techniques she has been developing throughout her life.

Starting from scratch 



In physics, as in many other fields of natural science, 

research has traditionally been carried out through 

experiments and theoretical analysis. The advent of 

inexpensive computing power has created a new trend of 

computer-assisted physics. The computer simulation of 

matter has been used extensively by Professor Yonezawa in 

order to understand how liquids become crystals or 

amorphous solids. “You take atoms, put them in a box, 

apply pressure, heat them up, and see what happens,” she 

says with a smile, “but it’s not easy.” She has obtained a 

number of results that, except with hindsight, could not 

have been obtained by other methods. Of course, it is a 

difficult and new technique, but Fumiko Yonezawa’s various 

achievements would not have been secured by taking an 

“easy route”. 

Portrait 

Fumiko Yonezawa, a pioneer in the field of disordered 

systems, was, from 1995 to 1997, the first woman 

President of the Physics Society of Japan and is 

currently an emeritus professor at Keio University. 

Professor Yonezawa is a woman of amazing and almost 

incredible intellectual voraciousness. She has 

enormous confidence in the powers of the human mind 

and thinks of theoretical physics as being like a very 

hard but enjoyable climb up a mountain - but without 

either a map or a guide. She therefore decided she had 

to pioneer a new path by herself. 

Originality comes first 

“Aim high! Choose the best subject in the field that 

interests you most - the newest and most different subject 

you can think of. There are thousands of researchers 

working in the fashionable fields, so there is no point in 

joining them. It is a tough race that ends with a great 

discovery, and only the first person to get there is the 

winner. It is a case of ‘winner takes all’. So the best strategy 

is to set out as early as possible towards your goal - before 

anyone else even realizes that such a goal exists. If at any 

stage what you are trying to do fails, do not despair. Simply 

make a fresh start. Think positively and you will always 

achieve more than you expect to. I have been doing that 

since I was very young.” 

What lies beyond the end of the universe? 

“My mother loved mathematics and at high school she did 

so well in geometry that she had the dream of continuing 

with her studies at the university. But at that time women 

were not accepted by universities in Japan, and even if they 

had been my grandfather would not have allowed her to go 

for fear that she might miss out on the opportunity to get 

married. In a way I fulfilled my mother’s dream. 

“When I was a child, I would keep asking my family all sorts 

of questions. ‘Why doesn’t the Moon fall on us?’ ‘What is 

beyond the furthest star?’ ‘Where does the universe end?’ 

‘What is beyond the universe?’ I would lie awake at night 

thinking about the beginning of time. Curiosity is the 

scientist’s greatest asset.”

Why don’t you try to do both? 



As a young graduate student, Fumiko Yonezawa had to face 

the usual handicaps and worries when her boyfriend 

proposed to her. “My future husband was a student of 

economics. At that time I saw it as a straight choice: 

marriage and no physics or physics and no marriage. I 

thought that way because most of the successful female 

scientists at the time were unmarried. My husband-to-be 

reacted as if he was inspired by Marie Curie. He said: ‘Why 

don’t you try to do both?’ These words changed my 

philosophy for life: I decided I would take everything I want 

in life, no matter how difficult it was to do. Marie Curie’s 

example was proof that it was possible: one could do both.” 

The young research scientist’s encounter with the Nobel 

Laureate Hideki Yukawa was another stroke of luck for her, 

as he was always very encouraging and supportive. 

Yukawa had worked alone without colleagues, but even so 

he had predicted the existence of a particle, the meson, 

which would be discovered some years later in cosmic rays. 

Yukawa understood how hard it was to row alone against 

the tide. 

“So I completed my work on disordered systems in 1967, 

just before I had my second daughter. I felt sure no one had 

understood disordered systems properly, and so I invented 

the coherent potential approximation (CPA) for the 

evaluation of the electronic properties of disordered 

systems. But I was wrong - to my surprise I found out that 

the same theory had been invented independently at 

almost the same time by three young physicists of my age. 

The theory worked beautifully for explaining various 

physical properties of disordered systems.” 

I rush back to my desk, shouting “Eureka! 

Eureka!” 

How do things become clear? In a way the brain seems to 

identify with the scientist’s subject of study - the transition 

from disorder to order. “Illumination and inspiration do not 

come when I am working at my desk. I have to struggle for 

hours, days and weeks with mathematical equations, 

formulations and theories - and then when I start cooking 

or take a bath the idea all of a sudden comes into my mind, 

and I rush back to my desk shouting ‘Eureka!’ The 

transition happens unexpectedly, but after a lot of work.” 

Build me a Time Machine… 

Fumiko Yonezawa has maintained the inquisitiveness of her 

childhood. She dreams of establishing a grand unified 

theory covering the four kinds of force existing in the 

universe, i.e. gravitational force, electromagnetic force, and 

weak and strong nuclear force. A related question she 

would like to understand is why - and not only how - the Big 

Bang happened, what it was like before the Big Bang (if that 

question means anything), why gravitational and 

electromagnetic forces vary in inverse proportion to 

distance… 

“I should like to ask the genie in the bottle to build me a 

Time Machine so I can go back into the past and travel to 

the future to see what it is going to be like. But this is not a 

scientific dream, because as a physicist I do not think we 

can make a Time Machine.”

It could not have happened 60 years ago 



“Going back in time, one has to admit that, although 

progress has been slow, the situation for women scientists 

has been improving: I was elected President of the Physics 

Society of Japan by male physicists, and that could not have 

happened 60 years ago, when my mother was not even 

granted access to university. It is clear that male physicists 

recognize the scientific achievements of female scientists. 

My advice to a young person wanting to become a scientist 

would be: ‘Forget you are a man or a woman, and let the 

revolution inside you lead the way.’ 

“However, the main reason there are still so few young girls 

going into science is that it is rather difficult to find models 

of women scientists. If a woman is a singer or a painter or 

a writer, everyone can find and enjoy her songs, her 

paintings or her novels. But the achievements of a woman 

scientist are for the most part presented in scientific 

papers which are not so accessible to a lay person. This is 

why I really appreciate the fact that the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO 

awards are given to women scientists and made public to 

everybody, and not just to scientists.”

EUROPE 

PROFILE 

Soft Matter Physics 



Dominique LANGEVIN 

“For her fundamental investigations of detergents, emulsions and foams” 

Professor Dominique Langevin is an experimenter and 

an observer who is fascinated with surfaces. Throughout 

her scientific career, virtually all her research activities 

have been centered on the dynamic behavior of 

interfaces, a field that is relatively unexplored due to the 

lack of easy-to-use experimental techniques. She is 

recognized as one of the leading scientists in the field of 

soft matter and surface science, although the impact of 

her contributions goes far beyond. Over the years, the 

practical applications of her work have been extremely 

valuable for industry in a wide range of sectors, from 

petroleum to laundry detergents, milk proteins, hair 

products, nuclear waste treatment, and even the 

construction of a foam module for the International 

Space Station. 


CNRS Directeur de Recherches 

Laboratory of Solid State Physics 

University of Paris-Sud 

Orsay 

France 

Dominique Langevin began her career in the Physics 

Laboratory of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris in 

1967, where she studied light scattering at the liquid 

surface. This was an entirely new area of study, to which 

she made pioneering advances at the theoretical level 

and developed much of the experimental method. She 

then turned to more complex fluids, applying her ideas 

and methods to liquid crystals. She determined, for the 

first time, the molecular orientation of liquid crystals at 

liquid interfaces. 

She and her team clarified the unusual wetting behavior 

of microemulsions, bringing important insights to the 

understanding of ultra-low surface tension, of particular 

interest to the petroleum industry for oil recovery. 

Dominique Langevin’s microemulsion studies in many 

ways demonstrated the importance of the surfactant 

monomolecular layer at the interface between oil and 

water. In her work on macroscopic water-air and water-oil



interfaces, she has obtained novel experimental 

observations and developed theories to interpret them. 

Since the 1990s she has made many key contributions to 

the understanding of foams, with numerous applications 

for industry. 

Dominique Langevin is the author of some 150 scientific 

publications and has received a number of prizes and 

awards. She has played an instrumental role in 

developing European level networks and consortia, and 

continues to be a scientific leader as well as a scientist. 


Dominique Langevin or the fascinating 

universe of liquids 

By developing several original experimental methods for 

the study of physical phenomena occurring at the surface 

of liquids, by measuring with great precision their 

superficial tension, and by better understanding the role 

of surfactants - those substances that give liquids useful 

properties for future applications - Dominique Langevin 

has greatly contributed to advancing the physics of 

liquids. For this substance between oil and water, she 

has developed techniques and analytical approaches that 

are envied (and at times copied) by other scientific teams 

around the world. A small weight for a large volume is 

one (too) brief way one might define the foams and 

emulsions that Dominique Langevin has studied at the 

CNRS; these products that flow too easily through your 

fingers are a real challenge for experimental scientists! 

And a paradox. What could be more ordinary than bath 

bubbles, a draft beer, a tube of makeup, an emulsifier, 

decorative and colored foams and liquids? 

We use these products every day; at times we eat and 

drink them. We do not necessarily ask ourselves how 

they become a little more sophisticated each day in their 

applications (i.e., putting out fires, preparing food 

products and cosmetics, soil decontamination, and so 

on). And what about tomorrow? By digging deeper into 

the secrets of soft matter, new and more surprising 

developments will become possible: imagine being able 

to extract heavy petroleum trapped in underground rocks 

(an estimated 50% of global reserves) or using solid 

foams to build structures on planets that do not have the 

Earth’s gravity, or inventing "smart" vectors for gene 

therapy. Dominique Langevin has published some 150 

articles in leading international scientific journals and is 

one of the 4,000 chemists most often cited for the period 

from 1981 to 1997. Despite her accomplishments in this 

field, she wishes wholeheartedly for an improved 

understanding of the stability of foams (why does a 

bubble burst?) and emulsions, which illustrates the 

difficulty and future dynamics of this discipline. 

Scientific context 

In the mid-60s, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes introduced 

so-called "soft-matter physics" in France (a field that is 

better known today thanks to the media attention for his 

work on glues). New areas of research then opened in 

order to better understand the universe of these curious 

fluids (such as liquid crystals, produced industrially at 

the end of the 1960s). Was it fate or a stroke of luck when 

Dominique Langevin enrolled at the Ecole Normale de 

Paris as an 18-year old student? Her desire to compare 

mathematical science (her first love) with harsh reality 

(experimental physics) quickly led her to work with 

high-caliber scientists. This opportunity was decisive for 

her as a woman scientist. 

At the Hertzian Spectroscopy Laboratory that is part of 

this prestigious research center, her colleagues, all



talented experimental scientists, quickly began using the 

laser (developed in 1965) to analyze matter. In the 

laboratory it soon became clear that this was the 

luminous tool that would make it possible to probe fluid 

matter (gases and liquids) more effectively. Dominique 

Langevin’s thesis advisor, Dr Marie-Anne Bouchiat, 

asked her to examine simple liquids (laboratory models) 

and, naturally, their surfaces. Dominique Langevin has 

since worked on the unexplored territories of polymer 

solutions and then fine emulsions, or micro-emulsions. 

Nearly 30 years have gone by. Today she is one of the 

most widely recognized scientists for her contributions to 

basic research and one of the leading specialists of 

foams and emulsions, complex fluids with highly 

promising applications. 

Dominique Langevin’s scientific work 

THREE ORIGINAL METHODS FOR OBSERVING THE 

SURFACE OF LIQUIDS 

Observing a liquid involves, in particular, examining the 

interfaces between the liquid and the air. The surface of a 

liquid is never flat. The molecules of the liquid are 

constantly moving-a phenomenon known as "Brownian 

motion." Molecules are completely at rest only at zero 

degrees. By observing the movement of surface 

molecules one can learn more about the rheology of 

liquid surfaces (viscosity and elasticity) and the role of 

surfactants or other adsorbed molecules (polymers). 

1) LIGHT SCATTERING ON LIQUID SURFACES: A 

DELICATE MEASURING TOOL 

The laser techniques continuously developed and 

improved upon by Dominique Langevin’s laboratory have 

made it possible to study the surfaces of liquids and the 

role of surfactants on the properties of surfaces. 

