Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I am still
Speaker 1: working through my list. I think we both are forever.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm never gonna get through it, but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to refer back to it more and more as
Speaker 1: I plan episodes. The woman that we're talking about today
Speaker 1: has been on my list for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I think she might have even been a listener request,
Speaker 1: but that long time means I have lost said requests.
Speaker 1: So if you are the person who suggested her to me,
Speaker 1: I have a vague memory that it was after our
Speaker 1: Joan Curran episode that someone recommended her, but I don't remember.
Speaker 1: But if you're the person that recommended her, apologies, also
Speaker 1: thank you. This is also a nice bit of Australian history.
Speaker 1: Before we get into it, I do want to mention,
Speaker 1: just as a heads up, there is a brief discussion
Speaker 1: of miscarriage and also some discussion of Alzheimer's and dementia
Speaker 1: towards the end, So if those are troubling for you,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not this one. But I am so
Speaker 1: excited to talk about Ruby Payne Scott because she is
Speaker 1: often called a pioneer in radio astronomy, which she was,
Speaker 1: but she was also a pioneer in advocating for women's rights,
Speaker 1: and she was clearly brilliant, but her work was cut
Speaker 1: short simply by her desire to have a spouse and
Speaker 1: a family. Ruby Violet Pain Scott was born on May
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen twelve, in South Grafton, New South Wales, Australia.
Speaker 1: That's a little more than six hundred kilometers or three
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five miles north of Sydney, along the
Speaker 1: country's east coast. Her parents were Cyril Herman and Amy
Speaker 1: Sarah Neil Payne Scott. Cyril was an accountant and had
Speaker 1: been born in London. Amy was born in Sydney. Sometime
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen twenties, the family moved to Sydney
Speaker 1: and Ruby attended the Cleveland Street School and she went
Speaker 1: to Fort Street High School and when she graduated at sixteen,
Speaker 1: she enrolled at the University of Sydney. She earned her
Speaker 1: Bachelor of Science degree in nineteen thirty three with honors
Speaker 1: in physics and math, and Ruby next pursued a master's
Speaker 1: degree with several scholarships, those who the Dias Thomas Scholarship
Speaker 1: for Physics, the Walter Burfett Scholarship for Physics, and the
Speaker 1: Norbert Quirk Prize for Mathematics. And while working on her
Speaker 1: master's degree, Ruby moved into the role of assistant physicist
Speaker 1: in cancer research. This was part of the University of
Speaker 1: Sydney's Cancer Research Committee, and while cancer research might sound
Speaker 1: like a departure from her physics and math background, it
Speaker 1: really wasn't. She was focused on newly developed radiation treatments
Speaker 1: for cancer. In nineteen thirty six, she finished her master's
Speaker 1: deg with a thesis on wavelength distribution of the scattered
Speaker 1: radiation in a medium traversed by a beam of X
Speaker 1: or gamma rays. For the next two years she stayed
Speaker 1: at the Cancer Research Institute as a physicist. This part
Speaker 1: of her life doesn't get talked about all that much,
Speaker 1: But there's an interesting news article I found that appeared
Speaker 1: in various forms in the US in the spring of
Speaker 1: that year that pain Scott received her master's degree, and
Speaker 1: it talked about some of her research. One version of
Speaker 1: it appears in the four Worth Star Telegram titled Magnetism
Speaker 1: and Life, and it reads in its entirety quote, although
Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism are inextricably mingled, if not one force,
Speaker 1: and electricity undeniably is essential to life, vital processes are
Speaker 1: affected little, if at all, by magnetism. According to doctors
Speaker 1: Ruby pain Scott and William H. Love of the Cancer
Speaker 1: Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney, Australia, they cultivated
Speaker 1: it test tubes the living cells from chick embryos. Some
Speaker 1: of these they grew in a magnetic field five thousand
Speaker 1: times as powerful as that of the Earth. Others they
Speaker 1: grew under normal conditions. They reasoned, if the weak field
Speaker 1: of the Earth produces any effect on living things, the
Speaker 1: powerful field should increase the effect to an observable extent.
