WEBVTT - Ruby Payne-Scott 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.000 of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.720 Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I am still 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.520 working through my list. I think we both are forever. 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.920 I mean, I'm never gonna get through it, but I'm 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:26.880 trying to refer back to it more and more as 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.720 I plan episodes. The woman that we're talking about today 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.320 has been on my list for a very long time. 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:36.800 I think she might have even been a listener request, 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:41.720 but that long time means I have lost said requests. 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:44.519 So if you are the person who suggested her to me, 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.040 I have a vague memory that it was after our 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.080 Joan Curran episode that someone recommended her, but I don't remember. 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.280 But if you're the person that recommended her, apologies, also 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:58.360 thank you. This is also a nice bit of Australian history. 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:01.800 Before we get into it, I do want to mention, 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.880 just as a heads up, there is a brief discussion 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:10.919 of miscarriage and also some discussion of Alzheimer's and dementia 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:14.120 towards the end, So if those are troubling for you, 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.679 you know, maybe not this one. But I am so 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:21.120 excited to talk about Ruby Payne Scott because she is 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:24.920 often called a pioneer in radio astronomy, which she was, 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.720 but she was also a pioneer in advocating for women's rights, 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.479 and she was clearly brilliant, but her work was cut 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.760 short simply by her desire to have a spouse and 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:39.959 a family. Ruby Violet Pain Scott was born on May 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:44.319 twenty eighth, nineteen twelve, in South Grafton, New South Wales, Australia. 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:47.720 That's a little more than six hundred kilometers or three 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:50.600 hundred and seventy five miles north of Sydney, along the 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:55.600 country's east coast. Her parents were Cyril Herman and Amy 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:59.800 Sarah Neil Payne Scott. Cyril was an accountant and had 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.400 been born in London. Amy was born in Sydney. Sometime 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.400 in the early nineteen twenties, the family moved to Sydney 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.400 and Ruby attended the Cleveland Street School and she went 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.000 to Fort Street High School and when she graduated at sixteen, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.520 she enrolled at the University of Sydney. She earned her 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:21.440 Bachelor of Science degree in nineteen thirty three with honors 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:25.680 in physics and math, and Ruby next pursued a master's 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:29.720 degree with several scholarships, those who the Dias Thomas Scholarship 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.080 for Physics, the Walter Burfett Scholarship for Physics, and the 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:37.040 Norbert Quirk Prize for Mathematics. And while working on her 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.480 master's degree, Ruby moved into the role of assistant physicist 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.920 in cancer research. This was part of the University of 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:49.040 Sydney's Cancer Research Committee, and while cancer research might sound 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.840 like a departure from her physics and math background, it 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:56.280 really wasn't. She was focused on newly developed radiation treatments 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.720 for cancer. In nineteen thirty six, she finished her master's 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.679 deg with a thesis on wavelength distribution of the scattered 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.440 radiation in a medium traversed by a beam of X 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:10.840 or gamma rays. For the next two years she stayed 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:15.119 at the Cancer Research Institute as a physicist. This part 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:17.440 of her life doesn't get talked about all that much, 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.480 But there's an interesting news article I found that appeared 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.960 in various forms in the US in the spring of 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.560 that year that pain Scott received her master's degree, and 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:30.880 it talked about some of her research. One version of 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.840 it appears in the four Worth Star Telegram titled Magnetism 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:38.560 and Life, and it reads in its entirety quote, although 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.840 electricity and magnetism are inextricably mingled, if not one force, 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:47.720 and electricity undeniably is essential to life, vital processes are 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:51.520 affected little, if at all, by magnetism. According to doctors 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.720 Ruby pain Scott and William H. Love of the Cancer 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:59.880 Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney, Australia, they cultivated 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:03.960 it test tubes the living cells from chick embryos. Some 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.120 of these they grew in a magnetic field five thousand 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:10.440 times as powerful as that of the Earth. Others they 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:14.520 grew under normal conditions. They reasoned, if the weak field 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.479 of the Earth produces any effect on living things, the 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.159 powerful field should increase the effect to an observable extent. 