Independent molecular movements disturb the flatness 

of a liquid surface or the interface between water and an 

oil, and confer a degree of roughness. This creates 

collective shifting of the waves at the liquid’s surface, like 

the waves on the surface of the sea. Seen from the shore, 

the sparkling on the crest of the waves corresponds to 

the light reflected by the areas of the wave with a 

sufficient swell and the distance between two crests is 

the measure of the wavelengths of the waves. These 

“waves” are also observed at the surface of a liquid. From 

the wavelength of the light from a given area, physicists 

can determine the viscosity and elasticity of the surface 

of the liquid and, in particular, the role and effect of 

surfactants. 

Although this technique was perfectly suited to 

measuring superficial tension, it was not precise enough 

for the study of the rheological properties of interfaces 

(viscosity and elasticity between oil and water). 

2) ELECTRICAL WAVES AS A MEASURING TOOL 

It is possible to excite waves with electricity at the surface 

of a liquid and study how they spread (as described 

above). The amplitude of these waves is much greater,



however, than thermally excited waves, and the detection 

and measurement of elasticity and viscosity are thus 

more precise. 

3) USING DROPS AS A MEASURING TOOL 

Through a phenomenon of expansion and retraction 

caused by a small motor, one can create superficial 

compression waves of very fine drops formed at the tip of 

a syringe. The measurement of these viscoelastic 

parameters thus becomes possible. 

Other optical methods are currently being developed in 

Dominique Langevin’s laboratory to measure the 

thickness of the interface (an average of 2 nanometers): 

ellipsometry, x-ray reflectivity, and Brewster angle 

microscopy. 

A major discovery: the amazing properties of 

micro-emulsions 

Attempting to stabilize an emulsion for as long as 

possible, or to lower the superficial tension in order to 

improve their “detergent” power are primordial scientific 

challenges. It is possible to obtain extremely fine 

emulsions, called micro-emulsions, which are stable 

indefinitely. These fine emulsions have the power (by 

playing on the “resistance” of the interface - the 

superficial tension) to penetrate porous media. 

Petroleum can thus be retrieved from rocks or sand. One 

of the consequences of Dominique Langevin’s research 

has been discovering the origin of the low superficial 

tensions within such systems (10,000 to 100,000 times 

lower than those at the initial water-oil interface). 

Recent studies in her laboratory have focused on the 

characteristics of solutions containing blends of 

surfactants and polymers that are more or less flexible, 

like DNA strands that can be used in certain gene therapy 

approaches. 

The universe of foams 

As Aesop said about the tongue, foam is both the best and 

the worst of things. Foam is essential for shampoos to 

effectively eliminate the oils on the hair surface, but too 

much foam ruins the dishwashing soap. 

The structure of foam 

Upon close examination, foams turn out to be a complex 

group of bubbles separated by a liquid film: foams are 

gas inside a liquid. From the time they are formed to the 

time they disappear, several mechanisms govern the 

lives of bubbles: maturation (when gas goes from small 

drops toward larger drops), the drainage of liquid 

between the walls of the bubbles that dries out the foam, 

and when the bubbles burst. 

The study of foams draws on a number of disciplines. In 

the 19th century, the Belgian mathematician Joseph 

Plateau set out the rules governing the shape of bubbles 

and the number of faces and the angles between the 

faces. As is often the case in physics, the problem was 

simplified to determine its essential characteristics, and 

foams were initially studied in two dimensions, with 

bubbles being polygons. The three sides of a bubble 

begin at the apex of such a polygon, each side of which is 

at an angle of 120 degrees to the next; bubbles with up to 

six sides are under excess pressure and empty into 

bubbles with a smaller number of sides. These 

pressure-equalizing phenomena within a changing



geometry is called “maturation of foams.” There is a 

corresponding phenomenon in three dimensions. The 

maturation of a foam may last anywhere from one minute 

to several hours. 

The fugacity of foams 

The life of a foam is ephemeral: except for maturation, 

draining empties the interfaces between the bubbles of 

interstitial liquid, which weakens the walls and causes 

them to burst. To control the stability of foams, physicists 

add surfactants. These molecules alter the elasticity and 

viscosity of the bubble’s surface and, by stopping the flow 

of the liquid, slow the draining and increase the lifespan 

of the foam. 

A foremost pioneer: Benjamin Franklin 

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was a remarkable 

physician who proved and measured the existence of 

layers of molecules packed tightly against one another at 

the surface of a liquid, like stalks of wheat in a field. The 

fact that he was the son of a soap maker perhaps 

explains his propensity for surfactant molecules. 

Franklin spread a given volume of surfactant products on 

the surface of a still lake and measured the surface 

occupied by the monomolecular layer. Since the volume 

of the solution of surfactant is equal to the surface 

multiplied by the height of the molecule resting 

perpendicular to the surface of the water, Franklin 

determined, for the first time in history, the size of a 

molecule. This was a historic measurement by a genius 

whose first literary works were articles promoting the 

place of women in society. 

Portrait 

Dominique Langevin is an experimental physicist who 

specializes in the study of liquid surfaces. She is 

Director of Research at the CNRS (Centre National de 

Recherche Scientifique) and has been awarded the 

CNRS Silver Medal. She works with a number of 

agencies for the evaluation of research. 

One of the stumbling blocks is employment 

The decreasing number of students in physics - both 

men and women - is a sore point for Dominique 

Langevin. “I do not see any real improvements on the 

horizon - things are becoming much more difficult. And 

this is not just for women - but for all young scientists. I 

got a position with the CNRS when I was 22, without 

filling in any form (my thesis supervisor did it) and 

without an interview. Nowadays young scientists hardly 

ever get a permanent position before they are 25. 

Salaries are much lower than when I started. 

Promotions have become increasingly difficult over the 

years. There is no lack of interest in physics: it is that 

young scientists are simply not considering working in 

the field because there are not enough opportunities. 

Eventually this state of affairs will change because there 

will be a shortage of physicists and engineers which will 

be harmful to the health of the economy. But then it 

takes many years to rebuild the education machine. This 

is now the case in Japan, where there is a high demand 

in the telephone industry. There are ups and downs. The 

fact that there are very few female scientists is a 

problem of education: young women are not encouraged 

by their families and friends. It was difficult enough 

when times were good; when times are more demanding 

the hardship is even more severe for women.”

My life as a young scientist 



“France has always favoured mathematics in school 

studies. As a child, I liked the subject a lot, but after 

entering the Ecole Normale de Paris I came to prefer 

physics because at that level mathematics seemed too 

abstract, too far removed from reality. This was the time 

of the great structural abstractions of the Bourbaki 

style. Actually, my father wanted me to become an 

engineer, but he was very proud when I was admitted to 

the Ecole Normale and supported me in my desire to do 

research in physics. The subject of my thesis - light 

scattering by liquid surfaces - was given to me by my 

adviser, M.A. Bouchiat, and I greatly enjoyed working in 

the field. I am now using the knowledge I have built up 

about these types of surfaces over the years. I am 

applying it to systems such as foams and emulsions 

which have many applications even though their 

properties are still not clearly understood and there is a 

dearth of ideas about how to formulate them effectively. 

My research seeks to understand, from a fundamental 

point of view, how to stabilize the interfaces of these 

systems.” 

The impenetrable ways of science 

“There are happy and unexpected surprises in research. 

I had not imagined that my work would be important in 

the context of space exploration. It is vital to know how 

foam would behave in the absence of gravity - how 

fire-fighting foams would operate in the International 

Space Station, for example. Also, on Mars there would 

be no materials, so they would have to be brought from 

Earth and, since weight would be a factor, the idea would 

be that instead of using pure materials you would foam 

them, make materials like the polymer foams with which 

everyone is familiar and which you have in seats and to 

insulate bottles against heat or cold. The idea is to use 

our knowledge about the behaviour of foams in reduced 

gravity to make foamy material on Mars.” 

Don’t wait for inspiration or a stroke of genius 

When she is asked to describe her moments of 

enlightenment, Dominique Langevin gives an 

experimentalist perspective. “Problems untangle only 

after you have done and redone many, many 

experiments under different conditions. It is a 

continuous process of collecting data, comparing them 

with theory, improving the theory or finding another one, 

doing more experiments, and so on. In some cases it can 

be having an idea about a new material, a way to process 

it, transposing one scientific field into another domain, 

or an intuition. All these elements are generally mixed 

up together. Only in a very few cases has the solution 

come quickly. My record, I think, is one day for the idea, 

the set-up and the recording of data: this was for the 

investigation of the orientation of liquid crystal 

molecules at the surface. 

“So I would recommend that a young woman who wants 

to succeed should choose a suitable research project 

and a good group, work hard and get to know a large 

number of people in her discipline so as to establish 

collaborations, since science is no longer a subject for 

isolated individuals. And she should never forget that 

family and children are important too - if not more 

important. She will also need a bit of luck. But, as 

Pasteur said, ‘Chance favours the prepared mind.’ I was 

lucky to have been inspired and influenced by Pierre 

Gilles de Gennes, who introduced me to my beloved field 

of research - soft matter.”

LATIN AMERICA 

PROFILE 

Condensed Matter Physics 



Belita KOILLER 

“For her innovative theoretical research on electrons in disordered materials such as glass” 

During her career as a physicist, Professor Belita Koiller 

has demonstrated her ability to develop elegant 

theoretical approaches to unraveling complex 

experimental systems. Her most recent work has 

important implications for two of the most exciting fields 

in physics today: quantum computing and nano-science. 

After earning a degree in physics from the Pontifical 

Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Belita Koiller 

obtained her PhD from the University of 

California-Berkeley in 1976 and returned to Brazil. 

Over the years she has earned a reputation as an 

outstanding teacher, lecturer, and thesis supervisor who 

has motivated and inspired the younger generations of 

Brazilian condensed matter physicists. 


Professor of Physics 

Institute of Physics 

Solid State Physics Department 

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro 

Rio de Janeiro 

Brazil 

Belita Koiller is a renowned theorist, whose innovative 

work has helped improve the understanding of complex 

condensed matter systems, opening up many research 

opportunities for other scientists. She has creatively 

adapted the most efficient tools of statistical mechanics 

(tools such as the renormalization group and scaling 

techniques) to investigate the structure and 

non-equilibrium dynamics of disordered systems. For 

example, she applied the renormalization group to the 

calculation of the properties of electrons and other 

excitations in solids, an approach that was widely 

recognized and adapted by other physicists. She applied 

finite-size scaling to improve the physical understanding 

of alloys and impurities in semiconductors. She has made 

important contributions to the study of critical 

phenomena in systems far from equilibrium, to the 

interaction of intense laser fields with electrons in solids 

and to semiconductor nanostructures (quantum wells 

and quantum dots). Her recent work is expected to have a



major impact on the design of quantum computing 

devices. In nano-science Professor Koiller has addressed 

the fascinating electromechanical behavior of carbon 

nanotubes and optical properties of semiconductor 

quantum dots. 

Professor Koiller has been a Senior Research Fellow of 

the Brazilian National Research Council since 1985. Her 

publications have appeared in the most prestigious 

physics journals. She was the first woman physicist to be 

elected full member to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences 

and was decorated Comendador da Ordem Nacional do 

Mérito Científico of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil. 


Operating in the micro- and macroscopic 

worlds 

Belita Koiller’s research is in the line of the long tradition 

of studying the properties of crystals and controlling 

them. Recent progress has been breathtaking, and has 

created the transistorized, digital world in which we live, 

with cellular telephones, CDs, DVDs, computers, etc. 

The first scientists to take an interest in the geometry of 

crystals were Hauy and Bravais at the beginning of the 

eighteenth century. They recognized that some solids 

exhibited very regular and simple forms that one could 

perceive with the naked eye. By looking very closely at a 

grain of salt, for example, one can see cubes of different 

sizes. Other natural crystals, like quartz, display 

hexagonal shapes. 

Mineralogists analyzed the crystalline state and found 

that every crystal has a definite composition, with the 

atoms at specific sites: for example, sodium chloride 

(table salt) can be viewed as a cubic array with the 

chlorine atoms at the corners of a microscopic cube and 

the sodium atom at its center. The great progress they 

made was to recognize that the macroscopic shape 

reproduces the microscopic arrangement of atoms. 

The next step was the recognition that atoms were 

composed of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by 

negatively charged electrons. The heavy nuclei were at the 

sites characterizing the crystal while the electrons were 

in some cases allowed to move. When they are able to 

move, the crystal is a conductor. When the electrons do 

not conduct electricity, the material is an insulator. If the 

electrons are such that the crystal is a conductor, a 

voltage applied across two opposite surfaces of the 

crystal induces a flow of electrons, and thus a current. 