Speaker 1: They found that the chromosomes in the magnetically tested cells
Speaker 1: showed no changes from normal. She might have stayed in
Speaker 1: cancer research longer, but her project ended. There wasn't another
Speaker 1: opening at the institute. Though she really had excelled academically,
Speaker 1: she just wasn't met with a lot of options when
Speaker 1: she finished her graduate studies and her research work, so
Speaker 1: she got a teaching certificate and took a job at
Speaker 1: the Woodlands Church of England Grammar School. Shouldn't stay in
Speaker 1: teaching though. Ruby took a job at Amalgamated Wireless Australia
Speaker 1: as a librarian, editing the company's internal journal, but was
Speaker 1: soon working on research projects in the standards lab. Ruby
Speaker 1: was trying to solve problems with existing receiver designs. Amalgamated
Speaker 1: Wireless Australia was not much older than Ruby was. It
Speaker 1: was founded as Australasian Wireless Limited three years before she
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen oh nine, as a telegraph company.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen teens, the company had been given exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to operate Australia's coastal network of maritime radio stations.
Speaker 1: During World War One, it had been instrumental in the
Speaker 1: passage of information about the war back and forth between
Speaker 1: Britain and Australia. After the war, the Australian government became
Speaker 1: the company's majority shareholder, and by the time Ruby started
Speaker 1: working for AWA, the company had established global communications networks
Speaker 1: and had transmitted the first newsreel picture from Sydney to London.
Speaker 1: So for someone interested in radio technology, it was probably
Speaker 1: a great place to be in nineteen forty one. Because
Speaker 1: many of Australia's physicists were engaged with wartime activities, Ruby
Speaker 1: was able to get a job with the CSIR, the
Speaker 1: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. She was part of
Speaker 1: a group of AWA engineers who were hired by the
Speaker 1: CSIR to work in their division of Radiophysics. She wasn't
Speaker 1: the only woman on the scientific staff. Another woman named
Speaker 1: Joan Freeman was also brought on board at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are also a couple of other women that came
Speaker 1: into the group at various times, but those two are
Speaker 1: the ones that get mentioned the most. The CSIR was
Speaker 1: founded in nineteen sixteen to create a national laboratory for
Speaker 1: Australia that would use science to bolster the country's mining,
Speaker 1: agriculture and manufacturing efforts. Under the name Advisory Council of
Speaker 1: Science and Industry. The organization started its first research project
Speaker 1: by studying pests that had invaded the Prickly Payer and
Speaker 1: it changed to the CSIR in nineteen twenty six and
Speaker 1: then at the onset of World War Two, the umbrella
Speaker 1: of projects that conducted widen to include research that would
Speaker 1: help the Australian defense forces, and that is how Ruby
Speaker 1: Payne Scott was brought in. Ruby had been brought on
Speaker 1: as a probationary employee, and a few months into her
Speaker 1: time at the CSIR, her supervisor, Edward George Bowen, who
Speaker 1: went by the nickname Taffy, wrote an assessment of her.
Speaker 1: According to CSIRO's account, that memo read quote, well, she's
Speaker 1: a bit loud, and we don't think she's quite what
Speaker 1: we want, and she may be a bit unstable, but
Speaker 1: will let her continue and see how she works out.
Speaker 1: That kind of cracks me up and also makes me angry.
Speaker 1: That I think is the thing that made me say
Speaker 1: out loud something as I was reading this over for
Speaker 1: the first time. So this move to CSIR was intellectually
Speaker 1: really a great fit for Payne Scott. She was finally
Speaker 1: doing work that she can really dig into and use
Speaker 1: her education and her training, and she definitely advanced science
Speaker 1: in her time there. Because the Division of Radiophysics was
Speaker 1: working on radar as a new defensive weapon. Ruby's area
Speaker 1: of research looked at small signal visibility on radar displays,
Speaker 1: and she also worked on receiver noise factors and how
Speaker 1: they could accurately be measured. She also was the go
Speaker 1: to expert on the planned position indicator system that other
Speaker 1: scientists had developed in the UK, and it was through
Speaker 1: the work of the team that Ruby was on that
Speaker 1: radar devices were developed that were used by Australian and
Speaker 1: US forces in the South Pacific. Through the noise measurement research,
Speaker 1: pain Scott started working with another physicist, Joseph lad Palsey.
Speaker 1: Posey had, like Ruby, been recruited into the CSIR to
Speaker 1: work on radar technology and get its manufacture up and running.
