From Building Roads To Building Peace: A Woman Chemist's

Chapter 20

From Building Roads To Building Peace: A Woman Chemist’s Odyssey Downloaded by UNIV OF SYDNEY on March 20, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 2, 2015 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2015-1195.ch020

Zafra Margolin Lerman* President, Malta Conferences Foundation, 1911 Grant Street, Evanston, Illinois 60201, U.S.A. *E-mail: [email protected]

I started my chemistry adventure while in high school, where I was the only female in a science- and mathematics-oriented class. During our junior year of high school, we were sent to the desert, close to the Red Sea in Israel to build roads. In the summers, we were in a kibbutz on the border to help with the work needed. After work, we had time to discuss our future plans. Upon graduating from high school, I was drafted into the Army, and in the evenings, started my college education and majored in chemistry. While conducting research on isotope effects, I realized that I wanted to make chemistry accessible to all. My tenet in life is that equal access to science education is a human right. I developed a method of teaching chemistry using art, music, dance, and drama, which attracted students at all educational levels to chemistry. I felt that as chemists, we have obligations to make the planet a better place for humankind. At this point, I became very active in working towards scientific freedom and human rights, helping chemists in the Soviet Union, China, Chile, Guatemala, and many other countries. This work led me to use chemistry as a bridge to peace in the Middle East by organizing conferences which bring together chemists from fifteen Middle East countries with six Nobel Laureates for six days. The conferences allow the participants to collaborate on solutions to problems facing the Middle East and the world. The issues are; Air and Water Quality, Alternative Energy Sources, and Science Education at all levels. I started my career by building roads and through chemistry, moved to building a bridge to peace in the Middle East.

© 2015 American Chemical Society Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

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Building Roads I was born and grew up in Israel, which was a developing country at the time. We did not have toys, after-school programs, sports, or any sort of guided activities while growing up. This demanded that we develop our own creativity to build toys and to develop our own activities so we could socialize with each other. Leadership was vital in order to develop these sorts of skills. Because the homes in Israel did not have hot showers, a center of our activity was a central bath made up of many showers. All of the children loved the gathering and this was like a community center for us. I remember coming home one day and my parents announcing that we now had a shower with running hot water at home. I started to cry and blamed them for trying to spoil my social life, so that instead of going together with a group of children to the central bath, I would now have to shower alone. From the age of ten, we all spent the summers in a kibbutz, a sort of commune that was built on the borders of the country. The main activity was agriculture. During the harvest, these communes needed more hands and we, the children, volunteered to work in the fields and help the members of the kibbutz. We would go out at 4AM to pick grapes because by 10AM, it would already be too hot to work in the fields. We would get forty bee stings a day. The adults promised us that these stings would help us avoid arthritis later in life. (As a matter of fact, these days there is research on the effects of bee stings on arthritis). In the evenings, we would gather together and have discussions about agriculture and living in a commune. There is no doubt that this experience helped us to build character and leadership skills. In high school, we were already required to choose majors. I had chosen science and math, which landed me in a class with all boys. I had to prove to them that I could be as good as they when it came to science and math. Socially, it was an interesting time. At an age when girls find their best girlfriends, my best friends were boys. During the junior year of high school, every student was required to spend four weeks in the desert, close to the Red Sea, building roads going from the south to the north of the country. It was a wonderful experience. We lived in tents, stood guard at night, and spent all day building the roads (Fig. 1). After four weeks, there was an exchange of groups, and another group of juniors would arrive to continue the task. Upon graduating from high school, we all were drafted to the army, male and female alike. This was a new experience for all of us. Suddenly, I had to share my room with fifty other girls I had never met before for two months during training (Fig. 2). Leadership was a very important characteristic for success in the army. All of these experiences taught the importance of giving to your country. The famous John F. Kennedy saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” was practiced in Israel by everybody starting from a very young age.

210 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 1. The tents in the desert ca. 1953. (Reprinted with permission from Ref. (3). Copyright 2013 American Chemical Society.)