The microscopic basis of the delicate behavior of 

electrons in solids was elucidated by the quantum 

physicists in the period between 1930 and 1950. 

The semiconductors of the modern world 

A semiconductor is a crystal in which some impurities 

(dopants) have been introduced to control the conductivity. 

Thus semiconductors (poor conductors and poor 

insulators) became important when artificial doping 

became available: the conductivity and even the (positive 

or negative) sign of the current carriers in 

semiconductors could be controlled by doping. In 1947, 

the transistor - a semiconductor crystal with different



doping in selected regions - was invented. This was the 

beginning of the silicon revolution. 

The theoretical physicist relates the macroscopic vision of 

matter to the microscopic behavior of its atomic 

constituents. The task is enormous because there are so 

many atoms in a cubic centimeter of material. Recording 

their velocity and position - even just to one decimal place 

- would take a very long time, but averaged figures are 

stable and computable, so that by knowing some of the 

processes, like the interactions between individual 

particles, one can establish laws of general behavior. 

Theoretical tools were developed for dealing with sets of 

identical particles by the physicists Maxwell and 

Boltzmann in the nineteenth century; and have been 

continuously improved since. 

Professor Koiller has worked out the electronic and 

optical behavior of semiconductor alloys by describing 

disorder at the atomic scale. One of the characteristics of 

the research of physicists is that they simplify the systems 

they are studying in order to understand the more relevant 

physical phenomena in each situation. As three-dimensional 

crystals are mathematically too intricate, Belita Koiller 

first studied disordered one-dimensional materials, 

adapting statistical mechanics tools as simple models to 

understand the effects of chemical disorder in the 

electronic properties of materials in general. These tools 

became useful and important in the studies other 

physicists undertook in one-dimensional and also 

fractional-dimensional (fractal) systems. 

The quantum computer? 

As transistors get smaller and faster, they approach a 

regime with severe quantum mechanical limitations. At 

this limit, atoms and electrons will behave not as a 

statistical average but as individual quantum particles. 

The physicist - undiscouraged by this - transforms these 

difficulties into solutions: the quantum world can be used 

to solve certain problems at fantastic speed. At the 

quantum limit, each quantum bit (qubit) is defined by the 

quantum state of a single component. This kind of 

machine - the quantum computer - is hypothetical, since 

it has never been built. Belita Koiller has recently been 

involved in a critical analysis of the feasibility of 

semiconductor-based quantum computers. Her findings 

have led to very stringent constraints in the placement of 

dopants inside the silicon material - a major challenge to 

the experimentalists involved in fabricating the quantum 

computer hardware. 

Her interest in quantum computing is one of the more 

general characteristics of Professor Koiller’s research: 

focusing on the atomistic nature of matter and on its 

consequences in the physical behavior of materials. 

We are now just on the point of entering the era of 

nano-science and nano-fabrication, where different 

systems and devices will eventually be built in the 

laboratory atom by atom. Carbon nano-tubes and 

semiconductor quantum dots are examples of 

self-assembled or self-organized systems at the 

nano-scale level, already accessible to experimentalists. 

Belita Koiller has calculated their electronic properties 

and how they are affected by chemical composition, shape 

and other atomistic characteristics. The answer - at the



nano-scale world - is that the relevant properties 

(electronic, optical) always tend to be very sensitive to the 

individual atomic species and position, contrary to the 

macroscopic world where things tend to average out in a 

collective statistical behavior. 

Belita Koiller stands as one of the latest in a line of 

scientists who - since Bravais - have been making a 

fruitful study of the interrelations between the 

microscopic and macroscopic world of condensed matter. 

Portrait 

Belita Koiller is a theoretical physicist and Professor of 

Physics in the Institute of Physics of the Federal 

University of Rio de Janeiro. She is Senior Research 

Fellow of the Brazilian National Research Council and the 

first female physicist to be elected a full member of the 

Brazilian Academy of Sciences. 

“Be a Woman!” 

This motto of Professor Belita Koiller is a war cry of 

optimism - an implicit acceptance of the difficulty and a 

recognition of the possibility of reconciling one’s family life 

with one’s scientific work. It goes along with her message 

to young girls embarking on scientific careers while 

developing their personal lives: “Do the best you can, and 

work hard.” 

My magic wand is hard work 

When asked about moments of scientific exhilaration she 

has experienced, Belita Koiller says: “It reminds me of 

Archimedes’ ‘Eureka’, when he discovers his famous 

Principle while taking a bath, gets so excited about it, 

jumps out of the bath tub and runs naked through the 

streets shouting ‘Eureka’. My experience is that this is 

rare in science, and becoming rarer. The more - and the 

harder - I work, think, study, read, discuss with students 

and colleagues, attend conferences and seminars, the 

more I ‘open up’ solutions to old problems and formulate 

new ones. Of course, the relationship is not a linear one: 

sometimes the most interesting or most important 

results may in fact be obtained more quickly and more 

easily than others. Hard work is usually necessary, but it is 

not sufficient for ‘scientific illumination’. Intuition also helps. 

“Within this context, I may say that the most gratifying 

scientific work I have developed - always in collaboration 

with colleagues - involves the transposition of ideas or 

concepts which are familiar in one field of physics into 

another. One example is that ideas and methods from 

statistical mechanics were ‘imported’ and very successful 

in calculations involving the electronic properties of 

disordered solids. Another example is that effects due to 

the electronic behavior of solids strongly influence 

applications in the fascinating new field of quantum 

computing. 

“I also have my ‘mini-Eureka’ moments - when I 

understand something new and exciting. This sometimes 

happens when I solve a scientific problem, or even a 

problem in a textbook, or when I am attending a seminar 

given by a colleague or reading a paper - there is no rule 

about it. But what I am sure of is that this can come only 

after very serious, hard and continuous scientific work.”



I was not discouraged by sexist and male 

chauvinist ideas 

“I did my undergraduate studies in physics in Brazil. 

Several of my fellow students were women and there 

were some female professors. I went to the United States 

for my Ph.D., and there I noticed that there were no other 

female students in the class, or even on the Faculty. This 

was in the early 1970s. 

“I became aware of the women’s movement in the United 

States. In early 1972, I went to San Francisco specifically 

to attend a lecture by Professor Richard Feynman. Before 

the lecture started I saw a big demonstration by a group 

of women who were protesting against ‘the very negative 

sexist characteristics of Feynman Lectures on Physics, 

including several examples where the book reinforces 

many sexist or male chauvinist ideas’ (the quote is from 

the leaflet they were handing out, and I found it recently 

inside my copy of this book). I had studied this book 

intensively and liked it a lot, and it is true that the 

examples were not fair to women, but they had a 

negligible effect in terms of discouraging me from 

entering the field. 

“Of course, these sorts of comments are no longer found 

in modern physics textbooks. I find my environment 

‘politically correct’ - with women as colleagues, students 

and teachers - and in this respect things have improved. 

However, there is always room for further improvement! 

Much more than in the past I now see women - and 

especially young women - attending and giving very good 

lectures on work of high quality at international meetings 

and conferences. There are definitely more women 

choosing physics as a career now than ten years ago.” 

“The question ‘Why are there so few women scientists?’ is 

a very important and difficult one. I should like it to be 

addressed to experts in sociology, anthropology and the 

social sciences in general. My observation is that it is a 

regional and thus a cultural phenomenon: the proportion 

in Brazil is not as dramatic as it is in the United States. 

I should also like to state that in Brazil the main 

difficulties for my scientific work are related to 

infrastructure and other local conditions, and therefore 

the male scientists in Brazil face the same difficulties.” 

Physics is a good playground for one’s 

intuition 

Luckily, Belita Koiller was given ready access to science. 

“My father was a lawyer, my mother a dentist. I am the 

second of four sisters, and have no brothers, so it was not 

a family in which boy/girl career choices could have been 

an issue - although I heard such stories from friends and 

colleagues in high school. I always liked mathematics, 

mainly because it was a tool with which to solve 

interesting problems. I also enjoy using my intuition, and 

physics is a good playground for testing it and exercising 

it. The choice of physics, where I can combine teaching 

and scientific work, came after a number of other choices, 

such as that of becoming a schoolteacher. In all of them I 

was supported by my family. The clear message I always 

got from them was that I should be an active, independent 

professional. They also made it clear that they hoped I 

should marry and have a family.” 

There is no doubt that Belita Koiller followed her own 

motto - Be a Woman - in achieving remarkable success in 

both her family and her scientific lives.

NORTH AMERICA 

PROFILE 



Myriam P. SARACHIK 

“For important experiments on electrical conduction and the transition between metals and insulators” 

Condensed Matter Physics 

For more than 40 years, Myriam P. Sarachik has been a 

prominent experimental condensed matter physicist and 

a leader in the international physics community. After 

earning a PhD from Columbia University in 1960, she did 

postdoctoral work at IBM Watson and Bell Laboratories 

before joining the faculty at the City College of the City 

University of New York, where she has been teaching 

since 1964. In 2003 she served as president of the 

American Physical Society, the third woman president in 

the society’s 105-year history. 

Professor Sarachik’s career in experimental condensed 

matter physics has focused on superconductivity, 

disordered metallic alloys, metal-insulator transitions, 

hopping transport in solids, and the properties of 


Distinguished Professor of Physics 

Department of Physics 

City College of New York (CUNY) 

New York 

USA 

molecular nano-magnets. In particular, she has made 

seminal contributions to Kondo physics, a central theme 

in condensed matter physics, and the metal-insulator 

transition (MIT). She has shown that, contrary to 

conventional wisdom, a true phase transition may occur 

in two-dimensional systems; her group has also 

demonstrated quantum mechanical spin dynamics in 

molecular magnets. In her laboratory, she and her team 

are currently pursuing the study of condensed matter 

properties at low temperatures, with particular focus on 

two areas: molecular nano-magnets and the novel 

behavior of two-dimensional electron systems. 

In addition to her accomplishments as an internationally 

recognized researcher, Myriam P. Sarachik has a 

distinguished record as a teacher of undergraduate 

students, graduate students, and post-doctoral 

associates. She is the author of 150 articles in 

professional journals and has given colloquia, talks and



seminars in many countries. She has testified before the 

U.S. Congress and works to promote collaboration 

between physicists in the U.S. and Africa. She received a 

2004 Sloan Public Service Award from the City of New 

York for "blazing trails as a scientist, researcher, 

teacher, mentor, and humanitarian" and the 2005 Oliver 

E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics. 

Professor Sarachik is a member of the U.S. National 

Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American 

Academy of Arts and Sciences. 


The conducting behavior of solids 

An atom consists of a positively charged nucleus, 

surrounded by electrons that have a negative charge. In 

many solid materials the atoms are regularly spaced in 

three dimensions forming a crystal structure which can 

be insulating or metallic. In the insulator “phase” the 

electrons continue to be tied to the nucleus, and the 

material does not conduct electricity. In metals some of 

the electrons (those furthest from the nucleus) can move 

freely throughout the solid: a metallic phase is 

conducting. Semiconductors are intermediate between 

the two: pure semiconductors are insulators at very low 

temperatures, while they become metallic with the 

addition of controlled amounts of “dopant” substances 

at higher temperatures. “Doped” semiconductors are 

the basis for much of our technology. For example, 

semiconductors are used to make transistor switches, 

where the presence or absence of a current denotes a 

“0” or “1” in digital electronics and computers. 

The Kondo effect before Kondo 

Myriam P. Sarachik has studied electrical transport and 

magnetic properties of a variety of materials, mostly at 

low temperatures. Some of these materials have 

potential applications for memory storage and quantum 

computation. Much of her research has centered around 

semiconductors, which are the basis of the solid-state 

optical and electronic devices that have revolutionized 

communications, computation, and information 

gathering during the twentieth century. In her own 

words: “The better we understand their fundamental 

properties, the better we can utilize them to full 

capacity.” 

Professor Sarachik worked as a Postdoctoral Research 

Associate at the illustrious Bell Laboratories, where she 

did a seminal measurement of the resistivity of alloys 

containing magnetic iron impurities. She found that an 

unexplained increase in the resistance of the alloy with 

decreasing temperature was correlated with the 

presence of the magnetic impurity. The effect was 

explained shortly thereafter by the legendary Japanese 

physicist J. Kondo, who cited Myriam Sarachik’s work as 

the major experimental evidence that the anomaly in the 

resistivity was associated with magnetic impurities. 