Speaker 1: Posey had seen a report that indicated that there were
Speaker 1: bursts of staff that were altering radar's effectiveness. Very briefly,
Speaker 1: he suspected that they were coming from somewhere other than
Speaker 1: the Earth. Once World War Two ended, Ruby stayed with
Speaker 1: the CSIR, working with Posey and pivoting to work in
Speaker 1: the new field of radio astronomy. Their team was one
Speaker 1: of only two in the world at the time examining
Speaker 1: what they called cosmic static. Was that stuff that Posey
Speaker 1: had seen. The report about this team pinpointed the origin
Speaker 1: point of various instances of cosmic static, including the Sun
Speaker 1: and other heavenly bodies. Pain Scott discovered or was part
Speaker 1: of a team that discovered three categories of solar bursts
Speaker 1: which came from the corona of the Sun in the
Speaker 1: course of just a few years. These were categorized at
Speaker 1: the time as type one, Type two, and type three bursts,
Speaker 1: and those classifications were based on the h alpha spectrum,
Speaker 1: referring to a visible spectral line of red in the
Speaker 1: hydrogen attic. This is different from modern classification, which bases
Speaker 1: the divisions on peak flux of electromagnetic radiation. Pain Scott
Speaker 1: and Posey published a paper in Nature in early nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six explaining that solar bursts were not visible like
Speaker 1: solar flares, and that they had figured out how to
Speaker 1: detect and monitor them using radio waves. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: some of the challenges that Ruby pain Scott experienced from
Speaker 1: the beginning of her career at CSIR right after we
Speaker 1: pause for a sponsor break. Although she was pretty much
Speaker 1: by everyone's account, doing really great work, Ruby's time at
Speaker 1: the CSIR wasn't exactly easy. She often got in trouble
Speaker 1: for silly things like wearing shorts instead of a skirt,
Speaker 1: and when she was called into a meeting about this
Speaker 1: clothing choice, she stated, quote, well, this is absurd we're
Speaker 1: climbing up on ladders, up on aerials every day. I'm
Speaker 1: not going up on a ladder with a skirt on.
Speaker 1: The shorts are much better at tire for us, and
Speaker 1: she was not afraid to speak her mind on just
Speaker 1: about any topic that came up. She wanted women to
Speaker 1: be treated equally at work and pointed out when they weren't.
Speaker 1: She talked politics with her colleagues and argued with them
Speaker 1: about it. Despite problems with the organization's leadership, Ruby was
Speaker 1: promoted in nineteen forty four into the position of research Officer.
Speaker 1: That was also the year that she and Posey made
Speaker 1: their first radio astronomy observations from the RPL building using
Speaker 1: radar equipment at ten centimeters. That means they were detecting
Speaker 1: wavelengths of ten centimeters, which today would be known as
Speaker 1: the S band. The idea of quantifying the light in
Speaker 1: the sky mathematically was really new, and Ruby, Payne Scott,
Speaker 1: and the team at the Radio Physics Lab were leaders
Speaker 1: in the field. Ruby was a participating author on nine
Speaker 1: Publishers works in the years from nineteen forty five to
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, and the department overall published sixty two
Speaker 1: papers in the rapidly expanding field of radio astronomy. Something
Speaker 1: else happened in nineteen forty four that would have ended
Speaker 1: Ruby's career had she not kept it a secret. And
Speaker 1: if you're imagining that, maybe she committed a crime or
Speaker 1: did something really horrifying. No, she got married on September
Speaker 1: eighth of that year. Ruby's new husband, William Holman Hall,
Speaker 1: who was a telephone technician, supported her work, but it
Speaker 1: was expected that women would resign when they got married,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't just a social convention. As a public servant,
Speaker 1: she was, according to the rules of that field, supposed
Speaker 1: to resign when she got married. So Ruby, who had
Speaker 1: no interest in ending her career, kept her marriage secret
Speaker 1: to avoid having to leave her. Colleagues, who knew about
Speaker 1: it helped her do so. Initially, Ruby had just let
Speaker 1: people think that she and Bill were living together, which was,
Speaker 1: of course quite bold in the nineteen forties. Many biographical
Speaker 1: accounts I read of her described as using the old
Speaker 1: school phrase living in sin. Most women would not want
Speaker 1: anyone to think that they were just living with a man,
Speaker 1: because of the social stigma that it would have invited.