Figure 2. Entering the army. The picture shows everyone wearing their berets on opposite sides, not knowing the uniform rules yet ca. 1955. (Courtesy of the author.) 211 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


We all entered college after serving for two years in the army. I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chemistry from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and my Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science. I was very proud that my son attended the three ceremonies for my Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D degrees. In those days, it was very unusual for an undergraduate student to have a child. My field of research was secondary isotope effects, specifically Oxygen and Carbon Isotope Effects in Decarbonylation Reactions. As a graduate student, I was invited to the U.S. to deliver a lecture in the Gordon Conference on Chemistry and Physics of Isotopes. I was lucky enough to meet Professor Frank Long from Cornell University, who invited me to join his group at Cornell. Upon receiving my Ph.D., I moved to the U.S. with my son to continue my postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University and continued my research on isotope effects. Working with Frank Long gave me the opportunity to become involved in issues about Science and Society, Arms Control and Disarmament, and Human Rights. From Cornell, I moved to Northwestern University and then continued my research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). While at the ETH, I had to overcome two challenges, one to learn German so I could participate in lectures and seminars, the other one, to learn to ski because we had skiing seminars for a week at a time in the Alps. I overcame both challenges.

Education I decided that in order to make the world a better place for humankind, I would like to develop methods of teaching chemistry, which would make it possible for everybody to master the subject. My tenet in life is that equal access to science education is a human right that belongs to all. In order to guarantee science education to all, I developed methods for teaching and assessing students, which took into account students’ talents, interests, and cultural backgrounds. There is no one method that can fit all. If we don’t develop different methods for different students, we will not be able to make science accessible to all (1). This will result in a two-class society, not divided by royalty and wealth, but divided by knowledge of science. I first developed chemistry courses for students majoring in art, music, dance, drama, poetry, and computer animation. The class was student-centered. In the world of education, a known saying is, “A teacher can be a sage on the stage or a guide on the side.” In this method, the teacher is a guide on the side. The central piece of this method is that the students show their knowledge through projects, which they produce alone or in groups, through the use of different media to present their projects to the class (Fig. 3). For example, a group of theater students showed their understanding of the concept of the ionic bond through a drama, which followed Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In this presentation, sodium gave his extra electron to chlorine to make her his wife and in order to follow Shakespeare’s tragedy, water came along and separated 212 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


the couple. They ended the drama by having each participant hold up a plaque stating, “Learn to take every tragedy with a grain of salt,” where the plaque that said “salt” was held up by the NaCl couple. Other students presented a project on the chemical bond called the “Bondfather” and followed the “Godfather” story line, where a mother comes to Don Mendeleev to ask him for help because her daughter is in an ionic bond with a boy named sodium and she wants her in a covalent bond, where electrons are shared. The students spent long hours to produce their projects and to master the understanding of the abstract concepts of chemistry, which they tried to explain in this fashion. An advantage of this method is that these projects were used as an alternative assessment method. Instead of a written test, the students presented their projects to the whole class, where their fellow classmates along with the professor assessed their knowledge of the subject.

Figure 3. Student’s cartoon strip. (Art by Joe Nelson. Used with permission.)

As a result of the success of this method, the National Science Foundation funded a project in the inner city of Chicago to bring this method of teaching to the Chicago Public Schools. An old African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child,” therefore, we ran workshops for teachers, parents, and the students. In these workshops, we mixed together students from diverse cultural backgrounds, which helped the students to learn, not only chemistry, but also appreciation for other religions and cultural backgrounds. 213 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


We showed the teachers, parents, and students how the arts can be a wonderful vehicle for learning, teaching, and assessing science (2). We always brought undergraduate students who represented the cultural demographics of Chicago to work with the group. These students presented their understanding of different scientific concepts to the teachers, parents, and students through different media: paintings, sculptures, songs, dances, drama, poetry, rap, and film. For example, two students in the same class visualized the fission reaction, where a neutron bombards the nucleus of the atom, but they presented it using the media that each felt most comfortable using. One presented it as a computer animation, and another student choreographed it as a dance (3). 16,000 students participated in this program and many of them went on to pursue careers in the sciences and in science-related fields. More than 1,000 teachers participated in the program over 20 years and during those years influenced hundreds of thousands of students.

Figure 4. Science education at a dance studio ca. 1997. Photograph by David Morton. (Reprinted with permission from Ref. (3). Copyright 2013 American Chemical Society.)

In a very poor neighborhood of Chicago, we partnered with a dance studio where at night, students, many of whom were from homeless families, came to learn dance and we took the opportunity to teach them chemistry through dance (Fig. 4). We encouraged these students to obtain high school diplomas and to continue onto college. Several of them went on to pursue a PhD. in Biochemistry. In 2001, I was asked to deliver a plenary lecture at a Gordon Conference on Science Visualization, and managed to raise enough money to bring 25 of the AfricanAmerican students who had learned chemistry at the dance studio, to participate 214 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


in the conference. They demonstrated to the scientists their understanding of scientific concepts through dance. The audience reacted with a standing ovation and a chorus of “bravo!” which contributed to the students’ self-confidence and self-esteem (3, 4). In 2000, I received the first international award in the new democratic South Africa from the World Cultural Council. This gave me the opportunity to adopt the school district of Soweto and to introduce the methods of teaching science through the arts to the children. These methods were extended to many institutions in the United States and around the world.