Kondo’s calculations showed that electrons of the 

conducting host metal shield the magnetism in the local 

vicinity of the magnetic impurity by collectively 

establishing a “cloud of electrons” with magnetism in 

the opposite direction. As the temperature is reduced, 

the shielding becomes more effective and the electron 

cloud surrounding the impurity presents a bigger 

obstacle and a larger resistance to current flow. The 

Kondo effect is now ubiquitous and central in solid state



physics and many people think that this discovery and its 

explanation were worth a Nobel recognition. 

A large spectrum of creativity 

Myriam Sarachik has been interested in the behavior of 

systems as they transform from one “phase” to another. 

For example, materials can be in the solid, liquid or gas 

phase, and the transitions between them are called 

“phase transitions” (e. g. ice melts to become water, 

water boils to become steam). Another example is the 

“metal-insulator” transition between a metallic phase 

(where a material conducts electricity) and an insulating 

phase (where it does not). Professor Sarachik has 

investigated “metal-insulator” transitions in semiconductors, 

and more recently in two-dimensional layers. It has been 

believed for many years that a metallic phase cannot 

exist in two dimensions (in contrast to the three 

dimensional world we live in). With coworkers, she has 

shown that there is an apparent transition to a metallic 

phase, where the electrons are free to move in the plane 

of the layer. Whether a true metallic phase can exist in 

two dimensions is currently a matter of great interest 

that is being hotly debated. 

Myriam Sarachik has been interested in many subjects 

and has changed fields of interest many times. She is 

now also investigating an interesting class of materials 

called molecular nanomagnets, or “single molecule 

magnets”. These are insulating solids that contain a very 

large number of identical molecules that are tiny little 

magnets regularly arranged on a crystal structure. 

These materials are fascinating because they display 

behavior that straddles the classical (macroscopic) 

world we are all familiar with, and the bizarre world of 

quantum mechanics which dominates at very small 

distances. Professor Sarachik’s group demonstrated 

quantum mechanical flipping of these tiny magnets at 

low temperatures, a major finding in the field. Molecular 

magnets are also interesting because of their potential 

for high density storage of information, a nanomagnet 

pointing up or down representing a “0” or “1”; and 

possibly as an element (or “qubit”) for a quantum 

computer. Although no one has yet succeeded in 

implementing it on a useful scale, quantum computation 

is under investigation as a novel computational 

paradigm. Instead of the two states, “1” and “0”, of 

classical physics, qubits deal with combinations (or 

“superpositions”) of “1” and “0”, thereby taking 

advantage of the much broader, rich complexity of 

quantum mechanics. 

Beyond doubt, Myriam Sarachik has maintained a high 

level of creativity and open mindedness throughout her 

life. 

Portrait 

Myriam P. Sarachik is an experimental condensed 

matter physicist with almost 150 published articles to 

her name. She has been President of the American 

Physical Society, and is Distinguished Professor of 

Physics at the City College of the City University of New 

York, where she has been teaching since 1964. 

Born in Antwerp, Belgium, Myriam P. Sarachik was



almost 7 when World War II broke out and her family had 

to flee the country, arriving in Havana in late 1941. They 

remained in Cuba for five and a half years before 

emigrating to the United States. 

Professor Sarachik leads an active, busy and rewarding 

life. While her professional life is in physics, she derives 

pleasure and inspiration from music, the arts, her 

family, friends and colleagues. 

Do not look for the enemy behind every tree! 

Myriam P. Sarachik knows from her own experience how 

hard it is to counsel others. “What advice would you give 

to a young woman scientist?” 

“I worry that I might sound like pompous Polonius in 

‘Hamlet’, spouting insights that sound wise but are 

shallow…Nevertheless, I shall try. I would urge women 

to look for their inner strength, trust in it, to respect 

themselves and their worth. It is important to choose 

something you love to do, and to invest yourself in it 

wholeheartedly. Do not let anything or anyone talk you 

out of it. But be prepared to work hard. And do not look 

for the enemy behind every tree: most people are on 

your side and many will help you accomplish your goals 

if you give them the chance.” 

While conditions for women have changed, in 

many ways they are quite the same 

“I was one of a handful of women doing graduate work in 

physics. The (largely male) faculty did not take me 

seriously, but I was nevertheless expected to measure 

up to the same standards as the men. Obtaining a 

position and staying in the field was an enormous 

challenge. 

“Today many more women earn advanced degrees in the 

sciences, and they have more opportunities. Still, the 

numbers are too small, particularly in the physical 

sciences, and I find this puzzling. Women ‘drop out’ at a 

substantially greater rate than men, and there are far 

too few women in high positions. 

“While conditions for women have changed since I was a 

child, in many ways they’re quite the same - ‘Plus ça 

change, plus c’est la même chose’: we have made little 

progress in resolving some of the underlying problems. 

Married couples continue to have great difficulty 

obtaining two positions in the same geographical 

location. Moreover, although men and women now share 

household chores and childrearing to a greater degree, 

it is still the woman who generally bears the greater 

responsibility for the family and the larger share of the 

work. And child care is an enormous problem. I believe 

we need more imaginative solutions to these problems.” 

Physics looked like something you can sink 

your teeth into… 

Like most college students, Myriam P. Sarachik had a 

tough decision to make when it was time to choose her 

major. She had to decide between mathematics, music, 

languages and physics, among other things. 

“Physics was very challenging, very highly regarded, and



I was very good at mathematics; it looked like something 

I could sink my teeth into, and it was fun. My father did 

not have the opportunity to get a formal education. 

Self-taught, he was an exceptionally well-informed and 

intelligent man who had enormous respect for intellect 

and intellectual pursuits. My father admired physics 

above all other disciplines. My mother had (and still has) 

very high expectations for her children. So, I was 

strongly encouraged to pursue my love of literature, 

music, and mathematics. I read voraciously and I was 

intrigued and challenged by puzzles, concepts and 

patterns. However, there was no expectation that I would 

actually use any of this. My role in life was to marry, to 

have children, and to raise them (at home). Women 

worked only out of economic necessity if their husbands 

were unable to provide for them adequately. So my 

family did not object to my interest in the sciences. 

Rather, the issue was my choice to pursue any career at 

all. I had internalized these assumptions, both overt and 

tacit, and I had to deal with my own expectations 

regarding the role of women in society.” 

There is great pleasure in stretching the brain 

“When doing research, the sudden moments of 

transparency and insight are quite wonderful. I 

remember one occasion lying on the grass on a lovely 

summer evening enjoying an open-air concert in Central 

Park in the middle of Manhattan. The music and the 

weather were quite marvelous. Some recent data that I 

did not understand kept racing back and forth inside my 

head. And a pattern (in the form of an unexpected, but 

robust relation between two fundamental parameters) 

suddenly fell into place. I had no pencil, no paper, I could 

not be sure! But I checked it mentally again and again. 

Such moments are truly exhilarating. There is great 

pleasure (also work and occasional pain) in stretching, 

stretching, stretching the brain. That result held fast, 

and appears in one of my publications. I should tell you, 

however, that other ‘insights’ that came to me, 

sometimes in the middle of the night, did not survive 

careful scrutiny. I think that the brain is constantly 

attempting to resolve the puzzles, often in the 

background when you’re not aware of it. It’s quite 

special.” 

I have many questions to ask the genie in the 

bottle 

“There are questions that emanate from my own 

research on which I have spent a great deal of time. I am 

interested in the behavior of systems as they transform 

from one ‘phase’ to another. For example, materials can 

be in solid, liquid or gas phases, and we study the 

transitions between them (e.g. ice melts to become 

water, water boils to become steam). Another example 

is the transition between a metallic phase (where a 

material conducts electricity) and an insulating phase 

(where it does not); this is referred to as the ‘metalinsulator’ 

transition. It has been believed for many years 

that a metallic phase cannot exist in two dimensions (in 

contrast to the three-dimensional world we live in). We 

have been investigating materials in two dimensions 

that unexpectedly appear to be metallic. I would ask my 

friend the genie to guide me towards a definitive 

experiment that would settle whether what we are 

studying is a metal or not.



“There are the larger questions, of course. For example, 

are there underlying physical laws that explain the 

bizarre phenomena of quantum mechanics? Can science 

address the deep mystery and meaning of 

consciousness? The latter question has preoccupied me 

greatly since my adolescence. I wonder whether the 

genie knows the answers.”

IN BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH, IMAGINATION IS THE ONLY LIMIT 

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Nobel Laureate 1991 and President of the Jury 2005 

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes 

Nobel Laureate 1991 in Physics and President of the International Jury for 

the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO 2005 Awards in Materials Science 

In this interview, the president of the 2005 jury of the 

L’OREAL-UNESCO FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE in Science Award 

takes a look at materials science and describes the scientist's 

approach and quest for discovery—between basic and applied 

research, knowledge and utility. Within the context of human 

history and materials science, he reviews major 

breakthroughs and future prospects. 

"The scientist is like a mountain climber filled with curiosity, 

who sees new paths for climbing the rock face. This person 

enjoys climbing and discovering ways to perfect new materials, 

or finding new applications for old ideas. The invisible peak of 

total understanding is naturally an inaccessible Holy Grail, but 

the gates to the invisible are partially open. The knowledge 

gained is beneficial to society, which is what differentiates the 

act of mountain climbing from my notion of scientific research. 

I am interested in materials science because it does more than 

respond to a need: it creates new possibilities and, in terms of 

changing people's lives, it is an essential discipline. 

IN BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH, 

IMAGINATION IS THE ONLY LIMIT 


The origin of the concept of soft matter and 

liquid crystals lies in the transformation of 

natural materials 

In the distant past, for economic reasons, humans 

transformed natural materials such as stone, wood, 

clay, plant fibers, and animal skins. In terms of physics 

or chemistry, it is difficult to say what they have in 

common, apart from their availability. Defining materials 

sciences is not easy, but this rich subject lends itself 

well to an illustrative, rather than exhaustive, 

description of its near past, present, and predictable 

future 

Think of people living eight millennia B.C. who 

discovered that they could shape wet clay with their 

hands and then heat it to make it hard. Think of the 

Amazonian Indians who covered their feet with hevea 

resin; when it cooled they used it to make protective



rubber shoes, which they called "caoutchouc." What is 

striking about this last experiment is that a minor 

chemical reaction—the effect of the oxygen in the air, 

which binds the chains of natural polymers—has major 

consequences on the product's mechanical properties. 

This characteristic is typical of what we call soft matter. 

It is used in liquid crystals so that a small change in 

electrical tension considerably modifies the 

arrangement of the molecules and their optical 

properties. The displays on watches and flat computer 

screens are just two examples. 

The theory of solid- state physics as the basis 

for electronics 

The middle of the 20th century witnessed the triumph of 

electronics, a discipline that developed thanks to major 

theoretical breakthroughs by solid-state physicists, and 

physical-chemists in the purification of silicon-based 

materials. The communications sector was also able to 

take advantage of the production of ultra-transparent 

glass for fiber optics. The extraordinary superconductivity 

of certain oxides is the result of the same physicalchemical 

progress but it has not yet achieved the same 

success in terms of practical applications. 

The blacksmith's habit of dipping his red-hot tools in 

water has been adapted so that materials are cooled by 

several millions of degrees per second. This gives us 

alloys that are both more rigid and more resistant to 

shock and heat. 

From DNA to intelligent glue, the age of 

polymers 

For a good part of the past century, and continuing into 

this one, scientists have focused on molecular chains 

whose links are repeated on a more or less regular 

basis. Everything began with rubber and nylon, 

examples of the vast family of polymers, then extended 

into biology with amino acids, proteins and DNA strands. 

Today who would claim to do research in biology without 

taking into account the role of the DNA strand, the 

polymer of life? 

This resulted in the development of parallel disciplines 

(in particular, crystal liquids and polymer solutions) in 

media where order is not as pervasive as in crystals but 

is more pervasive than in liquids. In addition, new 

composite materials were developed that combined the 

two components, a matrix of organic polymer resin and 

high-resistance metallic fibers. The arrangement of 

long chains of polymers gives the materials specific and 

useful optical or mechanical properties. Glues are 

another example of a variation on polymers where 

fabulous progress has been made: the chemistry of glue 

has replaced the mechanics of rivets. Today we know 

how to produce glues that do not change when exposed 

to air and which, however, polymerize upon contact with 

a metallic substrate that plays the role of polymerization 

catalyst. We are able to make such glues and we know 

why we can make them. 