Speaker 1: But Ruby kind of didn't care or She saw that
Speaker 1: as preferable to disclosing her married status and losing her job.
Speaker 1: But the truth did come out among her colleagues after
Speaker 1: a couple of years. Even once the people in her
Speaker 1: department knew about the couple, though they just chose not
Speaker 1: to say anything to the bureaucratic heads of the organization.
Speaker 1: According to her colleague Joan Freeman, quote, all her radiophysics friends,
Speaker 1: having developed a strong affection for Ruby as well as
Speaker 1: respect for her scientific abilities, greeted the story with hilarity
Speaker 1: and sympathized with her attitude. Although they had very different personalities,
Speaker 1: Ruby and Bill seem like they were a great match.
Speaker 1: Bill was just a little older than Ruby. Born on
Speaker 1: August twenty second, nineteen eleven in Inveral, New South Wales,
Speaker 1: to a Scottish mother and an English father. Bill and
Speaker 1: Ruby often went bushwhacking together. They actually met through the
Speaker 1: Sydney Bushwalkers Club several years before they married. They shared
Speaker 1: that hobby together for years. He treated her as an equal,
Speaker 1: and Ruby had helped him with the mathematics he had
Speaker 1: to learn to pass his exam to get his telephone
Speaker 1: mechanic license. Bill wanted her to keep doing the work
Speaker 1: that she found so fulfilling. In nineteen forty six, John G. Bolton,
Speaker 1: who had served in the British Navy, moved from his
Speaker 1: military career to become the new head of the Radiophysics
Speaker 1: Lab at CSIR. He and Ruby pain Scott did not
Speaker 1: hit it off, and then when Joseph Posey, who she
Speaker 1: had a great working relationship with, went overseas for a
Speaker 1: year for research, both Ruby and Bolton tried to work
Speaker 1: at the same site at Dover Heights. That's a coastal
Speaker 1: area just east of Sydney. It was where the inferometer
Speaker 1: testing that she had been doing had started, so it
Speaker 1: would make sense that pain Scott would continue taking readings there,
Speaker 1: but she and Bolton fought constantly, and because he ranked
Speaker 1: higher than she did, Ruby ended up having to move
Speaker 1: to another site. Sometimes this is described as an exile.
Speaker 1: While at that other site, which was Hornsby's Station, one
Speaker 1: of the technologies that Ruby helped to develop in her
Speaker 1: time at the Radiophysics Lab was an interferometer that could
Speaker 1: sweep the sky rapidly more than two dozen times a second.
Speaker 1: Interferometers work by combining multiple sources of light to make
Speaker 1: an interference pattern for analysis. The one pain Scott worked
Speaker 1: on could rapidly identify radio wave formations. They could be
Speaker 1: examined more closely, and it made it possible to use
Speaker 1: the collected images of the Sun to make a movie
Speaker 1: that showed solar bursts happening. This is a hugely significant thing,
Speaker 1: and it enabled scientists to more deeply understand space emissions.
Speaker 1: She's credited by biographer W. M. Goss with taking quote
Speaker 1: the first ever interferometric measurements in radio astronomy. Was part
Speaker 1: of the work on her sweptlope interferometer. She also developed
Speaker 1: the mathematical concept that would later lead to the aperture
Speaker 1: synthesis system that's been used ever since. In simple terms,
Speaker 1: aperture synthesis is the use of multiple antennas to simultaneously
Speaker 1: monitor an astronomical source. The signals are then mixed or
Speaker 1: combined to create a greater sized sample. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: are familiar with the work of things like the very
Speaker 1: large array, that's how they work. In nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: Ruby was involved in a controversy at work. During the war,
Speaker 1: she and Joan Freeman and the other women on staff
Speaker 1: were paid the same wages as their male colleagues. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine the CSIR instituted a new policy
Speaker 1: that women were to receive pay scaled to two thirds
Speaker 1: of what the men were making. I also saw one
Speaker 1: account that said it was seventy five percent, so that
Speaker 1: would have been three quarters either way significantly less. This
Speaker 1: was basically seen as the organization as a correction, because
Speaker 1: that had been the scaled salary before the war. This
Speaker 1: was also part of a subtle shift that happened in
Speaker 1: the name of the organization to CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and
Speaker 1: Industrial Research Organization. Ruby was very vocal about how absolutely
Speaker 1: wrong this change in pay was, and so were many
Speaker 1: of her colleagues. Painne Scott led a letter writing campaign
Speaker 1: to CSIRO leadership and also to the press, so anyone
Speaker 1: who read a paper in Australia knew that the women
Speaker 1: who had worked on radar technology for the war effort
Speaker 1: were now getting a pay cut. To try to appease
Speaker 1: existing staff, the company declared that it would give equal
Speaker 1: pay to anyone who had been hired six months or
Speaker 1: more before June of nineteen forty nine if they were
Speaker 1: working in the same division and doing the same work,
Speaker 1: but that any new hires would be paid what was
Speaker 1: referred to by the organization as the quote female rate.