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:25.279 They found that the chromosomes in the magnetically tested cells 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.320 showed no changes from normal. She might have stayed in 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.520 cancer research longer, but her project ended. There wasn't another 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:38.120 opening at the institute. Though she really had excelled academically, 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.680 she just wasn't met with a lot of options when 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:44.480 she finished her graduate studies and her research work, so 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:47.240 she got a teaching certificate and took a job at 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:51.320 the Woodlands Church of England Grammar School. Shouldn't stay in 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.360 teaching though. Ruby took a job at Amalgamated Wireless Australia 0:04:55.400 --> 0:05:00.359 as a librarian, editing the company's internal journal, but was 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.440 soon working on research projects in the standards lab. Ruby 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:09.600 was trying to solve problems with existing receiver designs. Amalgamated 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.080 Wireless Australia was not much older than Ruby was. It 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:17.280 was founded as Australasian Wireless Limited three years before she 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.200 was born in nineteen oh nine, as a telegraph company. 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.800 In the nineteen teens, the company had been given exclusive 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:27.840 rights to operate Australia's coastal network of maritime radio stations. 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.080 During World War One, it had been instrumental in the 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.479 passage of information about the war back and forth between 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:38.760 Britain and Australia. After the war, the Australian government became 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.800 the company's majority shareholder, and by the time Ruby started 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:47.159 working for AWA, the company had established global communications networks 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:51.320 and had transmitted the first newsreel picture from Sydney to London. 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.240 So for someone interested in radio technology, it was probably 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.760 a great place to be in nineteen forty one. Because 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:03.760 many of Australia's physicists were engaged with wartime activities, Ruby 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.719 was able to get a job with the CSIR, the 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:10.560 Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. She was part of 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:14.039 a group of AWA engineers who were hired by the 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:18.440 CSIR to work in their division of Radiophysics. She wasn't 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.799 the only woman on the scientific staff. Another woman named 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.920 Joan Freeman was also brought on board at the same time. Yeah, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.440 there are also a couple of other women that came 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.440 into the group at various times, but those two are 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.839 the ones that get mentioned the most. The CSIR was 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.440 founded in nineteen sixteen to create a national laboratory for 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.159 Australia that would use science to bolster the country's mining, 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:46.760 agriculture and manufacturing efforts. Under the name Advisory Council of 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:51.160 Science and Industry. The organization started its first research project 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:55.159 by studying pests that had invaded the Prickly Payer and 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.839 it changed to the CSIR in nineteen twenty six and 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.760 then at the onset of World War Two, the umbrella 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:05.760 of projects that conducted widen to include research that would 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.799 help the Australian defense forces, and that is how Ruby 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:11.880 Payne Scott was brought in. Ruby had been brought on 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:15.000 as a probationary employee, and a few months into her 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:19.160 time at the CSIR, her supervisor, Edward George Bowen, who 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.200 went by the nickname Taffy, wrote an assessment of her. 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:31.280 According to CSIRO's account, that memo read quote, well, she's 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.880 a bit loud, and we don't think she's quite what 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.920 we want, and she may be a bit unstable, but 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.720 will let her continue and see how she works out. 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.560 That kind of cracks me up and also makes me angry. 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.480 That I think is the thing that made me say 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:50.200 out loud something as I was reading this over for 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:55.960 the first time. So this move to CSIR was intellectually 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.080 really a great fit for Payne Scott. She was finally 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.960 doing work that she can really dig into and use 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:06.480 her education and her training, and she definitely advanced science 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.000 in her time there. Because the Division of Radiophysics was 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:14.400 working on radar as a new defensive weapon. Ruby's area 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.960 of research looked at small signal visibility on radar displays, 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.520 and she also worked on receiver noise factors and how 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.240 they could accurately be measured. She also was the go 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:28.840 to expert on the planned position indicator system that other 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.040 scientists had developed in the UK, and it was through 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.080 the work of the team that Ruby was on that 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.840 radar devices were developed that were used by Australian and 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:42.679 US forces in the South Pacific. Through the noise measurement research, 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:47.360 pain Scott started working with another physicist, Joseph lad Palsey. 