Schools : Science & Music ? Yes ! Let's talk Alexander Borodin ! Resources

Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin

credits: Drawing by Natalia Mikhaylenko

https://www.rbth.com/arts/

"Know more as a musician than a scientist, Alexander Borodin was a friend and colleague to many famous scientists of the 19th century. Sometimes those just outside the limelight have their stories to tell."

Eva Amsen

Although composer Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) is best known for writing one of the best Russian operas, Prince Igor, he was also a renowned scientist and chemist. 

In fact, many Russian composers were not only composers. Mussorgsky was a militarist. Rimsky-Korsakov was a sailor.

The son of a Georgian prince, Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a sickly child who went on to create a powerful legacy in two different fields. 

Alexander Borodin

https://en.wikipedia.org/

Born in St. Petersburg on this day in 1833, Borodin showed an early aptitude for science, languages, and music. 

While mastering German, French, and English, he began studying flute at age eight and later learned the violin and violoncello. 

By the age of 13 he’d already composed a piece for flute and piano, nevertheless, he considered music to be a hobby while his main focus was in the field of science.

Google Doodle:

Google Doodle Alexander Borodin’s 185th Birthday

https://www.google.com/doodles/

Today, 12 November Google celebrates the 185th birthday with an interactive Doodle. Borodin, the boy who grew up to become both a distinguished chemist and one of Russia’s greatest classical composers.

He was a Russian Romantic composer who was a doctor and chemist by profession and made important early contributions to the field of organic chemistry. 

Although he is better known today as a composer, during his lifetime, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only pursuing music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill. 

The Five

https://en.wikipedia.org/

• Borodin, the composer:

Alexander Borodin, a Russian chemist and composer, was born Nov. 12, 1833.  Most people, if they have heard of Borodin at all, know him as a composer of symphonic poems, such as The Steppes of Central  Asia, or as an opera composer and creator of the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor opera.

Musically, he was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as The Mighty Handful, a group dedicated to producing a uniquely Russian kind of classical music, rather than imitating earlier Western European models.

The group of five Russian composers: César Cui, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov who in the 1860s banded together in an attempt to create a truly national school of Russian music, free of the stifling influence of Italian opera, German lieder, and other western European forms. 

Borodin is best known for his two symphonies - his third was unfinished, interrupted by his early death; his two string quartets, the tone poem and his opera Prince Igor, also unfinished – it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov.

Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet (1953). .

With three Tony Awards (including Best Musical), a television version and an MGM smash film, Kismet is one of the most renowned musicals to grace the Great White Way. Kismet has proven a winner with audiences time and again, thanks to its exotic setting, appealing characters and wry sense of humor... not to mention a lush score that is adapted from the soaring melodies of Alexander Borodin.

Alexander Borodin

https://www.famousscientists.org/

Portrait of composer and chemist Aleksander Porfirievich Borodin

by Ilya Repin

https://commons.wikimedia.org/

• Borodin, the scientist:

In fact, by profession, Borodin was a medically-trained organic chemist, and a very good one.  He taught at the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg.  

Modern organic chemists recognize him as the co-discoverer of the aldol reaction, which is used to build complex carbon compounds, and for his work in organic synthesis.  He was also instrumental is setting up the first medical school for women in St. Petersburg, where he himself taught for some years.

At 17, Borodin began his studies at St Petersburg’s Medico-Surgical Academy, delving into botany, zoology, anatomy, and crystallography. Soon specialized in organic chemistry, earning his doctorate in 1858. 

St. Petersburg. Imperial Academy of Medical and Surgical (Military Medical)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/

He went on to become a professor at his alma mater, conducting research on benzene derivatives and organic synthesis, and the discovery of the aldol reaction. 

He’s also remembered as a champion of women’s rights, equal opportunity. He was of the opinion that there should be equality of education and was convinced that women would make good doctors. 

Medicina Ars Nobilissima

https://en.wikipedia.org/

Having founded the Women’s Medical School in St. Petersburg, where he taught for many years. The project of which Borodin was most proud. 

On his burial casket there is a silver plate from his female students which reads: "To the Founder, Protector and Defender of the School of Medicine for Women."