•••



Biomaterials today and tomorrow: the 

marriage of physics and biochemistry 

Biomaterials are one of the main focuses of materials 

science today and will very likely remain so in the near 

future. Biomaterials are composite substances that can 

be used to replace destroyed bones or deteriorated 

tissues. Once again, biochemistry was more efficient, 

more imaginative, and less theoretical than biophysics in 

the development of biomaterials. 

Over the last few decades, the frequently preponderant 

role of chemistry has been underestimated. Even though 

it contributes to improving the comfort of our day-to-day 

lives, chemistry is not fashionable. This attitude is just 

temporary; we must be wary of passing fads in science 

as well as scientific policy. In the same vein, it seems to 

me that the current popularity of nanotechnology is 

somewhat naive. 

Chemistry applied to plastics 

I am especially enthusiastic about another area where 

spectacular progress is being made: paints. Thirty years 

ago, paint was difficult to apply. It dripped and formed 

clumps so that only specialists were able to deliver an 

acceptable finished product. Paint manufacturers have 

taken advantage of the breakthroughs made in polymer 

chemistry. We know how to make paints that are very 

sensitive to the shearing force created by the brush 

when the paint is applied, and which spread well and do 

not drip. 

Chemistry can be used to alter the physical properties of 

plastics: adding hydrophilic groups to the surface of 

plastic films prevents the formation of dew drops that 

diffuse light, creating phenomena that lead to a loss of 

light energy in greenhouses. Similarly, the added 

volume of hydrophilic inclusions in plastic lenses makes 

it possible to store drugs that slowly spread through the 

surface of the lens and are released into the 

bloodstream at a constant rate. 

A material is defined by its internal structure, 

including its defects 

Success in materials science is the result of an act of 

faith, constantly renewed in concrete applications. 

A material's internal structure determines its properties. 

Various means of analysis, from microscopy to 

synchrotron radiation, have revealed the different scales 

of matter: atomic, molecular, microstructural and 

macroscopic. At each level, the discovery of specific laws 

would not have been possible without an understanding 

of these structures. Understanding defects represented 

an important step in our knowledge of matter that is not 

as "ideal" as theoreticians would like. It is nonetheless 

theory, along with defect assessment, that enabled 

progress to be made in understanding and 

manufacturing glass, resistant materials, polymer 

"reptations." Impurities make transistors. 

New production methods, such as atomic layer-by-layer 

growth of crystals, have led to the development of new 

magnets and super networks with remarkable optical 

properties. 

•••



Basic or applied research: imagination is the 

only limit 

These stories might seem to suggest that a scientist 

ventures out alone in search of a Holy Grail of the kind 

mentioned above, yet this is not the case. 

Scientific progress is no longer the result of solitary 

intellectual undertakings. That was true in the 19th 

century, but the 20th century witnessed the triumph of 

large visionary societies and teams of researchers 

working together. The current situation is deteriorating 

with the power of the Stock Exchange and the desire for 

short-term profits: three years is a very brief period of 

time in research. Should scientific research be driven by 

challenges faced by industry, or does it emerge from 

basic science? If we are able to ask this question, it is 

because both driving forces are at play today. 

I remember fondly one of my visits with Françoise 

Brochard at Allied Chemicals, where they were having a 

problem over polymers dissolving too slowly. 

We immediately made a foolish suggestion, and then we 

began to seriously look at the phenomenon, which was 

new. We established the rule that determines the range 

for optimum parameters. And at the same time, this 

problem gave rise to several theses in basic research. 

Improvements to materials and the processes by which 

they are made are driven by market needs, and 

important discoveries in materials science stem from 

scientists' geometrical or chemical concepts. 

Discoveries are the result of simplified models, at times 

inspired by events in our daily lives, and often stimulated 

by interaction with industry. Imagination is the only 

limit.". �

FELLOWS UNESCO-L’ORÉAL 2005 

FELLOWS UNESCO-L’ORÉAL 2005

FELLOWS: 

The hope for a sustainable science 

In November 2004, the selection committee for the 

UNESCO-L’ORÉAL FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE 

Fellowships reviewed the applications of 111 candidates 

from 61 different countries. We are delighted to see the 

list of finalists includes several countries appearing for 

the first time: Burkina Faso, Poland, Turkey, Brazil, 

Algeria, Jordan, the Democratic Peoples' Republic of 

Korea, Thailand and Cuba. Clearly, the program is 

becoming more widely known by the community of 

young women scientists across the globe. 

In developing countries, where projects are essentially 

focused on local concerns and do not require 

sophisticated technology, we are witnessing a shift 

toward more basic research topics that take 

scientifically relevant and elegant approaches. The 

improved quality of the candidates' proposals is very 

encouraging. 

The research topics are more and more diverse, 

covering increasingly rich fields of study, very often 

thanks to approaches based on observations as well as 

simple and common techniques. Perhaps routinely 

relying on the most sophisticated tools at times masks a 

good idea inspired by common sense. 

Alongside projects devoted to tuberculosis, AIDS, and 

bilharziosis, this year we have selected proposals 

concerning cancer of the liver, colon, skin, and other 

tissues. All these projects are based on methods that 


UNESCO - L’ORÉAL FELLOWSHIPS 

LIFE SCIENCES 

seek to fight cancer through prevention and the 

development of new treatments that could be easily 

organized in the Fellows' home countries, on the 

condition that the results they obtain at their host 

institutions confirm the hypotheses these young women 

have set out to test. 

The 2005 Fellowships also reward projects designed to 

find ways to fight drought, insects, and other threats that 

attack plants needed to feed people, to balance the 

ecosystem, or ensure the survival of endangered 

species. Soy, tobacco, and the argan tree will survive 

thanks to the success of these young women whose 

work supports the proper use of GMOs and genuine 

sustainable development. 

The committee also selected projects in basic science 

that rely on techniques from bioinformatics, molecular 

biology, and neurobiology. By validating the utilization of 

such advanced techniques, the committee wanted to 

recognize and encourage young women scientists in 

Poland, Turkey, Australia and Iran. They will be able to 

be a part of leading international teams as they seek to 

unravel some of life's enigmas. 

Once again, the list of Fellowship beneficiaries offers an 

eloquent illustration that science knows no borders: 

between cultures, nations, and even disciplines. 

Biology, chemistry, and physics, which are taught 

separately, are closely intertwined and intelligently 

utilized by the fellows. The list of projects also takes into 

account the risks that jeopardize our planet, its 

environment, and its populations.

AFRICA 

Burkina Faso 

Public Health 

Fati KIRAKOYA, 28, is a graduate student studying 

biochemistry and microbiology at the University of 

Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. 

Ms Kirakoya is interested in assessing whether sexually 

transmissible infections, such as genital herpes and 

syphilis, or imbalance in vaginal flora, have a role to play 

in increasing susceptibility to HIV infection in women in 

Ouagadougou. 

HIV infection in Burkina Faso has risen dramatically 

since the first cases were identified in 1986. The latest 

figures show that 6.5% of the population is now HIVseropositive 

(2002 data). Sexual comportment, hygiene 

practices and lack of access to appropriate treatment for 

sexually transmissible infections are all factors 

contributing to an increase in HIV transmission in the 

country. 

During the first part of her fellowship, Ms Kirakoya plans 

to undertake a statistical study of the sexually active 

female population of Ouagadougou. This will involve 

collecting socio-demographic and behavioral data, in the 

form of a questionnaire and biological data in the form of 

blood, urine and vaginal samples from individuals who 

consent to take part in the study. The biological data, 

once analyzed, will provide evidence for sexually 

transmissible infections, including HIV, and for other 

genital infections. During the second part of her 

fellowship, at the Catholic University of Louvain, Ms 

Kirakoya will learn how to analyze and interpret the 

collected data using biostatistical software to establish if 

there is a positive association between pre-existing 

genital infections and susceptibility to HIV infection in 


the studied population. 

On return to Burkina Faso, Ms Kirakoya hopes to be able 

to use the results of her study to provide input into the 

education and prevention programs for AIDS/HIV and 

sexually transmissible infections currently in place in 

Ouagadougou. 

Host institution: School of Public Health, Catholic 

University of Louvain, Belgium. � 

Côte d'Ivoire 

Microbiology 

Cho N’Din Catherine BONI-CISSE, 34, trained as a 

medical doctor and currently works as a hospital 

assistant specializing in bacteriology and virology at the 

central laboratory of the University Hospital of Yopougon 

in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. 

During her fellowship, Dr Boni-Cisse will be focusing her 

attention on a bacteria, Haemophilus influenzae type b 

or Hib, which is responsible for a potentially fatal form of 

meningitis in young children. In developed countries, 

this form of meningitis is now rare thanks to widespread 

vaccination, but in many developing countries Hib 

infection still poses a significant threat to young 

children’s health. 

Côte d’Ivoire is planning to introduce Hib vaccination into 

its vaccination program, but before this can happen it is 

important for doctors to know which strain of the Hib 

bacterium is currently responsible for bacterial 

meningitis in Côte d’Ivoire’s children. 

Dr Boni-Cisse will initially isolate the bacterium from 

meningitis patients and study their characteristics at her

home laboratory in Abidjan. She will then do a more indepth 

study of the same bacteria samples at the Pitié- 

Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to establish their molecular 

characteristics and their degree of resistance to 

antibiotics. 

This pre-vaccination study will help her to evaluate the 

prevalence of Hib-related meningitis in Côte d’Ivoire and 

to characterize the bacterial strains most implicated. 

Once the vaccination program is underway, a similar 

study will measure the impact of vaccination and monitor 

any changes in circulating Hib strains. 

After her fellowship, Dr Boni-Cisse will become 

responsible for the epidemiological and microbiological 

surveillance of Hib bacteria in Côte d’Ivoire. 

Host institution: Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, 

France. � 

Nigeria 

Public Health 

Aisha Abubakar ABDULWAHAB, 34, has a 

doctorate in veterinary medicine and is currently working 

as a veterinary doctor for the Nigerian Police Force in 

Abuja. She is also studying for a joint PhD in public health 

between Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria and 

the University of Plymouth in the UK. 

For her fellowship research project, which will also 

contribute to her PhD, Ms Abdulwahab will study the 


prevalence of human and bovine tuberculosis (TB) in the 

Federal Capital Territory of Abuja and the Kaduna State in 

Nigeria. 

Tuberculosis is a contagious disease caused by members 

of the Mycobacterium family of bacteria. It can affect both 

humans and cattle and, despite being curable, still kills 

some 2 million people every year worldwide. Humans can 

be affected either through direct exposure to TB patients 

or contaminated cattle carcasses, or via the consumption 

of contaminated products such as unpasteurized milk 

from infected cattle. 

Ms Abdulwahab will take samples of sputum from TB 

patients in hospitals and lesions from infected cattle 

slaughtered in abattoirs in the study area. She will also 

screen cattle on farms and take milk and blood samples 

from those infected with TB. She will then isolate and 

characterize the different strains of human and bovine 

Mycobacterium present in the samples and extract their 

DNA. This DNA will be analyzed using the molecular 

biology facilities available at the University of Plymouth. 

The results will help determine whether there are genetic 

similarities between the human and bovine 

Mycobacterium strains and whether cross-contamination 

of TB between humans and cattle has occurred. 

This information will be used to inform national policy on 

tuberculosis control and in educative programs for 

Nigerian cattle farmers. 

Host institution: Seale Hayne College, University of 

Plymouth, United Kingdom. �

LATIN AMERICA & 

THE CARRIBEAN 

Argentina 

Environmental Biology 

María Valeria LARA, 30, PhD in Biological Sciences, 

is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in plant 

biochemistry at the National University of Rosario in 

Argentina. Her research focuses on the effect of 

environmental and climatic stress on the process of 

photosynthesis and in particular on the development of 

crops that can use water more efficiently under drought 

conditions. 

The safeguard of the world’s water resources is 

dependent on research in this area: currently some 40% 

of the world’s food crops are grown under artificial 

irrigation and 70% of the water drawn by humans from 

freshwater sources is used for agriculture. Plants 

control water-loss and CO2 intake from their leaf 

surface through the action of leaf guard cells. These 

cells have the capacity to open and close the leaf 

stomata (pores) by changing shape in response to 

environmental conditions such as light and water 

stress. A specific enzyme (NADP-malic enzyme) is 

supposed to be involved in this process. 