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:51.920 Posey had, like Ruby, been recruited into the CSIR to 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.400 work on radar technology and get its manufacture up and running. 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:58.920 Posey had seen a report that indicated that there were 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:03.160 bursts of staff that were altering radar's effectiveness. Very briefly, 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:06.839 he suspected that they were coming from somewhere other than 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:10.560 the Earth. Once World War Two ended, Ruby stayed with 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:14.160 the CSIR, working with Posey and pivoting to work in 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:18.000 the new field of radio astronomy. Their team was one 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:20.600 of only two in the world at the time examining 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.400 what they called cosmic static. Was that stuff that Posey 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.880 had seen. The report about this team pinpointed the origin 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:32.600 point of various instances of cosmic static, including the Sun 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:37.920 and other heavenly bodies. Pain Scott discovered or was part 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.840 of a team that discovered three categories of solar bursts 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.160 which came from the corona of the Sun in the 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.679 course of just a few years. These were categorized at 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.000 the time as type one, Type two, and type three bursts, 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.319 and those classifications were based on the h alpha spectrum, 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:59.160 referring to a visible spectral line of red in the 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:05.040 hydrogen attic. This is different from modern classification, which bases 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:09.760 the divisions on peak flux of electromagnetic radiation. Pain Scott 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.800 and Posey published a paper in Nature in early nineteen 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:16.560 forty six explaining that solar bursts were not visible like 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:19.560 solar flares, and that they had figured out how to 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:24.280 detect and monitor them using radio waves. We'll talk about 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.560 some of the challenges that Ruby pain Scott experienced from 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:30.760 the beginning of her career at CSIR right after we 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:43.480 pause for a sponsor break. Although she was pretty much 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.240 by everyone's account, doing really great work, Ruby's time at 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:51.360 the CSIR wasn't exactly easy. She often got in trouble 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.960 for silly things like wearing shorts instead of a skirt, 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.280 and when she was called into a meeting about this 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:00.640 clothing choice, she stated, quote, well, this is absurd we're 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:04.440 climbing up on ladders, up on aerials every day. I'm 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:06.400 not going up on a ladder with a skirt on. 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.959 The shorts are much better at tire for us, and 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:12.520 she was not afraid to speak her mind on just 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:16.080 about any topic that came up. She wanted women to 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:19.160 be treated equally at work and pointed out when they weren't. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.600 She talked politics with her colleagues and argued with them 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:27.080 about it. Despite problems with the organization's leadership, Ruby was 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.880 promoted in nineteen forty four into the position of research Officer. 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.720 That was also the year that she and Posey made 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:38.040 their first radio astronomy observations from the RPL building using 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:42.199 radar equipment at ten centimeters. That means they were detecting 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.400 wavelengths of ten centimeters, which today would be known as 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.600 the S band. The idea of quantifying the light in 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.320 the sky mathematically was really new, and Ruby, Payne Scott, 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.760 and the team at the Radio Physics Lab were leaders 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.520 in the field. Ruby was a participating author on nine 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.240 Publishers works in the years from nineteen forty five to 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:06.160 nineteen fifty two, and the department overall published sixty two 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:11.000 papers in the rapidly expanding field of radio astronomy. Something 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.319 else happened in nineteen forty four that would have ended 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:18.400 Ruby's career had she not kept it a secret. And 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.920 if you're imagining that, maybe she committed a crime or 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.839 did something really horrifying. No, she got married on September 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:29.840 eighth of that year. Ruby's new husband, William Holman Hall, 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.760 who was a telephone technician, supported her work, but it 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.480 