Down to a Science by James Patterson

Down to a Science

by James Patterson

photo by Stephanie Diani

Just last month, Donna Strickland became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, nearly sixty years after Maria Goeppert Mayer. And in 1903, sixty years prior to Goeppert Mayer’s win, Marie Curie became the first ever woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. You can do the math—that’s only three women in nearly 120 years to win an award given out annually! While female scientists have come a long way over the past century (engineer Frances H. Arnold also won the Nobel this year for chemistry), there’s overwhelming evidence that women remain underrepresented in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

That’s the exact reason I created the character of Maxine “Max” Einstein in my new middle-grade series, Max Einstein: The Genius Experiment. And that’s why I really believe Max Einstein is the most important book I’ve ever done. When the managers of the Albert Einstein Archives, located at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, approached me a while back saying they’d like me to create books that will introduce kids to Einstein’s science, I insisted that the protagonist be a girl. They were very bright—no surprise—and were on board. They also said the books must be entertaining to make a difference, because otherwise young readers won’t pay any attention to them.

So while the book is a fictional adventure, it involves lots of very cool science as part of the story. As a young person, Einstein grew up in a time when technology was rapidly changing the world. His curiosity about the world around him was limitless. He imagined things that even adults had trouble comprehending, and asked questions about the universe that few had even bothered to ask. His only tools were pencil and paper. He was tolerant of many backgrounds and viewpoints, and he had this amazing sense of fairness, and of right and wrong.

Max Einstein channels all of these traits, and while she isn’t striving to teach kids science, we hope she gets them excited about Einstein’s discoveries and makes them similarly curious. Did you know that it’s Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that makes the GPS in your cell phone work? You’d be surprised how science affects your life every day. Those fun “Do It Yourself” slime videos on YouTube kids love? That’s chemistry! Your favorite baseball player uses physics to bat a game-winning homerun. Biologists are working to cure diseases around the world. And another of Einstein’s discoveries helped create solar panels, which are key in fighting global warming. When they think of science, kids might think of a boring laboratory or memorizing lots of equations. But if they want to be the next Einstein or Strickland, what they really need is a big imagination! And what this world needs is kids with big ideas. Kids like the ones you work with every day!

When asked about her reaction to winning the Nobel Prize last month, Strickland noted that she was surprised so few women had won the award. She went on to say, “But, I mean, I do live in a world of mostly men, so seeing mostly men doesn’t really ever surprise me, either.” My hope is that our kids, and then their kids, will grow up seeing as many women as men in whatever field they choose to pursue. And I hope that both young girls and boys will find an inspiriting character who they can identify with in Max.

I like to think that when Max is an adult, she’d have a shot at winning the Nobel Prize, with plenty of female trailblazers ahead of her. So for all of your aspiring scientists, mathematicians, doctors, writers, musicians, artists—whatever their passion may be—remind them to dream big! Shoot for the stars, or maybe the Nobel. •

For more information, check out the November 2018 issue of Story Monsters Ink at www.storymonsters.com.