During her fellowship, Dr Lara plans to transfer the 

maize gene – this species use a photosynthetic pathway 

known as C4 – which codes for this enzyme into tobacco 

plants, which use a different photosynthetic pathway 

(C3), to see if this specific enzyme could be used as a 

mechanism to make other C3 plants, including 

important food crops such as wheat, more resistant to 

water stress. 

On her return to Argentina, Dr Lara will test her results 

on other plants, under differing environmental 

conditions, with the aim of developing drought-resistant 

crop plants with increased yield. 

Host institution: School of Biological Sciences, 

Washington State University, USA. � 


Brazil 

Medical Science 

Michelle Lucinda DE OLIVEIRA, 33, a medical 

doctor, is currently working as an attending surgeon at 

department of Gastrointestinal Surgery at the Federal 

University of São Paulo, where she is doing postgraduate 

research in surgical hepatopancreaticobiliary field. Her 

research focus is on liver cancer and novel strategies to 

treat this disease. 

Cancer arising in the liver (primary liver cancer) is one of 

the commonest cancers in the world, with approximately 

one million new cases reported every year. The liver is 

also one of the main sites of secondary tumors 

originating from metastatic cancer cells. The liver is the 

only solid organ, which can regenerate and grow back to 

its normal size. Up to 70% of the liver can be safely 

removed, and it will fully regenerate within a few weeks. 

For this reason surgery remains the first line of 

treatment in many cases and the only chance of cure for 

patients with primary or secondary liver tumors. A 

frequently alternative strategy used prior to surgery is to 

occlude one major vein supplying blood to a large part of 

the liver (portal vein embolization) selectively causing 

liver atrophy and concomitant major regeneration in the 

part with intact blood supply. This strategy is very useful 

to enable safe resection of large liver volume (> 70% of 

the liver mass) containing cancer. However, how 

regeneration influences tumor growth in the remaining 

tissue and whether liver resection or portal vein 

embolization have similar effects is unknown. 

Dr de Oliveira wants to find out how liver resection and 

portal vein embolization influence tumor growth, and 

which growth factors produced by the liver are involved. 

The long-term goal is to enable safe resection of large 

liver volume while minimizing the risk of tumor 

recurrence after surgery.

During her fellowship in Zurich, Switzerland, Dr de 

Oliveira will have the opportunity to work on several 

models of primary and secondary liver cancers enabling 

her to study the effects of regeneration related to various 

types of intervention on liver tumor growth. Her results 

are likely to have an important impact on the treatment 

of patients with liver cancer. 

On return to São Paulo, Dr de Oliveira intends to 

continue her experimental work in this area with the aim 

to develop high quality surgical research in Brazil. 

Host institution: University Hospital of Zurich, 

Switzerland. � 

Cuba 

Nuclear Medicine 

Marlein MIRANDA CONA, 28, MSc in 

radiochemistry, is doing doctoral research into 

radiopharmaceuticals at the National Institute of 

Oncology and Radiobiology in Havana, Cuba. 

Radiopharmaceuticals play important roles in the 

diagnosis and treatment of cancer. They act as carriers 

for radioactive molecules which they concentrate in 

specifically targeted tissues in the body, such as tumors. 

The radioactivity can be used either as a way of localizing 

malignant tissue for diagnosis using imaging techniques 

or as a way of delivering high doses of radiation to kill 

the tumor while minimizing radiation to surrounding 

healthy tissue. 

Ms Miranda Cona is particularly interested in developing 

new radiopharmaceuticals based on peptides – the 


small groups of amino acids which make up proteins. 

These molecules have the advantage of being easily 

synthesized and highly specific, binding rapidly to the 

receptor molecules present in high concentrations in 

malignant tissue. 

During her fellowship in Milan, she will undertake both 

in vitro and in vivo studies to optimize the synthesis of 

these new peptide-based radiopharmaceuticals and 

evaluate their chemical stability and biological efficacy. 

On return to Cuba, Ms Miranda Cona plans to apply the 

radiotherapy techniques developed during her 

fellowship to ongoing research in her home institution 

and will train other colleagues in their use. She hopes, 

through her work, to contribute to the development of 

more efficient and effective therapies for cancer 

patients. 

Host institution: European Institute of Oncology, Milan, 

Italy. � 

ASIA & THE PACIFIC 

Australia 

Biochemistry and Structural Biology 

Katharine Arwen MICHIE, 28, PhD in molecular 

biology, is a post-doctorate research fellow and is 

working as an undergraduate tutor in biochemistry in 

the School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences at the 

University of Sydney, Australia. 

During her fellowship, Dr Michie will be studying the 

structure and function of a protein complex -- the

SMC/kleisin complex -- which plays key roles in the 

maintenance of chromosomal DNA and cell division. 

Abnormal functioning of this complex can cause 

chromosome abnormalities responsible for a number of 

genetic diseases, including Down’s syndrome, and in 

spontaneous abortions. It is also implicated in the 

development of malignant tumors. 

Dr Michie is particularly interested in working out the 

SMC/kleisin protein complex structure and investigating 

how this is related to its biological functions. It is thought 

that the complex forms a hinged “ring” structure which 

binds to DNA and holds it in place within the 

chromosome. 

In the Cambridge laboratory she will learn how to apply 

cutting-edge X-ray crystallography techniques to 

determine part of the structure of the protein complex. 

She will also test the validity of the “ring” model using 

cryo-electron microscopy. This technique involves 

freezing the protein in time and has the advantage of 

providing an undistorted sample for structural 

determination. 

Solving the mystery of the way the SMC/kleisin complex 

functions will have a significant impact on the future 

development of new therapies for genetic disorders, 

infertility and cancer. 

On return to Australia, Dr Michie intends to take up a 

position as a postdoctoral researcher where she will 

apply the structural determination techniques acquired 

during her fellowship to investigate other important 

proteins. 

Host institution: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, 

Cambridge, United Kingdom. � 


DPR of Korea 

Molecular Biology 

Yong Sun KYE, 32, PhD in biology, is a postdoctoral 

researcher in the Experimental Biology Institute of the 

Academy of Sciences in Pyongyang in the Democratic 

Peoples’ Republic of Korea, where she specializes in the 

molecular biology of food crops. 

During her fellowship, Dr Kye will study ways of 

developing transgenic plants that are resistant to insect 

predation. Crop damage by insects is a global problem 

which has significant consequences for agricultural 

economies. It has been exacerbated by the rise of 

monocultures and its treatment by the indiscriminate and 

extensive use of chemical pesticides has resulted in 

severe environmental hazards in some areas. Genetic 

engineering provides an alternative method of conferring 

insect resistance to important crops. 

Dr Kye will focus her attention on the soybean plant, one 

of the main sources of oil and agricultural fodder in the 

DPR of Korea. She will learn the different stages of 

standard genetic engineering techniques including 

isolation, purification, identification, amplification and 

cloning of the gene for insect resistance taken from one 

species of plant known for its resistance. She will then 

learn how to insert the resulting recombinant DNA 

containing the gene for insect resistance directly into the 

soybean plant cell by “firing” it with a particle acceleration 

gun. This recombinant DNA technology is currently not 

available in the DPR of Korea. 

On return to her home institute, Dr Kye will integrate 

these newly acquired techniques of genetic engineering 

into a national project to breed insect-resistant varieties 

of soybean. 

Host institution: Nankai University, Tianjin, China. �

Thailand 

Polymer Science 

Ketsiri KUESENG, 30, PhD in polymer science and 

technology, is a lecturer in the School of Science at 

Walailak University in Nakorn Si Thammarat, Thailand 

where she teaches and does research in the fields of 

chemistry and materials science. 

During her fellowship, Dr Kueseng plans to investigate 

how to improve water and oil repellency of Thai silk - one 

of Thailand’s best known exports - using plasma 

technology as an alternative to chemical treatments. 

Plasma is considered to be the fourth state of matter, 

alongside solids, liquids and gases. It takes the form of a 

super-energized gas consisting of free-moving electrons 

and ions and makes up 99% of matter in space. Plasmas 

can be created in special reaction chambers and have a 

very wide range of applications, from flat television 

screens to sterilization of medical equipment. In the 

treatment of textiles, plasma technology has the 

advantage of only modifying the material’s surface atomic 

layers without affecting the properties of the inner layers. 

In addition, it is a ‘clean’ technology. 

Dr Kueseng plans to investigate which plasma reaction 

gases are most efficient for treating silk under industrial 

conditions. By analyzing and characterizing the silk fibers 

after plasma treatment, using facilities available at the 

German Wool Research Institute, she will also gain a 

more in-depth understanding of the mechanism by which 

plasma treatment can increase water and oil repellency in 

this textile. 

On completion of her fellowship, Dr Kueseng plans to 

develop other applications of plasma technology for silk 

such as improving shrink resistance, increasing softness 

and integrating UV protection, making it adaptable to a 

much wider range of potential uses than is currently 

possible. 


Host institution: German Wool Research Institute 

(DWI), Aachen University of Technology, Germany. 

Ketsiri KUESENG has been reported missing since the 

tsunami of December 2004. � 

ARAB STATES 

Algeria 

Molecular Biology/Genetics 

Habiba DRICI, 35, is studying for a PhD in molecular 

biology and genetics at the University of Oran Es-Sénia, 

Algeria, where she also works as a teaching assistant for 

students in microbiological and genetic engineering. 

Habiba Drici’s research interests focus on the molecular 

biology of lactic bacteria used in the production of 

fermented foods. Lactic bacteria are key to the 

fermentation process that gives many foods - including 

bread, wine, cheese and yoghurt - their gustative 

characteristics. 

In fermented dairy products like cheese, lactic bacteria 

produce enzymes on their surface coat which break 

down milk proteins into smaller chains of amino acids. 

Different strains of lactic bacteria can produce enzymes 

which break down the proteins at different “cut-off” 

points, resulting in amino acid fragments with specific 

aromatic properties that can be used to vary flavor and 

aroma. 

During her fellowship, Habiba Drici will use up-to-date 

molecular biology techniques available in the host 

laboratory to identify and characterize the genes which 

code for protein-degrading enzymes in different strains

of lactic bacteria present in unpasteurized camel milk. 

By cloning the target genes identified in the different 

strains, expressing them individually in one single strain 

of the bacterium and then comparing their protein 

degrading activity, she hopes to be able to determine the 

genetic basis for each enzyme’s specific action. 

On return to Algeria, Habiba Drici plans to apply the 

newly acquired techniques to improve selected strains of 

lactic bacteria found in unpasteurized milk in Algeria for 

possible use in industrial cheese manufacture. She 

would also like to set up a new line of research on the 

production of lactic ferments in her home university with 

the aim of training a new generation of engineers 

specialized in cheese production. 

Host institution: Laboratory of Microbiology and 

Genetics, Claude Bernard University (Lyon I), 

Villeurbanne, France. � 

Jordan 

Clinical Nutrition 

Reema Fayez TAYYEM, 33, PhD in clinical nutrition, 

is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Allied Health 

Sciences at the Hashemite University in Al-Zarqa, 

Jordan, where she teaches nutritional science. 

Dr Tayyem is interested in assessing whether the 

consumption of curcumin has an inhibitory effect on the 

development of colon cancer. 


Curcumin is a yellow pigment from the root of Curcuma 

longa (or turmeric), a ginger-like plant that grows in 

tropical regions and is commonly used as a spice. 

Recent studies have shown that curcumin has particular 

chemical properties which make it a useful anti-cancer 

agent. It has the ability, for example, to selectively inhibit 

cancer cell division and to inhibit angiogenesis (the 

formation of new blood vessels) in certain cancers, 

including colon cancer. 

In her study, Dr Tayyem will make a statistical 

comparison of a group of colon cancer patients with a 

group of healthy participants in four different areas of 

Jordan, two of which have a high prevalence of colon 

cancer and two of which have a low prevalence of the 

disease. Using a questionnaire, she will determine the 

dietary curcumin intake of each participant and will also 

undertake chemical analysis and measurement of 

curcumin in blood and food samples. 

Dr Tayyem will use her time in Arizona to perfect her 

questionnaire and acquire knowledge of the 

biostatistical methods necessary to conduct this type of 

study. She will also develop an assessment tool for 

measuring curcumin in food and blood samples. 