Speaker 1: So this would have secured Ruby's old salary, but she
Speaker 1: was not okay with newly hired women getting paid a
Speaker 1: cut rate, and especially not okay with the idea that
Speaker 1: any woman transferring from one department or project to another
Speaker 1: could initiate a pay cut, she said, so she continued
Speaker 1: her campaign and wrote an open letter to the company's
Speaker 1: Officers Association bulletin that women should quote stick like glue
Speaker 1: to their current work until the rules of the situation
Speaker 1: were clearly defined and equitable. She had a meeting with
Speaker 1: the chairman of the company to discuss the sixty women
Speaker 1: who were currently on staff as research and technical oars
Speaker 1: and was promised that he would investigate the situation. This
Speaker 1: campaign didn't really fix anything in any immediate sense. Instead,
Speaker 1: Ruby ended up with a dossier on file at the
Speaker 1: Australian Security Intelligence Organization or ASIO, although that was not
Speaker 1: discovered until years later. Yeah, she had basically become a
Speaker 1: known rebel rouser. And we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: happened when Ruby was outed as a married woman. Oh
Speaker 1: the scandal. After we hear from our sponsors that keep
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class going. In nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: CSIRO management got wind of Ruby and Bill's marriage. She
Speaker 1: had a meeting with the chairman of CSIRO, Ian Clooney's Ross,
Speaker 1: in February of nineteen fifty, and that was the first
Speaker 1: of several such meetings. She told him that she had
Speaker 1: poured over are the regulations regarding the civil service and
Speaker 1: did not see any specific directive to demote or let
Speaker 1: go married women. She also refused to disclose the date
Speaker 1: of her marriage to Clooney's Ross. Ruby fought hard, and
Speaker 1: the whole conflict played out in a series of letters
Speaker 1: that she exchanged with the chairman. She stated, in one quote,
Speaker 1: all the married women research officers I have met feel
Speaker 1: that their classification as temporary puts them at a considerable
Speaker 1: psychological disadvantage in their work. Personally, I feel no legal
Speaker 1: or moral obligation to have taken any other action than
Speaker 1: I have in making my marriage known. She also told
Speaker 1: him quote the present procedure is ridiculous and can lead
Speaker 1: to ridiculous results. Basically, she was like, we're working on
Speaker 1: important stuff and you're going to mess it up because
Speaker 1: we got married. But she ultimately did have to give
Speaker 1: up her salaried position. She was allowed to stay as
Speaker 1: a temp contract employee. Sometimes this tempt status is characterized
Speaker 1: as having been the work of her boss, Posey, who
Speaker 1: made the case that he needed to rehire her back
Speaker 1: in some capacity because her work was so important. Other
Speaker 1: accounts make it sound like it was an organization initiated demotion.
Speaker 1: Either way, the whole thing understandably made pain Scott incredibly angry.
Speaker 1: At this point, she had contributed more to her field
Speaker 1: than many of her male peers. She pointed out the
Speaker 1: sexism of the rule that robbed her of a title
Speaker 1: that she had earned simply because she was married. It
Speaker 1: also meant she was no longer eligible for a pension,
Speaker 1: and that the retirement contributions the organization had made were
Speaker 1: pulled from her accounts, and the interest that had been
Speaker 1: earned on her own contributions to the retirement fund that
Speaker 1: was part of her benefits package that was also stripped away.