Human Rights For 25 years, I chaired the subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights of the ACS International Activities Committee. During these 25 years, the subcommittee worked on behalf of many scientists around the world whose human rights were abused. We were very successful in securing the release of prisoners of conscience from prison, bringing dissidents to freedom in the United States and joined campaigns to prevent executions in several countries. The written letters for these activites were always signed by the Presidents of ACS during these 25 years. The first success of the subcommittee was the release of chemist Yuri Tarnopolsky, who spent three years in hard labor in Siberia in the Soviet Union. We were involved in a writing campaign and joined other human rights groups who worked on his behalf. He was released in 1987 and with the effort of the human rights groups, came to the U.S. Yuri’s first address was at an ACS meeting in New Orleans, where he described his experience and thanked the subcommittee for its efforts on his behalf. He emphasized very strongly that without the help of the human rights group, he would still be spending time in Siberia. Yuri summarized his understanding of the work of human rights activists in a letter to me stating; “I often wondered what could make a person living in freedom, safety, and comfort to fight for someone deprived of all that and languishing on the other side of the globe.... I realized that both the faraway victim and his American guardian angel had something in common. They had the same ability to go against the tide, and they did for science something which could hardly be rationalized, an exhausting messy job of fixing its very foundation, invisible on the pages of professional journals they kept science both human and humane (5).“ After reading Yuri’s statement, I understood why I risked my life several times for the benefit of people whom I had never met. In order to help dissidents in the Soviet Union, I took a crash course in Russian and went to the Soviet Union several times (6). I met with dissidents after midnight in dark alleys and conducted 215 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


seminars in attics in the middle of the night. During these meetings, I distributed copies of C&EN and other scientific magazines so that these scientists would be able to read about scientific discoveries. In addition, I collected information and CVs from them so that I could bring the information back to the states and help facilitate their immigration to the U.S. It was against the Soviet law to take this information out of the country and I had to find ways to hide it in order to protect my freedom. We managed to bring several of these scientists to the United States and help them to find jobs. I was lucky enough to be able to meet with Andrei Sakharov and discuss with him the work of the subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights (Fig. 5). He emphasized that continuous pressure on the governments from the outside was the best way to help the victims. When the victims learned of this outside support, it gave them courage to persevere, despite their terrible circumstances, because they knew others cared.

Figure 5. Andrei Sakharov and Zafra Lerman ca. 1988. (Reprinted with permission from Ref. (3). Copyright 2013 American Chemical Society.) 216 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


After the incidents in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989, the subcommittee worked very hard on behalf of dissidents in China, including physicist Fang Lizhi, who was the father of the prodemocracy movement in China (7). During the incident in Tiananmen Square, he managed to escape to the American Embassy where he lived for a year. We worked very hard on his behalf and when he arrived to the U.S., he addressed the ACS members in a National meeting in San Francisco. In addition, his first speech in Chinese to China was made from my office in Chicago through the Voice of America Radio. I visited China several times, and risked bringing letters from Fang Lizhi to dissidents who were under house arrest and their letters back to him. When I was invited to deliver a plenary lecture in Beijing in the International Conference on Public Understanding of Science, I dedicated my lecture to the scientists who still were in jail, which made the Chinese authorities quite unhappy. Following this lecture I was closely watched when I tried to visit different dissidents. As a result of my lecture and the dedication, I appeared on China’s national television. Cuba was another challenge for the Subcommittee for Scientific Freedom and Human Rights. Because of the American embargo on Cuba, Americans cannot freely visit Cuba without a license from the Treasury Department, a process that takes a long time and does not guarantee that the license will be given. We felt that in order to have scientific freedom, the Subcommittee must arrange for a delegation from ACS to go to Cuba and attend the Cuban Chemical Society Meeting to deliver lectures; therefore, we went through the complicated process of receiving a license. Since 1998, seven delegations have gone to Cuba. While in Cuba, we dealt with scientists who were in prison and whose human rights were abused. During one of these conferences, the Cuban Chemical Society made me an honorary member, and Cuba National Television interviewed me. Another responsibility for Human Rights groups is the work on AIDS in Africa. In 1999, I received the Presidential Award for Excellence in STEM Mentoring from President Bill Clinton. I used the award money to take African American students with me to Kenya and South Africa to work at AIDS orphanages and produce a documentary on the experience.