Once her results have been analyzed she will evaluate 

whether her findings are in keeping with other studies in 

the field and apply this information in cancer prevention 

initiatives in Jordan. 

Host institution: Division of Health Promotion 

Sciences, Arizona College of Public Health and Arizona 

Cancer Center, Tucson, USA. �

Morocco 

Plant Biology 

Mariam ALLACH, 28, is a postgraduate student in 

agrarian biology and aquaculture at the University of 

Granada in Spain. She is studying ways of improving the 

sustainability of the argan tree (Argania spinosa), a 

semi-desert species endemic to Morocco. She is 

currently preparing a doctorate in vegetal physiology at 

the Faculty of Science, Oujda, Morocco. 

The argan tree is extremely important to Morocco, both 

ecologically and for its socioeconomic value. Its deep 

root system helps to protect against soil erosion and 

desertification and it is a major source of livestock 

forage and of cooking oil and wood for humans. 

Management of argan woodlands ensures the 

subsistence of many rural Moroccans but a combination 

of intensive agriculture and the abandon of traditional 

management practices have led to the tree becoming an 

endangered species placed under UNESCO protection. 

During her fellowship period, Ms Allach will be looking 

at ways to rehabilitate the argan tree in two areas in the 

north and west of Morocco. She will begin by collecting 

seeds from the different varieties of argan growing in the 

study region and optimizing their germination and 

regeneration in vitro using biotechnological methods 

developed at the University of Granada. This will enable 

her to select and genetically characterize the most 

resistant varieties for future regeneration. 

In the second part of her project, Ms Allach will study the 

chemical composition of oil extracted from the argan 

trees’ fruit at different stages of maturity and compare 

traditional and industrial methods of extraction, with a 

view to improving the oil’s commercial exploitation. 

Recognition of argan oil’s cosmetic, pharmaceutical and 

nutritional qualities are leading to the development of a 


national and international market which could help 

support the rehabilitation of the species in Morocco. 

Host institution: Department of Plant Physiology, 

University of Granada, Spain. � 

EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA 

Italy 

Biochemistry/Molecular Biology 

Paola Tiberia ZANNA, 31, PhD in medical 

biochemistry and biology, is doing postdoctoral research 

into melanogenesis and human epithelial pigmentation 

at the University of Bari in Italy. 

Melanoma is a highly malignant type of skin cancer and 

its incidence in the population is increasing rapidly. It 

arises in melanocytes, the cells that produce pigment in 

skin, hair and eyes and is thought to be triggered by a 

combination of genetic and environmental factors, 

particularly exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the 

sun. 

Dr Zanna is interested in studying the relationship 

between the MC1R gene, which controls some of our 

skin and hair pigmentation characteristics, and 

susceptibility to melanoma. Human MC1R sequence 

variants are associated with red hair and fair skin, 

resulting in a higher tendency to sunburn and an 

elevated risk for melanoma and non-melanoma skin 

cancer. 

During her fellowship Dr Zanna will study the correlation 

between different forms of MC1R mutation and 

melanoma, using cell lines taken from human 

melanoma lesions. She will then investigate the

elationship between MC1R variant alleles and the 

pigmentation pigmentation phenotype. Through this 

work Dr Zanna hopes to contribute to the development of 

new strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of 

melanoma. 

On her return to Italy, Dr Zanna intends to apply for a 

permanent position at the University of Bari to enable 

her to continue her research on this subject. 

Host institution: Faculty of Medicine, University of 

Murcia, Spain. � 

Poland 

Neurobiology 

Agnieszka Elzbieta SADOWSKA, 29, PhD in 

molecular biology, is doing postdoctoral research at the 

University of Basel in Switzerland looking at the process 

by which nerve cell (neuron) endings form junctions with 

muscle fibers. 

During her fellowship, Dr Sadowska will be focusing her 

attention on a protein – CLIP-170 - thought to be involved 

in polarizing developing neurons into their characteristic 

elongated form. During development, the single most 

prominent branch of the neuron – the axon – reaches out 

to make the connections with other neurons that are 

vital for the healthy functioning of the brain and nervous 

system. 

The cellular components underlying this process of 

neuronal polarization are called microtubules - tiny 

bundles of protein fibers which act as conveyor belts 

within the neuron. Dr Sadowska will be testing the 

hypothesis that the CLIP-170 protein, attached to the 

fastest growing end of the microtubules, somehow 


interacts with the cell membrane and induces it to 

elongate in one direction. 

The host institute in Italy will give Dr Sadowska access to 

all the facilities she will need to apply a multidisciplinary 

approach, including microscopy and gene knockout 

techniques, to study neuronal polarization. Ultimately, 

her research should help to increase understanding of 

human diseases linked to anomalies in neuronal 

development which can lead to mental retardation and 

premature death. 

Dr Sadowska plans to establish her own research unit at 

the University of Gdansk on return to Poland. 

Host institution: Cavalieri Ottolenghi Scientific Institute 

of Neurobiology, Turin, Italy. � 

Turkey 

Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 

Özlem Zehra KESKIN, 33, PhD in chemical 

engineering, is assistant professor at the University of 

Koç, in Istanbul, Turkey, where she teaches and does 

research in the College of Engineering. 

During her fellowship Dr Keskin will be developing an 

automated, computer-based tool capable of predicting 

possible interactions between proteins in the body and of 

designing novel protein complexes. 

Proteins are the products of gene expression. In their 

roles as enzymes, hormones or antibodies, for example, 

protein-protein interactions are key to many 

fundamental biological processes. Many major human 

diseases result from disruptions in the body’s protein 

interaction networks. A better understanding of the

inding sites of specific protein-protein interactions 

involved in disease will help researchers to design new, 

more effective drug compounds which target the 

interface between these proteins and prevent their 

interaction. 

Dr Keskin’s tool will search an existing database of 

known single protein structures for chains of molecules 

with the potential to interact. These potential binding 

sites will be compared to interfaces from a template 

database of known protein-protein interactions. Using a 

combination of computational methods, she will then be 

able to predict which of the single protein structure 

surfaces are most likely to interact with each other. Dr 

Keskin will benefit from access to high performance 

computing resources at the National Cancer Institute in 

the USA to help her develop this innovative research tool 

with the potential to accelerate the identification of 

important protein interactions. 

After her fellowship Dr Keskin plans to return to the 

University of Koç where she will resume her activities as 

a lecturer and researcher. 

Host institution: Laboratory of Experimental and 

Computational Biology, National Cancer Institute, 

Frederick, Maryland, USA. � 

FELLOWS UNESCO-L’ORÉAL 2005

1999: A shared vision 

L’ORÉAL and UNESCO committed themselves on 29 

September 1999 "through mutual, concerted cooperation, 

to carry out joint projects which would benefit the situation 

of women on an international scale in general and in their 

scientific work in particular." (Excerpt from the 

partnership agreement signed by L’ORÉAL and UNESCO) 

2002: A strengthened partnership 

SEVEN YEARS OF COMMITMENT IN FAVOR OF WOMEN 


On 17 October 2002, the partnership was strengthened. 

The Executive Board of UNESCO officially approved the 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO program. This decision illustrates the 

determination of UNESCO to further involve itself in this 

partnership, which has been regarded as a model by many 

of its Member States. 

2004: A renewed commitment to the promotion 

of women 

L'ORÉAL and UNESCO wish to strengthen the 

international impact of their initiatives. In 2004, the two 

partners renewed their "concerted cooperation" to 

promote women in science: the L'ORÉAL-UNESCO 

Awards and the UNESCO-L'ORÉAL Fellowships continue 

to be developed on all continents. In addition to the 

international recognition conferred by these distinctions, 

national initiatives are being organized to promote 

women's scientific activities across the globe. 

Today the partners intend to set up new initiatives and joint 

projects by mobilizing the community of L'ORÉAL- 

UNESCO Laureates and Fellows with the aim of 

contributing to the creation of new careers. 

The working relationship between UNESCO and 

L'ORÉAL is a first which is rich in resonance: it is an 

affirmation by the world of business of its responsibility 

to forge scientific progress and a recognition by the 

world of government of the positive contribution which 

business makes to the big issues of tomorrow's world. 

About L’ORÉAL 

Research is the focal point of L’Oréal’s development 

strategy, and is one of the keys to the Group’s success. 

Innovation is a core value that has been nurtured since 

chemist Eugène Schueller founded L’Oréal in 1907. The 

result is a portfolio of 17 international brands that 

deliver products based on science; products that work. 

L’Oréal is a worldwide leader in the cosmetics industry, 

developing innovative products to meet the diverse 

needs of customers in 130 countries worldwide. Nearly 

2,900 people work in the Group’s 14 research centers, 

located in France, Asia and America. Their findings are 

responsible for the registration of hundreds of patents 

annually. Women represent 55% of the research 

workforce – a percentage unmatched anywhere else in 

the industry. 

For more information on L’Oréal, visit www.loreal.com 

About UNESCO 

Since its creation in 1945, UNESCO has been dedicated 

to eliminating all forms of discrimination and promoting 

equality between men and women through action in the 

fields of education, science, culture and communication. 

Under the theme "Women, Science and Technology", 

UNESCO has organized six regional forums and created 

a series of academic chairs in Argentina, Burkina Faso,

Ghana, Soudan and Swaziland. UNESCO has supported 

the creation of numerous international networks of 

women in science and engineering, and launched 

projects in the fight against women’s poverty through the 

spread of science and technology into rural 

communities. The Organization is preparing to publish 

an in-depth report on the current situation of women in 

science and technology with the aim of helping 

governments develop appropriate policies. 

With 190 Member States, UNESCO works as a laboratory 

of ideas and a standard-setter to forge universal 

agreements on emerging ethical issues. UNESCO works 

to create the conditions for true dialogue, based upon 

respect for commonly shared values and the dignity of 

each civilization and each culture. 

For more information, visit www.unesco.org 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO 

FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE 

FACTS AND FIGURES 

• 1998: First year of the Awards 

SEVEN YEARS OF COMMITMENT IN FAVOR OF WOMEN 

• 1999: L'ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science 

partnership agreement 

• 2004: renewal of the framework agreement between 

L’ORÉAL and UNESCO for a duration of five years 

• A total of 111 scientists (Laureates and Fellows) 

honored as of 2005 


The L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards 

• Number of Laureates: 5 per year with one per 

continent (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, 

North America) 

• Amount of the award: $100,000 per Laureate 

Two alternating disciplines: Life Sciences and Material 

Sciences are recognized in alternating years 

• Approximately 2,000 eminent researchers and 

members of the international scientific community 

nominate candidates 

• 2 juries (Life Sciences and Material Sciences: Physics 

and Chemistry) are made up of 15 members each, 

including 3 Nobel Prize Laureates 

• 15 members each, including 3 Nobel Prize Laureates 

President of the 2005 Material Sciences Jury: 

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Nobel Prize in Physics 

• With the 2005 Award (7th edition), a total of 36 

Laureates from 20 countries 

• Countries of Laureates honored since 1998: South 

Africa (2), Germany, Argentina, Australia, Brazil (3), 

Chile, China (2) Egypt (2), Equator, Spain, United 

States (7), France (4), India, Japan (2) Mexico, Nigeria 

(2), Turkey, Republic of Korea, United Kingdom, 

Tunisia 

The UNESCO-L’ORÉAL Fellowships 

• Number of Fellowships: 15 per year, 3 per region 

(Africa, Asia & the Pacific, Arab States, Europe& North 

America, Latin America & the Caribbean) 

• Amount of the Fellowship: $20,000 each, intended to 

encourage young women researchers with promising 

projects in the Life Sciences 

• Candidates are proposed by the UNESCO National 

Commissions and Selection Committee steered by 

UNESCO 

• 75 Fellows to date, from 51 countries

CHRISTIAN DE DUVE, 

Nobel Laureate 1974 in Medicine, 

Founding President, 

L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards 

In an interview, Professor de DUVE spoke about the origins 

of the Awards. The following is a summary of his 

reflections. 

How can science deprive itself of 50% of human 

intelligence? How could it fail to include women in the 

forward march of knowledge and its applications? 

Today such seemingly naive questions immediately give 

rise to murmurs of agreement; idealists would say that 

these questions should not even be asked. Yet are they 

really superfluous? 

A scientific career became possible for women only 

recently. The first woman doctor, Madeleine Brès, received 

her medical degree in 1875, and it was not until 1900 that 

Clémence Royer was recognized for her research, just 

three years before Marie Curie received the Nobel Prize. 