Speaker 1: Because she had been married when she was making those jaments,
Speaker 1: you can see why she was angry. She had been integral,
Speaker 1: truly integral to making Australia the global leader in the
Speaker 1: emerging field of radio astronomy. There was so much talk
Speaker 1: at the time of how exciting it was that Australia
Speaker 1: was a leader in a new scientific field. According to
Speaker 1: biographer Wm Goss, even though Joseph Posey was her boss,
Speaker 1: he often would not make decisions about their projects unless
Speaker 1: he had gotten Ruby's input first. That is how key
Speaker 1: she was to the department, and because of her marriage,
Speaker 1: that meant very little in the eyes of the organization's bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: But although Posey still wanted Ruby on his team. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, another life change happened, and this one
Speaker 1: finally did end her time working at CSIRO. She became
Speaker 1: pregnant once again. Different biographies treat this differently. Some say
Speaker 1: she was forced to leave. Others make it sound as
Speaker 1: though her resignation was maybe her choice, But since the
Speaker 1: CSIRO didn't have any kind of maternity leave policy, there
Speaker 1: really wasn't much choice, and according to the organization's account,
Speaker 1: she gave two days notice and left. Either way, this
Speaker 1: is a brilliant career in science that ended way too early.
Speaker 1: The CSIRO biography of Ruby notes that she had a
Speaker 1: miscarriage several years before nineteen fifty one. She might have
Speaker 1: just wanted to prioritize her pregnancy over her career, take
Speaker 1: care of her physical well being and the babies. I
Speaker 1: feel like regardless of what the reasoning was like, CSIRO
Speaker 1: was not supportive of pregnancy and new motherhood in any way.
Speaker 1: Ruby and Bill welcomed their son Peter on November twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. They also had a daughter, Fiona. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, Ruby became a full time mom for
Speaker 1: more than a decade. In operation for their family, Ruby
Speaker 1: and Bill had moved to Oatly. That's a suburb about
Speaker 1: eighteen kilometers or eleven miles southwest of Sydney. They had
Speaker 1: designed and built their own house there, and they camped
Speaker 1: on the property during the process. She did receive a
Speaker 1: note from the CEO of CSIRO, who told her that
Speaker 1: while there was not maternity leave, he would be happy
Speaker 1: to welcome her back quote in due course, She replied
Speaker 1: that she was really sad to leave behind her projects
Speaker 1: and her friends at work, but she didn't expect to
Speaker 1: return to any kind of work for years. When she
Speaker 1: left the organization, Paine Scott had been promoted to the
Speaker 1: highest research category an employee could receive short of a
Speaker 1: formal leadership position. Ruby had also started going by Ruby
Speaker 1: Hall once the marriage was out in the open and
Speaker 1: she had left her career. Sometimes Ruby's exit from the
Speaker 1: CSIRO is told as though it was only being a
Speaker 1: married woman or being a mother that was the reason
Speaker 1: she had to leave. That was absolutely the huge primary
Speaker 1: part of it, but there is also a little more
Speaker 1: nuance because her opinions were constantly at odds with the
Speaker 1: policies and stances of the organization, even if her collaborators
Speaker 1: in her department valued her and really liked her. For one,
Speaker 1: Ruby really felt strongly that the work that had been
Speaker 1: done at the CSIAR during the war should have been
Speaker 1: declassified after the war, and she did not think the
Speaker 1: organization should have any secret research projects when the country
Speaker 1: was not at war, and she was as outspoken about
Speaker 1: that as the other issues she had with the organization.
Speaker 1: She went so far as to write a letter to
Speaker 1: the Sydney Morning Herald on July twenty ninth of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight that stated that she and many of her
Speaker 1: colleagues who had all signed this letter, thought that if
Speaker 1: the research of the CSIR remained classified on an ongoing basis,
Speaker 1: creativity was going to be impeded. Additionally, her clashes with
Speaker 1: leadership and her un wavering willingness to defend her position
Speaker 1: to her organizational superiors had probably taken a toll over
Speaker 1: the years. Her proclivity to openly challenge the status quo
Speaker 1: when she thought it was wrong, combined with her status
Speaker 1: as a member of the Communist Party at least through
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen fifties while also working on cutting edge
Speaker 1: scientific concepts, also drew a lot of attention to her.
