Edward Anders, who duped Nazis and illuminated the cosmos, dies at 98
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
'I found them tremendously exciting,' Dr. Anders said in a 2001 interview with the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 'I would even use the word romantic. Here were samples from far beyond the Earth's orbit, older than any rock on Earth, and you can get your hands on them, and even do respectable research on them.'
Advertisement
Dr. Anders's research turned out to be more than merely respectable. At the University of Chicago, his academic home for more than 30 years beginning in 1955, he conducted a series of groundbreaking studies into the early history of the solar system.
He demonstrated that meteorites were fragments from asteroids and not, as was believed at the time, debris from the moon or comets. He quantified the elements of the solar system in a journal article that has been cited more than 14,000 times. And he uncovered evidence of the global wildfires that helped lead to the dinosaurs' extinction.
Advertisement
'I find it hard to conceive of our science without Ed Anders,' Michael J. Drake, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona, said in a speech in 1990 in which he presented Dr. Anders with the V.M. Goldschmidt Award, the top honor of the Geochemical Society.
Dr. Anders spoke about the cosmos whimsically, with a sense of curiosity and awe.
In an interview with Discover magazine in 1991, he marveled at the rather mind-bending notion that everything about Earth — on it, in it, under it, around it — was unoriginal. 'The material in the solar system is secondhand,' he said. 'All of it originally was older than the solar system, but most of it has been reprocessed.'
He called meteorites 'the poor man's space probe,' because they deliver pieces of asteroids that scientists are able to study without traveling to outer space. The mysteries in the stardust they carry — of diamonds, graphite and silicon carbide — are never-ending, like the stars.
'What was the raw material of the solar system?' he asked in the Discover interview. 'Where did it come from? What were the nuclear and chemical processes in the parent stars? And how was this material altered in the early solar system?'
Dr. Anders spent his life trying to answer these celestial, seemingly impossible questions, even as painful, seemingly inexplicable ones about his childhood haunted him.
Advertisement
Edward Alperovitch was born June 21, 1926, in Liepaja and changed his surname to Anders when he became a naturalized US citizen in 1955. His father, Adolph Alperovitch, was a merchant. His mother, Erica (Sheftelovitch-Meiran) Alperovitch, was a file clerk.
When Edward was 14 years old, Soviet forces occupied Latvia, and his parents were forced to rent rooms in their apartment to Russian border guards. In June 1941, the Soviets began mass deportations to Russia. Edward's family was on the deportation list and received orders to pack their belongings.
One of their border-guard tenants, feeling sympathy for the family, removed them from the list. 'For the moment, we were saved,' Dr. Anders recalled in 1997 in an oral history interview for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Latvia, Jews faced restrictions on their movements and on their ability to practice their faith. Several hundred were massacred in a local park during a Nazi rampage. Edward and his family thought their days were numbered.
Then his father had an idea: Concoct a story about how his wife was not the biological child of Jewish parents, but rather an Aryan found on their doorstep in a basket with a note saying that she had been baptized. That made Edward and his brother half-Jews — 'only second class rather than total outcasts,' he said in the museum oral history.
'It was an absolutely crazy story for us to start,' he added, 'extremely audacious.'
It worked, but not for Edward's father, who had essentially sacrificed himself as part of the plan. He hid in the family's apartment but was discovered in November 1941 and arrested. A week later, a firing squad executed him.
Advertisement
The 'half-Jew' ruse continued for several years, and it ultimately spared Edward, along with his mother and brother, from a trip to a Nazi death camp.
'If we had any inkling that the war was going to last another four years, we never would have tried this plan, because this is a lie that simply couldn't go on for four years,' he said. 'We were just playing for time. Well, it worked, all right.'
Edward never finished high school, nor did he receive a bachelor's degree. After the war, he studied chemistry at a school in Munich affiliated with the United Nations. He later taught himself chemistry as a lab assistant at the University of Munich. After emigrating to the United States, he earned a doctorate from Columbia in 1954.
Throughout his career as a cosmochemist, Dr. Anders rarely, if ever, spoke about his childhood. 'You file it away in the proper place,' he said. 'You know where to find it when you need it. The file drawers don't pop open spontaneously.'