Women's access to scientific jobs remains tenuous, and is 

threatened by cultural and religious prejudices. 

The L’ORÉAL-UNESCO FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE Awards 

and Fellowships support the cause of women scientists in 

a spirit of shared celebration, a means to persuade with 

both the spirit and the intellect. 

The FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE Award is a heartfelt impulse 

allied to a generous conviction. Today it is fully expressed in 

renewed admiration for the work accomplished by Award 

Laureates in the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences. 

Why create another award? Because it offers a way to 

thank the women that L’Oréal wanted to include in the 

success they made possible. One finds generosity in others 

when one is generous oneself: the three founders asked 

me to participate in this project and I have given it my 

fullest and continuous support. From the outset I thought, 

DOES SCIENCE NEED WOMEN? 

Viewpoints: Christian de Duve, Nobel Laureate in Medicine, and Renée Clair, UNESCO 

and I continue to think, that women researchers open up 

new avenues of reflection and fine-tune our thoughts on 

the universe, nature and life, and that we must do more to 

increase their participation in science. 

After the initial ardent impulse, the stroke of generosity. 

Questions were raised and we had to address objections 

head on. Was it right to create a prize reserved exclusively 

for women? I was convinced it was because in the past and 

the present in many countries, women's activities in 

science and medicine are often secondary. In soap operas, 

which reflected a certain reality, the men were doctors and 

the women were nurses. In research laboratories, the men 

were in charge and the women were lab assistants. I 

believed it was necessary, and that it is still necessary 

today, to encourage and reward the women who are deeply 

devoted to their research activities, in spite of temporary 

difficulties created in particular by motherhood. Finally, 

this Award also encourages men to do their share of the 

work in encouraging women in their commitments and 

their ambitions. 

A second question was raised concerning the geographic 

origin of the Award Laureates. We felt it would be more 

generous to honor one woman in science on each 

continent; was it necessary to apply the same criteria in a 

world where scientific development is uneven? Rewarding 

excellent work has a greater impact on the condition of 

women scientists, and offers a more powerful example for 

vocations in Africa and Latin America, in countries where 

men's solidarity with women must also be encouraged. 

On these two points—reserving the Award exclusively for 

women and conferring one Award per continent—those 

who created the Awards wanted to get beyond "logical" 

reservations. Their goal was to encourage women to 

pursue scientific careers and, from this perspective, the 

Award fulfills its role. Clearly, much remains to be done, 

but social behavior toward women scientists is changing. 

Women's access to literary careers preceded their access 

to scientific careers. Today no one contests women's 

contributions to the poetry of images; in science, no one 

will contest their contributions to the poetry of ideas.

RENÉE CLAIR, Project Manager 

"Women and Science" 

UNESCO Division of Basic and 

Engineering Sciences 

Women scientists: still pionneers 

When I visited Marianne Grunberg-Manago in 1997 at the 

Institute of Physicochemical Biology, she suddenly asked 

her secretary, "How many men and how many women do 

we have working in the lab?" She had never asked herself 

this question, she added. 

Another recent example: 2005 has been designated World 

Year of Physics. At the conference to launch this celebration, 

held at UNESCO on January 13 – 15, 2005, there was not a 

single woman at the opening session or the closing session. 

There was only one woman plenary speaker, Myriam 

Sarachik, our 2005 Laureate for North America, out of a 

total of 11 speakers. What happened to the 

recommendations that came out of the "Women in Physics" 

Conference in Paris in 2002, which brought together more 

than 300 scientists from 65 countries? 

Often women scientists are told they are too impatient. They 

are in the same situation as other women and should thus 

wait for the irresistible movement of women onto the public 

scene to establish the balance between men and women in 

the field of science. Indeed, it is argued, look at the 

undeniable progress that has been made in just two 

generations. More and more women are choosing scientific 

careers. So women should be patient. However, although 

the progress made thus far is encouraging, much remains 

to be done. The situation differs depending on the scientific 

discipline and the country, yet everywhere the "glass 

ceiling" remains very solid. 

A BIT OF HISTORY 

Let us remember the pioneers: Hypatia of Alexandria 

(around 370 - 415) was a mathematician and philosopher. 

She studied science, philosophy and eloquence in Athens. 



She was interested in astronomy and philosophy. She wrote 

commentaries on the "Arithmetica" of Diophantus, the 

"Conics" of Apollonius of Perga, and the "Tables" of 

Ptolemy, one of the greatest Greek geometers. She is 

sometimes credited with the invention of both the 

hydroscope and the astrolabe. In 415, she was killed in the 

streets by fanatical Christians who accused her of standing 

in the way of a reconciliation between Cyril the Patriarch of 

Alexandria and the Prefect Orest. 

In France, the Revolution did not offer better roles to 

women. The first schools for girls opened in 1830. The 

French mathematician Sophie Germain (1776-1831) had to 

use the pseudonym Antoine Auguste Le Blanc to 

correspond with the mathematicians of her time, including 

Lagrange and Gauss. Her death certificate identifies her not 

as a mathematician but as a rentière, someone of 

independent or private means. 

The first woman to pass the French baccalaureate exam, 

Julie Daubie, received her diploma in 1861. 

Closer to today, after completing her thesis in 1907 in 

Germany, Emmy Noether (1882-1935), a mathematician, 

was allowed to give classes at the university thanks to the 

support of mathematician David Hilbert, but she had to 

teach under Hilbert's pseudonym and was not paid. She was 

expelled from the University in 1933 by the Nazis and took 

refuge at the University of Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania She 

was later able to teach, finally, at the prestigious Institute for 

Advanced Study in Princeton. 

Marie Curie was awarded two Nobel Prizes: the first in 

physics, in 1903, for her work on radioactivity, and the 

second in chemistry, in 1911, for the discovery of Polonium. 

And yet the French Academy of Sciences refused to admit 

her. Irène Joliot-Curie, her daughter, also won a Nobel Prize 

in Chemistry, in 1935, for her work on artificial radioactivity, 

and was likewise refused admission to this famous 

assembly of French scientists. It was not until 1988 that the 

Academy of Sciences accepted its first woman member, 

Marie-Anne Bouchiat, and only in 1995 did another woman, 

Marianne Grunberg-Manago, become its first female 

president.

STATISTICS THAT SPEAK OF INEQUALITY 

In France, in 2004, of the 190 members of the Academy of 

Sciences, only 14 were women (two of them, Pascale 

Cossart and Christine Petit, received the L’ORÉAL- 

UNESCO Award), with an encouraging sign nonetheless: 

the high proportion of women elected in 2004 (5 of 24 new 

members). In 1999, the situation was as follows in various 

countries: in the United States, 118 women out of the 

1,904 members of the National Academy of Sciences; in 

the Netherlands, one woman of the 237 members of the 

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; in the 

United Kingdom, 43 women of the 1,185 members of the 

Royal Society of London. 

Of the 503 Nobel Prizes in science attributed between 

1901 and 2004, two in physics, three in chemistry, and 

seven in physiology or medicine were awarded to women, 

including two to Marie Curie. The most recent was given 

in 2004 to Linda Buck (and Richard Axel) for their work on 

how the olfactory system works. 

No woman has ever received the Fields Medal, the highest 

distinction in mathematics, likened to the Nobel Prize. 

According to a study conducted in 2004, at the global 

scale, in over 50% of countries women represent more 

than 55% of all students completing the first two years of 

university, and in over 60% of countries, women represent 

less than 45% of graduates at this level in scientific 

disciplines. In over half the countries, women represent 

less than 35% of researchers. In private research, in 35 

countries that are developed or in transition, the 

difference between men and women is significant: women 

represent just 10% of researchers in Japan and nearly 

50% in Argentina, with an average of 30%. 

In the United States, women college graduates in science 

and engineering earn 35% less than their male 

counterparts. They earn 26% less at the doctoral level. 



REASONS THAT ARE CULTURAL, ECONOMIC, 

AND POLITICAL 

The Gago Report, published in 2004, is based on an 

investigation carried out in 21 countries among pupils 

who are around 15 years old, at the end of secondary 

school. When they were asked, "Would you like to become 

a scientist?" most students in developed countries said 

no, with girls being much less inclined toward a scientific 

career than boys. The largest difference between girls and 

boys was observed in Japan, and the smallest difference 

in Ireland. What does this survey tell us? That science 

does not attract young people as much as it used to, and 

that girls are less interested in science than boys. It is true 

that too often the lives of women scientists are depicted in 

unappealing terms, with women being torn between their 

family obligations and their professional lives. Tests have 

shown that in anticipation of such a future situation, young 

women turn away from scientific studies. Women must be 

especially solid and determined to choose a profession 

that is known mainly for its competitiveness. Let us 

remember what Eleanor Roosevelt said: "No one can 

make you feel inferior without your consent." 

In a number of developing countries, women's access to 

education and, in particular, access to scientific education 

remains difficult insofar as their role in social and 

economic life remains so essential: managing the 

production of consumer goods, exclusive responsibility 

for numerous children, and for the entire family. The 

poorer a country is, the heavier the burden on women: in 

proportional terms, less than half as many women obtain 

a bachelor's degree in science in Ghana as in Europe; 

three times fewer earn a doctoral degree. And yet the 

Gago Report, mentioned above, shows that most students 

in developing countries want to become scientists, and 

that the difference between girls and boys is nearly 

nonexistent for Ghana and Uganda. 

•••

Several Latin American countries have adopted an 

approach promoting equality in schooling, including in 

higher education. This is one of the factors – along with 

the fact that men tend to abandon this field for better paid 

jobs elsewhere – that could explain the high percentage of 

women scientists in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. 

So are women scientists impatient? No, but they are 

resolute in their desire to win recognition for their rights 

and their talents in spite of prejudice, and determined to 

change people's mentalities, not only to defend their 

interests but also because they believe in the vital 

importance of science in culture and development. Over 

the last 30 years, the major global conferences have all 

declared that there will be no sustainable development 

without the commitment of everyone, men and women, to 

promote science as a means of progress. 

L’UNESCO and L’ORÉAL have joined forces to pay homage 

to the most talented women scientists. They grow in 

number with each year and today represent a powerful 

network that should give rise to far-reaching actions in 

schools, in laboratories and in the forums for debate and 

decision-making where the future of science is being 

played out. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES 

• EMBO special meeting: the glass ceiling for Women in 

the Life Sciences 

http://www.embo.org/projects/women/meeting.html 

• “ETAN Report on Women and Science: Science policies 

in the European Union: Promoting excellence through 

mainstreaming gender equality, 2000” 

http://www.cordis.lu/improving/women/documents.htm 

• SHE FIGURES 2003 Report of the European 

Commission 

http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/research/sciencessociety/women/ 



• GREENFIELD Report on Women in Science, 

Engineering and Technology 

http://www.set4women.gov.uk/set4women/research/gre 

enfield-reportpdf 

• ENWISE Report on the situation of women scientists in 

Eastern Europe 

www.eurosfaire.prd.fr/news/EpAVFuyZFyTuHtlYPl.html 

• National Policies on Women and Science in Europe, by 

the Helsinki Group on Women in Science, European 

Commission, March 2002 

http://www.cordis.lu/improving/women/documents.htm 

• EUROSTAT “statistics in brief,” Section: “Women, 

Science and Technology” 

• “Why Gender, Science and Technology?” 

GST Gateway - Gender Advisory Board 

http://gstgateway.wigsat.org/gen/whygst.html 

• “From scarcity to visibility: gender differences in the 

careers of doctoral scientists and engineers - 

summary” - National Academies Press web site 

http://books.nap.edu/books/N1000366/html/8.html 

• Reports of the six UNESCO Regional Forums “Women, 

science and Technology” 

http://www.unesco.org/science/wcs/meetings/list.htm 

• “Women and Science: a global policy in search of 

evidence?” Science and Technology Indicators 

Conference 2004 - UNESCO 

http://conference.cwts.nl/Downloads/ppt/116_Ellis.pdf 

• “Increasing Human Resources for Science and 

Technology in Europe,” José Maria Gago, Report 

presented at the EC Conference, 2 April 2004, 192 p 

europa.eu.int/comm/research/conferences/2004/sciprof/ 

publications_en.html 

• Women in Science”: the IUPAP International 

Conference on Women in Physics, Paris, France, 2002 

http://www.cbpf.br\~women-physics

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