Speaker 1: An addition, garnered her the nickname Red Ruby among her colleagues.
Speaker 1: To the Australian Intelligence Security Organization, she also posed a
Speaker 1: risk to national security. Taking all that together, it's maybe
Speaker 1: more accurate to say that Ruby's career ended because she
Speaker 1: was a married woman who was also outspoken in ways
Speaker 1: that did not mesh with her organization's higher ups. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking you didn't say much about that Communist
Speaker 1: Party thing, we will talk about that a little bit
Speaker 1: more in the behind the scenes. But the honest answer
Speaker 1: is there's not a lot to know, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: even known that that was the case until well after
Speaker 1: her death, when Ruby and Bill's son was twelve and
Speaker 1: their daughter was ten. Payne. Scott went back to work,
Speaker 1: returning to her first job of teaching. She taught at
Speaker 1: the Danebank Anglican School for Girls. Starting in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: She went by Missus Hall at the tiny school, where
Speaker 1: she taught math and science. She did not really talk
Speaker 1: about her time working as a physicist, and she didn't
Speaker 1: seem to develop the kinds of friendships that she had
Speaker 1: had with her colleagues at CSIRO. She organized the labs,
Speaker 1: and she made sure the science program met all the
Speaker 1: requirements of state and federal standards, and she oversaw senior
Speaker 1: mathematics programs. She was apparently not especially well liked by
Speaker 1: most of her students, although there were exceptions, and she
Speaker 1: was dismayed that a lot of her pupils were kind
Speaker 1: of lacking scholastically and academically. She also was often in
Speaker 1: conflict with her colleagues on the faculty. Ruby retired from
Speaker 1: teaching in nineteen seventy four, when she was sixty two.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, Ruby and Bill took a trip together,
Speaker 1: traveling to Japan, then Vladivostok to take the Trans Siberian Express.
Speaker 1: They stopped in Moscow and Paris before arriving in London,
Speaker 1: where their son Peter was working on his mathematics dissertation,
Speaker 1: and Peter saw a lot of change in his mother.
Speaker 1: In the years following her retirement, pain Scott had developed Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: She was likely having issues even before leaving her teaching career,
Speaker 1: and that might have contributed to her difficulty connecting with
Speaker 1: other teachers and students there. When she got to London,
Speaker 1: Ruby seemed both physically depleted and confused. Bill took her
Speaker 1: to the doctor, but the visit didn't result in a
Speaker 1: lot of benefit to Ruby. At the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, they were back in Australia. Bill really doted
Speaker 1: on Ruby as she declined until she had to be
Speaker 1: moved to a nursing home in nineteen eighty. Bill would
Speaker 1: cook her favorite foods and bring them to her there.
Speaker 1: Ruby died of precina dementia on May twenty fifth, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, in Sydney. I hunted for an obituary for Ruby,
Speaker 1: but I was only able to turn up a very
Speaker 1: brief notice of her death in the Sydney Morning Herald,
Speaker 1: which ran on May thirtieth, nineteen eighty one, and it
Speaker 1: reads in its Entigrity Hall Nay Payne Scott Ruby Violet
Speaker 1: May twenty fifth, nineteen eighty one, Late of Warrinora Parade,
Speaker 1: Oatly dearly loved wife of Bill, loving mother of Peter,
Speaker 1: Fiona and Jeanie. Privately cremated. This is such a short
Speaker 1: footnote to a life of such great scientific achievement. Presumably
Speaker 1: that mention of Genie is a reference to Ruby's miscarriage.
Speaker 1: I did not find any other reference to it anywhere else.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that the family would have chosen to include it,
Speaker 1: and it offers an insight into how much Ruby valued
Speaker 1: her family. In two thousand and eight, the Payne Scott
Speaker 1: Award was established by CSIRO quote for researchers returning from
Speaker 1: family related career breaks. This award grants new parents financial
Speaker 1: support after an extended leave, which they can use for
Speaker 1: training and to quote, re establish themselves and reconnect with
Speaker 1: the research underway in their fields and related fields of research.
Speaker 1: Do you know if this same thing is available to
Speaker 1: people who take an extended break to care for an
Speaker 1: elder family member. I don't know the way it's worded.