Building Bridges to Peace Since September 2001, the eyes of the world have been on the Middle East. The Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights believed that it might be possible to use science as a bridge to peace in the Middle East. The idea was to bring together chemists from 15 Middle East countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates) with six Nobel Laureates to work toward solving scientific problems of importance to the region and to the world. The Subcommittee brought the idea to the Board of ACS, which enthusiastically supported it and spearheaded the project. IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry), and the GDCh (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker) joined later as co-sponsors (3, 8). 217 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


The First Conference referred to as “Malta I” was held in 2003 on the Island of Malta. The title of the Conference was “Frontiers of Chemical Sciences: Research and Education in the Middle East – A Bridge to Peace.” The first conference was a big success, despite the initial hesitation of the Middle East participants to interact with each other. At the end of the five days, it looked more like a family reunion than a gathering of scientists from countries whose governments do not have diplomatic relationships with each other. The conference was composed of plenary lectures by the Nobel Laureates and workshops. The Middle East participants presented their work orally in workshops or in poster sessions. The workshops included the following subjects; • • • • • •

Environment: Air and Water Quality Sustainability of Resources, Energy and Materials Science and Technology Education at all Levels Nanotechnology and Material Science Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products Chemistry Safety and Security

As a result of the Malta Conferences, collaborations on the important issue of water became very strong. The region’s severe poor air quality and insufficient high quality water can be successfully assessed and addressed by environmental science. However, the solutions have to be international because the badly polluted air sheds and watersheds are regional in nature and cross many national boundaries. A working group on Regional Water Quality Assessment in Jordan, Palestine and Israel was conceived at the Malta III conference and received funding from IUPAC to continue the assessment. During Malta IV, this group defined and launched an ambitious research program, involving hydrologists and environmental chemists from Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Kuwait (with advisors from the U.S. and EU). Reports of the work of the group were given in Malta V and Malta VI. The working group plans to expand their activities to include Syria and Lebanon. There is no clean drinking water in Gaza. As a result of the Malta Conference, collaborations were formed between scientists from Al-Azhar University in Gaza and scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology for heavy metals analysis (ICP analysis) of water samples brought from Gaza to be analyzed at the Technion (9–12). The Malta Conferences were recognized by Senator Dick Durbin (13) with a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate and by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (14) with a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. The two speeches are in the permanent Congressional Records. The Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) recognized the work of the Malta Conferences with the George Brown award (15). As President of the Malta Conferences Foundation, I was invited to deliver a lecture on Malta at the Nobel Peace Institute in Oslo, Norway (Fig. 6). The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recognized the Malta Conferences with the AAAS Science and Diplomacy Award. 218 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


At the end of every Conference, the participants unanimously voted to gather again two years later. There have been six conferences to date. In 2003 and 2005 the conferences took place on the Island of Malta; 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey; 2009 in Amman, Jordan. In 2011, the Malta Conference was invited to be held at UNESCO’s Headquarters in Paris as one of the last events for the International Year of Chemistry. The Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, opened the Conference and His Royal Highness Prince Hassan of Jordan gave the first lecture (Fig. 7). In 2013, in celebration of the tenth Anniversary of the first Malta Conference, it returned to the Island of Malta and was opened by his Excellency Dr. George Abela President of the Republic of Malta, where he stated, “In 2003, a great idea was born in Malta, this idea being the use of Science as a Bridge to Peace in the Middle East. At first, there were only slender hopes of it surviving, yet it has thrived, grown and returns home to Malta to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its inception (16, 17)…”

Figure 6. Lecturing at The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, 2009. (Reprinted with permission from Ref. (3). Copyright 2013 American Chemical Society.) 219 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 7. HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan and Director General of UNESCO Irina Bokova. (Photograph by Cynthia Mentz. Used with permission.)

The Malta Conferences contribute to encourage women leadership in the chemical enterprise. The number of women in the conference is continuously growing with every passing conference. The only woman with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Ada Yonath, is a participant in the Malta Conferences and is a role model to the young women from the Middle East. The women formed very strong bonds and consider themselves a sisterhood. The Malta Conferences are the ONLY platform in the world where scientists from 15 Middle East countries are collaborating and cooperating on scientific issues, as well as developing professional and personal relationships with each other. The common language of science is used for science diplomacy, serving as a bridge to tolerance, understanding and peace between the Arabs, Iranians and Israelis, and between the Muslim world and the West (18). 220 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

My personal odyssey of moving from building roads to building peace is an example of how education, human rights, and peace are intertwined.

References 1. 2.


3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

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From Building Roads To Building Peace: A Woman Chemist's

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