But after retiring, he began to revisit his memories in greater detail. He wrote a memoir, 'Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust' (2011), and created a database of the more than 7,000 Jews who were alive in Liepaja when the Germans rolled in.
'Most Holocaust victims have become nameless statistics,' he wrote in the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 'That would have pleased Hitler.'
Using government documents, directories, diaries and other materials he found in archives, Anders cataloged what happened to thousands of Jews in his town. He gave them back their names.
Advertisement
'Edward always saw himself as a bridge builder between past and present, between Jews and non-Jews, between the continents,' Uwe Neumärker, a historian who helped arrange for Anders' memoir to be published in German, said by email.
Dr. Anders married Joan Fleming in 1955. She died in 2019. In addition to his son, George, he is survived by a daughter, Nanci Schiman; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His brother, Georg, died of diphtheria in 1944.
Dr. Anders was raised Jewish but described himself as agnostic.
'In a way, peering into the solar system had an almost a spiritual component for him,' his son said in an interview. 'This was the creation story, and the creation story was pretty exciting and pretty amazing and pretty mysterious.'
This article originally appeared in
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Tiny Habit That Could Be Fueling Your Anxiety Without You Knowing It
Chances are you don't realize the impact anxiety can have on guys. Studies continuously show that women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder–but that doesn't mean you're immune. Researchers can't explain the causes of this disparity, but believe guys may feel pressured to exhibit anxious feelings in ways that seem more masculine. 'I think the biggest thing is men are socialized not to show anxiety,' said Carmen McLean, PhD, a researcher and clinical associate professor at Stanford University's Department of Psychiatry. 'Socializing to show agency and self-efficiency dissuades from showing anxiety.' This is one reason anxiety is often accompanied by substance abuse and other 'internalizing disorders, ' said McLean. Sometimes these signs can be subtle, meaning it's especially important to recognize symptoms of anxiety disorders specific to males. Some clues—nervousness, dread over impending danger and rapid breathing—are common across gender lines, but these five manifestations of anxiety disproportionately impact men: Men with social anxiety disorder are more likely to fear dating and are more commonly single, separated or divorced, according to an analysis of survey information from Columbia University. 'Men are supposed to take the lead in dating,' explained Stefan G. Hofmann, PhD and psychology professor at Boston University who researches anxiety. 'The male is the one who is expected to take the first step. That puts them in a performance situation.' Even in the age of apps, men are typically the pursuer. On OkCupid, males are three times more likely to send a first message in an opposite-sex exchange. This means constantly offering yourself up for evaluation and rejection–an anxiety-inducing prospect. 'It's a challenge for people who don't like to play that game,'said Hofman. Plus, some agonize over being chronically single–with reason–David Ezell, clinical director of Darien Wellness, a psychology clinic in Connecticut, told Men's Health. 'Men really benefit from marriage,' Ezell said. 'They're less likely to be sick. They're less likely to be hospitalized. They're hospitalized for shorter stays if they are hospitalized.' Also, marriage is a status symbol, a sign of 'maturation,' said Ezell. With so much at risk, dating and bachelorhood are significant sources of stress in men with anxiety. Men drink and use drugs to relieve anxiety more often than women, according to the same Columbia University study. Research has consistently shown a link between substance abuse and mental health disorders, particularly in men. 'They are looking for medication,' said Ezell. He explains a glass of booze pairs well with the 'I-can-fix-it-myself' attitude associated with masculinity because it doesn't require medical assistance and may seem like a socially acceptable way to ease stress. 'Alcohol is a very effective drug,' said Hofmann. 'It's why it's so popular.' Think about college students who 'pre-game" by drinking at a dorm or with a small group of friends before going to larger parties. They may not realize it, but this helps manage the anxiety of socializing. Guys who forego professional treatment may instead turn to drugs or heavy drinking to cope with anxiety–and this may be a doorway to addiction. In some men, anxiety may manifest as rage or anger. 'It's much more acceptable,' said McLean. While women may find support from friends or mental health professionals, guys often let their feelings build up until they hit a breaking point–and then the flood gates open. 'Because emotions don't get expressed [by men], because anxiety isn't expressed in a healthy way, there are busts of anger as a result,' said Ezell. 