Alexander Borodin

https://www.famousscientists.org/

Still, the music kept calling him. As a chemist, he is best known for his work in organic synthesis, including being among the first chemists to demonstrate nucleophilic substitution, as well as being the co-discoverer of the aldol reaction.

credits: The Knowledge Review

Education : 

"Music offers a bundle of advantages for the educational and overall development of students. Training in music helps students develop language and reasoning. Early musical training helps develop the areas of brain related to language and reasoning. Music can help develop the left side of our brain, and songs can help in imprinting information on our minds."

Music also has the potential to achieve social and psychological transformation of children and young people. Their sensibility will be accurate. 

We must never waste such an opportunity as teachers! Captivating the major interests of our students to Music.

Some teachers love Music and feel comfortable to speak about Music in school curricula.

So, there's Alexander Borodin to include into your school curriculum. 

Displaying the Doodle could be an interesting approach to understand the feelings of some of your students about classical music. 

I'm sure you will discover some gifted kids. You can guide them to continue to study Music in Higher Education.

And science? See? Some good students in science will discover that they can do both. Music and science.

 

Dr Frances H. Arnold Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/

Borodin has been a precursor on women and girls in science education. Wow! In the 19th century? 

Over the last years, the global community has made a  great effort to inspire and engage women and girls in science. But the gap is still a problem.

Girls do as well as boys in science, maths, STEM, at school but many more boys go on to further study science, technology, engineering and medicine.

Remember to include Nobel Prize Nobel in Chemistry 2018 with one half to Frances H. Arnold. 

Resources: Book

Alexander Borodin

Composer, Scientist, Educator

Williem Vijvers

via ABC The American Book Center

https://abc.nl/

This book will be valuable to musicologists and historians of science alike. It should appeal to a wider audience of music lovers and people interested in Russian history.

The author is a chemist and worked as a specialist in scientific and patent information. Additionally, he studied music and graduated in Russian studies. He published several articles in these fields.

Other resources:

Please visit my posts on Beethoven, Grieg, Debussy among others.

Alexander Borodin: A Composer Among Chemists

Alexander Borodin, composer and scientist

http://www.lateralmag.com/articles/

Some thoughts: 

All of your lessons plans must be thought to meet specific area and curricular requirements, but also enrich students experience. 

For example, start by choosing the subject areas such as Core Curriculum (Language, Science, Music, Digital Literacy) and of course a Media Art | Music cross-curricular project.

Music Art| Project in Vocational education: 

Based on the curricular strand to be focused on in conjunction with students needs and any other specific classroom requirements, the art form and a specially trained LTTA (Learning Trough the Arts) are selected. 

Invite LTTA artists to collaborate with you in partnership to develop customized arts-infused lesson plans.

G-Souto 

12.11.2018

update 12.11.2020
Copyright © 2020G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Schools : Science & Music ? Yes, Alexander Borodin : resources by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Women in Science : Maria Gaetana Agnesi & Dorothy Hodgkin

Google Doodle Maria Gaetana Agnesi's 296th birtday

http://www.google.com/doodles/

Four days after Dorothy Hodgkin, a British chemist, Google's doodle, celebrates the 296th birthday of the Italian mathematician and philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi. The Doodle showsthe Witch of Agnesi curve. 

The mathematical curve named after her is achieved by drawing a line from the source through the circle of radius.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

credits: Alamy Stock Photo

https://www.alamy.com/

Their real-life uses were only fully recognised in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, by physicists and mathematicians working with x-rays, optical lines, and electrical circuits.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi:

Gaetana Agnesi, born on 16 May 1718, to a wealthy and literate Milanese silk merchant, Agnesi was recognised as a child prodigy and became interested in mathematics and several modern languages, as well as Latin, Greek, Hebrew.

Propositiones philosophicae or “Propositions of Philosophy”, a series of essays on natural philosophy and history based on her discussions before such gatherings, was published in 1738.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

http://image1.findagrave.com/

At an early age she composed and delivered an hour-long speech in Latin to some of the most distinguished intellectuals of the time on the subject of women’s right to be educated. Wow ! That's interesting if we think she lived in the 18th century.