Speaker 1: Everything I read it sounds like it is specifically for
Speaker 1: parental new parents, which makes sense given the context. I
Speaker 1: was just curious. Yeah, yeah, so that is Ruby Payne Scott.
Speaker 1: I know I got all choked up and weep you
Speaker 1: at the end, But I have what I think is
Speaker 1: hilarious listener mail great as a sav awesome listen. I'm
Speaker 1: still on the Doctor Pepper recipes. This is from our
Speaker 1: listener Libby, who writes, hey, you wonderful people. As soon
Speaker 1: as I heard the Friday episode about Doctor Pepper, I
Speaker 1: knew I had to share my lifelong connection to doctor Pepper.
Speaker 1: My grandfather owned a soda bottling plant and for a while,
Speaker 1: bottled for Doctor Pepper. As such, my family practically memorized
Speaker 1: the cookbook that doctor Pepper put out, and Doctor Pepper
Speaker 1: is either an ingredient or a staple at our family gatherings.
Speaker 1: Some of my favorite ways to consume it include sloppy
Speaker 1: Joe's gravy for Thanksgiving, Choco PEPs that's doctor Pepper, and
Speaker 1: chocolate ice cream that actually sounds amazing to me, and
Speaker 1: doctor Pepper milk. I mix mine one part doctor Pepper
Speaker 1: to two parts milk. When we were kids, there was
Speaker 1: always doctor Pepper in glass bottles at my grandparents' house.
Speaker 1: And you knew you had made it when you got
Speaker 1: to have the bottle and the other person had to
Speaker 1: have it in a glass. We always had to share.
Speaker 1: I even drink it when I'm sick because I'm convinced
Speaker 1: that it will make me well anyway. That is all.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all your hard work. You're honestly the
Speaker 1: best Libby. I love this. I actually want the gravy recipe.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to go looking for it now,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing, Like, I don't I have lost
Speaker 1: track of how common it might be in more northern places,
Speaker 1: but I know in the South that's pretty common to
Speaker 1: use soda in various cooking things, right, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of pot roasty type recipes will include soda of some sort,
Speaker 1: and often it does make them very tender and super delicious.
Speaker 1: So I'm very curious about the gravy. Yeah. So Patrick
Speaker 1: has a braised short rib recipe that uses prune juice
Speaker 1: as one of the ingredients for the braising liquid, and
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like Doctor Pepper would have some
Speaker 1: similar notes, yeah to go with that. Yeah, apparently you
Speaker 1: can get the official Doctor Pepper Cookbook in a variety
Speaker 1: of formats. I'm sure there have been various different ones
Speaker 1: over the years. I'm gonna hunt one down and get
Speaker 1: one for myself and find out what it's all about.
Speaker 1: Just listen. We love to play in the kitchen. But
Speaker 1: that does sound great. I feel like that's such a
Speaker 1: comforting and delightful thing to have as part of all
Speaker 1: your family traditions. I love it again. I think, uh,
Speaker 1: doctor Pepper on chocolate ice cream sounds oh very good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do like to make an ice cream float, and
Speaker 1: I think that sounds possibly yummy. My thing lately is
Speaker 1: what things can I put on a doll whip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Doctor Pepper would be good because I invested,
Speaker 1: you know, as all wise consumers do, in a soft
Speaker 1: serve machine for my house. So I like to make
Speaker 1: dol whip at home and put things on it. Well,
Speaker 1: And as you have explained to me, you cannot just
Speaker 1: make a dull whip. You have a whole thing of
Speaker 1: doll whip mix that you got to you gotta use
Speaker 1: it or you gotta throw it away. So you can
Speaker 1: just have a whole Doctor Pepper dole whip party. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We only bring that out for parties because it's like
Speaker 1: the industrial mix that we get and like, we still
Speaker 1: end up having to pull some into pints and putting
Speaker 1: it in the freezer before we out the machine. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I have decided, in my advancing years
Speaker 1: to purchase a thing that requires me to do the
Speaker 1: work that normal places of business would hire like a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old to do. But here I am cleaning
Speaker 1: out that soft serve machine at like three in the morning,
Speaker 1: after everybody's left. But it's a delight makes parties very fun.
Speaker 1: If you have any other ideas of things I might
Speaker 1: put on top of my doll whip or soft serve,
Speaker 1: you'd send those right to me. You could do that
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