Italian astronomers are nothing new. Think of Galileo Galilie, who lived 1564 to 1592, and proved Copernicus’s theory that the earth revolves around the sun—not the other way around.
Now think of Shana Tribiano, BMCC Professor of Physics and Astronomy, who was honored by the 12th Annual Italian Heritage & Culture Celebration, October 20 at City Hall.
The event paid tribute to two historical figures, Galileo and early 20th-Century Italian American Giuseppe Petrosino, as well as two contemporary Italian Americans, Tribiano and Scientific American Editor-in-Chief, Mariette Dichristina-Gerosa.
The galaxy expands
Tribiano, a Hayden Associate at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium, researches starburst galaxies, those producing up to tens of thousands of stars a year.
The field of astronomy is producing another kind of star at a rapid rate, as young women join the science of studying celestial bodies and the universe as a whole. “Try to connect to as many other women astronomers as you can,” Tribiano advises BMCC women students interested in the field.
Those connections are getting easier to make. According to the American Astronomy Association, between 1980 and 1990, the number of women astronomers more than doubled—and today, about a third of the astronomers in the United States are women.
Tribiano advises young women interested in the field to choose a higher learning route that supports them. “There are more and more communities that have a balanced ratio of men to women, than when I went through school,” Tribiano says. “It varies a lot. Some schools will have excellent programs favorable to a balanced distribution, and other schools not— so do research into where you’re heading.”
Investigating the universe—and speaking out
The Italian Heritage & Culture Celebration, co-sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, also honored Giuseppe Petrosino, an Italian American immigrant who joined the New York Police Department in 1883 and created strategies for fighting organized crime that are still in use today.
Honoree Mariette Dichristina-Gerosa,acting Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American magazine, spoke of the “drive to find answers to our essential questions,” that links Galileo—whose findings evoked the wrath of the Spanish Inquisition and who was on house arrest the last nine years of his life—and Petrosino, whose investigations into organized crime led to his assassination in 1909.
While their methods of exploration varied, each man sought the truth, and spoke out on the truth, at any cost.
Discovering the unknown
Research and information-sharing techniques have radically evolved from Galileo’s time to Petrosino’s, to Tribiano’s, and those of other scientists today.
“In terms of astronomy I think nowadays a lot of excitement funnels through cable television, so shows that are on Discovery Channel, the History Channel, I would say are making the class and the material more accessible,” says Tribiano, who screens videos to introduce concepts in her astronomy class at BMCC.
Would she recommend that students—women or men—pursue a career in astronomy, which would mean going beyond an associate’s degree in science at BMCC, to a bachelor’s degree and eventual PhD? Tribiano doesn’t sugar-coat the truth.
“Your choices are generally being a professor—or the even less commonly available job would be working as a research scientist, working for a school or for the government—but the answer really lies in the decisions of what jobs are made and where funding goes, and in that way, your guess about that future is as good as mine.”