Some decades before Leopold Mozart dragged his young son Wolfgang Mozartto any prince or archbishop who had half a chance of offering a decent appointment, a Milanese girl with a genius intellect was made the center of an ongoing academic circus routine by her status-hunting father.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3b09774)

https://www.britannica.com/

Agnesi is believed to be the first woman in the west to gain recognition as a mathematician, at a time when most Europeans did not see the value of education for women.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi, remembered today only for a curve, the Witch of Agnesi, which shows up in the margins of introductory calculus texts from time to time, and which she didn’t actually discover.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi

https://matematica.unibo.it/

Agnesi best-known work, Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana, or the Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth, explored algebra and analysis (two volumes). In it she discusses the algebraic curve, now known as the witch of Agnesi.

After her father’s death, she apparently lost all interest in scientific work and turned to religion and devoted the last four decades of her life to studying theology and to charitable work, taking charge of a home for the poor and infirm in 1771.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi stamp

Italia, 2018

https://www.wnsstamps.post/

For the remaining fifty years of her life, she gave comfort to the mentally ill and elderly from 1771, and hunted the streets for children to be brought to her catechism class. The woman who had been regarded as one of the greatest minds of Italy, consulted from every corner of Europe for her advice on matters mathematical and philosophical, died unremarked on 9 January 1799.


Dorothy Hodgkin:

Google Doodle Dorothy Hogkin's 104th birthday

http://www.google.com/doodles/

On Monday, 12th May, Google Doodle celebrated Dorothy Hodgkin's 104th birthday, the British chemist.

Dorothy Hodgkin

credits: : Harold Clements / Freelancer

Hodgkin was the third woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1964) which she won for her discovery of the structure of vitamin B12 in 1964.

Dorothy Hodgkin and her husband Thomas at the Nobel ball in 1964 

© The Hodgkin Family

She is the only British woman to have won the prize to date. Born in Cairo on May 12, 1910 to English parents, Hodgkin went on to study chemistry at the University of Oxford's Somerville College, before going on to earn her PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin honored  postage stamp 

http://www.chemheritage.org/

The biochemist was best known as a pioneer in the advancement of the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three-dimensional structure of biomolecules.

Dorothy Hodgkin

https://www.nobelprize.org/

Hodgkin's love of her work was clear, and she was quoted as saying: 

"I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals".

She was also know for her contribution to the discovery of the structure of insulin and penicillin.

She returned to Oxford in 1934 and in 1936 was appointed Somerville's first fellow and tutor in chemistry – a post which she held until 1977.

Dorothy Hodgkin a life

by Georgina Ferry

https://www.amazon.com/

She was the chair of the Pugwash Conference from 1976 to 1988, an organization inspired by a manifesto by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell that works to reduce harm and conflict caused by scientific discoveries (like nuclear weapons.)

Girls in science

credits: unknown

Education:

No doubt! Google loves women in science. Ada Lovelace, Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Grace Hoper, Dorothy Hodgkin and today Gaetana Agnesi. And of course, women in Humanities as Hannah Arendt, Catherine Mansfield, Simone de Beauvoir among others.

The discussion of a better understanding of the role of the girls and young women dimension in many different STEM areas of study, and how these findings can lead to new ideas and new markets for girls and women in science knowledge is on the news every day.

This must begin early in school where girls must be encouraged to access to science and technology. 

Girls in Science

via Cambridge Assessment

The aim is to encourage creativity in the field of science and new technologies and highlight the importance of developing innovative skills at an early age.

However I read on The Guardian, this week, an interesting article : Women in technology : no progress on inequality for 10 years says:

" A report by the research firm Gartner on chief information officers (CIOs) and the challenges they face in the industry has shown that the percentage of women taking the role has remained largely static at 14% since 2004, when the firm started gender analysis.

The situation in the EU is also worse than developing nations and the US, where the proportion of women in leadership roles is higher. Gartner’s data showed women occupied 11.2% of technology leadership roles in Europe, the Middle East and Africa compared with 18.1% in North America, 13.4% in Latin America and 11.5% in Asia."

Samuel Gibbs, Technology

Some thoughts:

All the initiatives trying to change this situation are welcome. And teachers have an important role on it by fighting inequality for girls in science.

You can begin to include Doodles of women in science into school curriculum to motivate girls. 

G-S 

16.05.2014

Copyright © 2014G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Women in Science : Google doodles at school by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.