Photograph of Barbara A. Williams (via Astronomers of the African Diaspora)

 

Life

Barbara A. Williams is a retired radio astronomer and the first Black woman to receive a PhD in astronomy in 1981. She graduated with a BA in Physics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she was a part of the Phi Beta Kappa honours society. She then went on to pursue a masters and finally a doctorate in Radio Astronomy at University of Maryland at College Park. ¹

After her higher education career, Barbara worked as a Research Associate at the National Radio Observatory in Charlottesville,Virginia between 1981-1984. She published her first single-author paper in the Astrophysical Journal in 1984. {2. Jessica M. Hislop, “1981: Barbara Williams becomes the first Black woman to get a PhD…and when observations were still done with photographic plates!,” Astrobites | the astro-ph reader’s digest, last modified June 20, 2020, https://astrobites.org/2020/06/20/1981-barbara-williams-becomes-the-first-black-woman-to-get-a-phd/.] In the same year, she became a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until 1986. In 1986 she began teaching as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Delaware, becoming an Associate Professor in 1992 and the Acting Associate Chair in Spring 1994. Barbara has since retired. ²

At UNC Greensboro, Barbara A. Williams was a Reynolds scholar and received the Student Excellence Award. In 1986, she was named Outstanding Young Woman of America. {4. Ibid.] She is a National Research Council Fellow and a Charter Fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists. ³

Barbara has also worked as a NASA-ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) Summer Faculty Fellow, and was invited to the NASA Women in Astronomy and Space Science panel in 2009. ⁴ Before retiring, she was involved in Education research about “recruitment and retention of women in undergraduate physics,” publishing in the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering in 2007. ⁵

 

Work

Much of Barbara Williams’ research focuses on neutral Hydrogen (HI) emissions in galaxies and galaxy clusters. ⁶ In her 1984 paper on “A Group of Galaxies with a Compact Core,” she used radio observations of red shifts and doppler shifts of a selection of galaxies in a Compact Core cluster called MKW10 (Fig. 1) to determine how they interacted with one another. She found lower presence of HI than expected, suggesting “strong signs of tidal interaction” between the galaxies, which meant that their compactness was physical and not just a visual effect. This finding was consistently proven in later studies of similar compact groups. She also discovered that compact group formation takes a relatively short time and that the galaxies in the compact group will become one elliptical galaxy in around 1 billion years. MKW10 or Hickson Compact Group 58 is Compact Core galaxy cluster still studied to this day, as is research on those groups in general due to their difficulty to observe from their short lifetimes. ⁷

Radio astronomy is the observation of radio waves emitted from celestial bodies to get a “complete understanding” of objects beyond what can be found through observing their visual appearance (visible light). This is especially helpful for dimmer or more distant objects. ⁸ Radio waves coming from the sky are captured by radio telescopes (Fig. 2), made up of a large disc – its size is important to be able to pick up waves from faraway sources – that focuses the signal onto a subreflector, which then sends it to the receiver, then an amplifier weaker signals. The subsequent data is recorded for analysis by radio astronomers like Barbara A. Williams. ⁹

 

Women Astronomers of the African Diaspora

As of 2023, there are only 26 Black women in astronomy and physics in the United States. ¹⁰ In her 2007 joint-study on recruitment and retention of female physics undergraduates, Barbara A. Williams’ team found – through various interviews with students and faculty in American universities – that physicists from historically White, co-educational institutions consider teaching female or Black students “‘watering down’ the curriculum to make it less mathematical.” The study found that an exception to this is faculty from “women’s colleges.” ¹¹

 

Bibliography

“Barbara Williams, First African American Woman Astrophysicist.” Department of Mathematics – Department of Mathematics – University at Buffalo. Accessed July 10, 2024. https://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/physics/williams_barbaraa.html.

Boyle, Rebecca. “Only 26 Black Women Have Ever Become Astrophysicists in the U.S. Here’s One’s Story.” Scientific American. Last modified July 24, 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-26-black-women-have-ever-become-astrophysicists-in-the-u-s-heres-ones-story/.

Hislop, Jessica M. “1981: Barbara Williams becomes the first Black woman to get a PhD…and when observations were still done with photographic plates!” Astrobites | the astro-ph reader’s digest. Last modified June 20, 2020. https://astrobites.org/2020/06/20/1981-barbara-williams-becomes-the-first-black-woman-to-get-a-phd/.

Maylink. “Barbara A. Williams.” AAWIP – African American Women in Physics. Accessed July 10, 2024. https://aawip.com/profiles/barbara-a-williams/.

“The Science of Radio Astronomy.” National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Last modified October 15, 2020. https://public.nrao.edu/radio-astronomy/the-science-of-radio-astronomy/.

“The Technology of Radio Astronomy.” National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Last modified January 18, 2022. https://public.nrao.edu/radio-astronomy/the-technology-of-radio-astronomy/.

Whitten, Barbara L., Shannon R. Dorato, Margaret L. Duncombe, Patricia E. Allen, Cynthia A. Blaha, Heather Z. Butler, Kimberly A. Shaw, Beverley A. Taylor, and Barbara A. Williams. “What Works for Women in Undergraduate Physics and What We Can Learn from Women’s Colleges.” Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 13, no. 1 (2007), 37-76. doi:10.1615/jwomenminorscieneng.v13.i1.30.

Wilkins, Olivia H. “The First Black Woman PhD Astronomer: Barbara A. Williams — the Sky is Not the Limit.” The Sky is Not the Limit. Last modified February 8, 2021. https://theskyisnotthelimit.org/scoping-out-radio-astronomy/2021/02/08/the-first-black-woman-phd-astronomer-barbara-a-williams.

“Women in Astronomy 2009 – Invited Speakers.” SED Attic. Accessed July 10, 2024. https://attic.gsfc.nasa.gov/wia2009/invited_speakers/.