was expected that women would resign when they got married, 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:41.880 and that wasn't just a social convention. As a public servant, 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.359 she was, according to the rules of that field, supposed 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:49.280 to resign when she got married. So Ruby, who had 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.400 no interest in ending her career, kept her marriage secret 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.800 to avoid having to leave her. Colleagues, who knew about 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:59.959 it helped her do so. Initially, Ruby had just let 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.360 people think that she and Bill were living together, which was, 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:08.000 of course quite bold in the nineteen forties. Many biographical 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.640 accounts I read of her described as using the old 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:15.600 school phrase living in sin. Most women would not want 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.439 anyone to think that they were just living with a man, 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:20.720 because of the social stigma that it would have invited. 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:23.760 But Ruby kind of didn't care or She saw that 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.760 as preferable to disclosing her married status and losing her job. 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.080 But the truth did come out among her colleagues after 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.079 a couple of years. Even once the people in her 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:37.200 department knew about the couple, though they just chose not 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.000 to say anything to the bureaucratic heads of the organization. 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:45.240 According to her colleague Joan Freeman, quote, all her radiophysics friends, 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.200 having developed a strong affection for Ruby as well as 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:52.239 respect for her scientific abilities, greeted the story with hilarity 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:57.319 and sympathized with her attitude. Although they had very different personalities, 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.640 Ruby and Bill seem like they were a great match. 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:03.480 Bill was just a little older than Ruby. Born on 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.240 August twenty second, nineteen eleven in Inveral, New South Wales, 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.760 to a Scottish mother and an English father. Bill and 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.200 Ruby often went bushwhacking together. They actually met through the 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:18.200 Sydney Bushwalkers Club several years before they married. They shared 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:22.040 that hobby together for years. He treated her as an equal, 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:24.680 and Ruby had helped him with the mathematics he had 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.320 to learn to pass his exam to get his telephone 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:31.280 mechanic license. Bill wanted her to keep doing the work 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:36.520 that she found so fulfilling. In nineteen forty six, John G. Bolton, 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:39.360 who had served in the British Navy, moved from his 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:42.720 military career to become the new head of the Radiophysics 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:47.240 Lab at CSIR. He and Ruby pain Scott did not 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.760 hit it off, and then when Joseph Posey, who she 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.000 had a great working relationship with, went overseas for a 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.840 year for research, both Ruby and Bolton tried to work 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.800 at the same site at Dover Heights. That's a coastal 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.560 area just east of Sydney. It was where the inferometer 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.200 testing that she had been doing had started, so it 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.760 would make sense that pain Scott would continue taking readings there, 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:14.760 but she and Bolton fought constantly, and because he ranked 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:18.080 higher than she did, Ruby ended up having to move 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.359 to another site. Sometimes this is described as an exile. 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:26.120 While at that other site, which was Hornsby's Station, one 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.320 of the technologies that Ruby helped to develop in her 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.400 time at the Radiophysics Lab was an interferometer that could 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.560 sweep the sky rapidly more than two dozen times a second. 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:41.560 Interferometers work by combining multiple sources of light to make 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:46.040 an interference pattern for analysis. The one pain Scott worked 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.840 on could rapidly identify radio wave formations. They could be 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:53.200 examined more closely, and it made it possible to use 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.240 the collected images of the Sun to make a movie 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.720 that showed solar bursts happening. This is a hugely significant thing, 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:05.520 and it enabled scientists to more deeply understand space emissions. 