CONTENTS - L'Oréal

Starting from scratch
L’ORÉAL-UNESCO FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE 2005
L’ORÉAL-UNESCO AWARDS 2005: The Laureates
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.”