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:10.680 She's credited by biographer W. M. Goss with taking quote 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:15.480 the first ever interferometric measurements in radio astronomy. Was part 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:19.560 of the work on her sweptlope interferometer. She also developed 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:23.280 the mathematical concept that would later lead to the aperture 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:28.320 synthesis system that's been used ever since. In simple terms, 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:33.160 aperture synthesis is the use of multiple antennas to simultaneously 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:37.680 monitor an astronomical source. The signals are then mixed or 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:42.320 combined to create a greater sized sample. Yeah, if you 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.320 are familiar with the work of things like the very 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.040 large array, that's how they work. In nineteen forty nine, 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:52.400 Ruby was involved in a controversy at work. During the war, 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.520 she and Joan Freeman and the other women on staff 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.160 were paid the same wages as their male colleagues. But 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.960 in nineteen forty nine the CSIR instituted a new policy 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:07.040 that women were to receive pay scaled to two thirds 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.639 of what the men were making. I also saw one 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:11.720 account that said it was seventy five percent, so that 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:16.080 would have been three quarters either way significantly less. This 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.919 was basically seen as the organization as a correction, because 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.600 that had been the scaled salary before the war. This 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.280 was also part of a subtle shift that happened in 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:30.720 the name of the organization to CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:36.680 Industrial Research Organization. Ruby was very vocal about how absolutely 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:40.040 wrong this change in pay was, and so were many 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:44.040 of her colleagues. Painne Scott led a letter writing campaign 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:48.520 to CSIRO leadership and also to the press, so anyone 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:50.840 who read a paper in Australia knew that the women 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:54.159 who had worked on radar technology for the war effort 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.680 were now getting a pay cut. To try to appease 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.080 existing staff, the company declared that it would give equal 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.280 pay to anyone who had been hired six months or 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.600 more before June of nineteen forty nine if they were 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.480 working in the same division and doing the same work, 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.560 but that any new hires would be paid what was 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.560 referred to by the organization as the quote female rate. 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.679 So this would have secured Ruby's old salary, but she 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:26.199 was not okay with newly hired women getting paid a 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:29.720 cut rate, and especially not okay with the idea that 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.760 any woman transferring from one department or project to another 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:37.879 could initiate a pay cut, she said, so she continued 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.800 her campaign and wrote an open letter to the company's 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:46.200 Officers Association bulletin that women should quote stick like glue 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:48.800 to their current work until the rules of the situation 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:53.320 were clearly defined and equitable. She had a meeting with 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.520 the chairman of the company to discuss the sixty women 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:00.000 who were currently on staff as research and technical oars 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:04.760 and was promised that he would investigate the situation. This 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:09.639 campaign didn't really fix anything in any immediate sense. Instead, 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.960 Ruby ended up with a dossier on file at the 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:17.919 Australian Security Intelligence Organization or ASIO, although that was not 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:23.120 discovered until years later. Yeah, she had basically become a 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.840 known rebel rouser. And we're going to talk about what 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:28.879 happened when Ruby was outed as a married woman. Oh 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.959 the scandal. After we hear from our sponsors that keep 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:44.520 stuff you missed in history class going. In nineteen fifty, 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:49.199 CSIRO management got wind of Ruby and Bill's marriage. She 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:53.040 had a meeting with the chairman of CSIRO, Ian Clooney's Ross, 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:56.119 in February of nineteen fifty, and that was the first 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:59.400 of several such meetings. She told him that she had 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.480 poured over are the regulations regarding the civil service and 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.480 did not see any specific directive to demote or let 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.200 go married women. She also refused to disclose the date 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:14.959 of her marriage to Clooney's Ross. Ruby fought hard, and 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.080 the whole conflict played out in a series of letters 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:21.520 that she exchanged with the chairman. She stated, in one quote, 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.000 all the married women research officers I have met feel 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:29.080 that their classification as temporary puts them at a considerable 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:34.760 psychological disadvantage in their work. Personally, I feel no legal 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:38.399 or moral obligation to have taken any other action than 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:41.960 I have in making my marriage known. She also told 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:45.320 him quote the present procedure is ridiculous and can lead 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:49.560 to ridiculous results. Basically, she was like, we're working on 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:51.800 important stuff and you're going to mess it up because 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:55.600 we got married. But she ultimately did have to give 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.600 up her salaried position. She was allowed to stay as 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:05.040 a temp contract employee. Sometimes this tempt status is characterized 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.120 as having been the work of her boss, Posey, who 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.680 made the case that he needed to rehire her back 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:14.880 in some capacity because her work was so important. Other 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.760 accounts make it sound like it was an organization initiated demotion. 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:24.720 Either way, the whole thing understandably made pain Scott incredibly angry. 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:28.359 At this point, she had contributed more to her field 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.040 than many of her male peers. She pointed out the 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:34.840 sexism of the rule that robbed her of a title 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.440 that she had earned simply because she was married. It 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.440 also meant she was no longer eligible for a pension, 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:46.000 and that the retirement contributions the organization had made were 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:50.160 pulled from her accounts, and the interest that had been 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:53.439 earned on her own contributions to the retirement fund that 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.240 was part of her benefits package that was also stripped away. 0:21:57.280 --> 0:22:00.600 Because she had been married when she was making those jaments, 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:05.600 you can see why she was angry. She had been integral, 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:09.280 truly integral to making Australia the global leader in the 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.640 emerging field of radio astronomy. There was so much talk 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.560 at the time of how exciting it was that Australia 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:19.560 was a leader in a new scientific field. According to 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:23.360 biographer Wm Goss, even though Joseph Posey was her boss, 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:27.400 he often would not make decisions about their projects unless 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:30.800 he had gotten Ruby's input first. That is how key 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:34.080 she was to the department, and because of her marriage, 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:37.680 that meant very little in the eyes of the organization's bureaucracy. 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:42.639 But although Posey still wanted Ruby on his team. In 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:46.600 nineteen fifty one, another life change happened, and this one 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:51.119 finally did end her time working at CSIRO. She became 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:56.359 pregnant once again. Different biographies treat this differently. Some say 0:22:56.400 --> 0:22:59.760 she was forced to leave. Others make it sound as 0:22:59.800 --> 0:23:03.240 though her resignation was maybe her choice, But since the 0:23:03.320 --> 0:23:07.800 CSIRO didn't have any kind of maternity leave policy, there 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:11.600 really wasn't much choice, and according to the organization's account, 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:15.320 she gave two days notice and left. Either way, this 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:18.719 is a brilliant career in science that ended way too early. 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:22.600 The CSIRO biography of Ruby notes that she had a 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:26.600 miscarriage several years before nineteen fifty one. She might have 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:31.000 just wanted to prioritize her pregnancy over her career, take 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:34.919 care of her physical well being and the babies. I 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:40.520 feel like regardless of what the reasoning was like, CSIRO 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:45.760 was not supportive of pregnancy and new motherhood in any way. 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:51.040 Ruby and Bill welcomed their son Peter on November twentieth, 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:54.240 nineteen fifty one. They also had a daughter, Fiona. In 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:57.919 nineteen fifty three, Ruby became a full time mom for 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.840 more than a decade. In operation for their family, Ruby 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:04.800 and Bill had moved to Oatly. That's a suburb about 0:24:04.840 --> 0:24:08.720 eighteen kilometers or eleven miles southwest of Sydney. They had 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:11.320 designed and built their own house there, and they camped 0:24:11.320 --> 0:24:14.679 on the property during the process. She did receive a 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:18.639 note from the CEO of CSIRO, who told her that 0:24:18.720 --> 0:24:21.679 while there was not maternity leave, he would be happy 0:24:21.720 --> 0:24:26.359 to welcome her back quote in due course, She replied 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:28.879 that she was really sad to leave behind her projects 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:31.760 and her friends at work, but she didn't expect to 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:34.600 return to any kind of work for years. When she 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:37.919 left the organization, Paine Scott had been promoted to the 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:41.800 highest research category an employee could receive short of a 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:46.719 formal leadership position. Ruby had also started going by Ruby 0:24:46.800 --> 0:24:49.520 Hall once the marriage was out in the open and 0:24:49.560 --> 0:24:53.399 she had left her career. Sometimes Ruby's exit from the 0:24:53.440 --> 0:24:57.840 CSIRO is told as though it was only being a 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:00.320 married woman or being a mother that was the reason 0:25:00.359 --> 0:25:04.560 she had to leave. That was absolutely the huge primary 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:06.800 part of it, but there is also a little more 0:25:06.880 --> 0:25:10.560 nuance because her opinions were constantly at odds with the 0:25:10.560 --> 0:25:14.920 policies and stances of the organization, even if her collaborators 0:25:14.920 --> 0:25:18.720 in her department valued her and really liked her. For one, 0:25:18.960 --> 0:25:21.560 Ruby really felt strongly that the work that had been 0:25:21.600 --> 0:25:24.560