'I think anger is considered decisive.' If typical signs of anxiety, like nervousness or fear, are discouraged in men, anger is their only acceptable emotional response. In another study of survey data from Columbia University, men were more likely than women to experience relationship strain from worrying. This could be because women are more likely to have a circle of close friends, whereas men tend to have few confidants who can provide support through emotional distress. 'Men tend to rely on romantic partners for stress,' said Hofman. This can be a burden, he explained. Sociologist Eli J. Finkel further detailed the risk of putting all that psychological dependence on one person in his book, The All-Or-Nothing Marriage. Finkel argued that modern relationships are tense because people seek comfort, growth, purpose, and a host of other needs from romantic partnerships. Prior generations sought comfort in an entire network of family and friends. 'Marriage for a long time served a set and relatively limited array of different functions for us,' Finkel told the NPR podcast Hidden Brain. 'And over time we've piled more and more of these emotional and psychological functions." Anxious men might burn out their few outlets (or only outlet) for social support quickly. Ezell's practice is located in Darien, Connecticut, a bedroom community for hedge fund managers and Wall Street executives. With a median family income of $208,125, it's frequently named one of the wealthiest municipalities in the United States. Despite their success, Ezell has clients who are riddled with anxiety over what they haven't accomplished. 'My clients make a lot of money,' said Ezell. 'They are still not happy and want to know why.' Guys are often anxious about getting ahead of peers, he said. If a friend winters in Aspen, his client wants to winter in the Alps. There is a particular pressure in status attainment—and status advancement—that fuels anxiety disorders for many. 'We are very grateful by getting things,' Ezell said, 'but we get acclimated to that status very quickly. If I am eating well; I want to be eating better.' You Might Also Like The Best Hair Growth Shampoos for Men to Buy Now 25 Vegetables That Are Surprising Sources of Protein
CNN
3 days ago
- CNN
A couple tried for 18 years to get pregnant. AI made it happen
AI Maternal health Women's health FacebookTweetLink After trying to conceive for 18 years, one couple is now pregnant with their first child thanks to the power of artificial intelligence. The couple had undergone several rounds of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, visiting fertility centers around the world in the hopes of having a baby. The IVF process involves removing a woman's egg and combining it with sperm in a laboratory to create an embryo, which is then implanted in the womb. But for this couple, the IVF attempts were unsuccessful due to azoospermia, a rare condition in which no measurable sperm are present in the male partner's semen, which can lead to male infertility. A typical semen sample contains hundreds of millions of sperm, but men with azoospermia have such low counts that no sperm cells can be found, even after hours of meticulous searching under a microscope. So the couple, who wish to remain anonymous to protect their privacy, went to the Columbia University Fertility Center to try a novel approach. It's called the STAR method, and it uses AI to help identify and recover hidden sperm in men who once thought they had no sperm at all. All the husband had to do was leave a semen sample with the medical team. 'We kept our hopes to a minimum after so many disappointments,' the wife said in an emailed statement. Researchers at the fertility center analyzed the semen sample with the AI system. Three hidden sperm were found, recovered and used to fertilize the wife's eggs via IVF, and she became the first successful pregnancy enabled by the STAR method. The baby is due in December. 'It took me two days to believe I was actually pregnant,' she said. 'I still wake up in the morning and can't believe if this is true or not. I still don't believe I am pregnant until I see the scans.' Artificial intelligence has advanced the field of fertility care in the United States: More medical facilities are using AI to help assess egg quality or screen for healthy embryos when patients are undergoing IVF. There's still more research and testing needed, but AI may now be making advancements in male infertility, in particular. Dr. Zev Williams, director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, and his colleagues spent five years developing the STAR method to help detect and recover sperm in semen samples from people who had azoospermia. They were struck by the system's results. 'A patient provided a sample, and highly skilled technicians looked for two days through that sample to try to find sperm. They didn't find any. We brought it to the AI-based STAR System. In one hour, it found 44 sperm. So right then, we realized, 'Wow, this is really a game-changer. This is going to make such a big difference for patients,' ' said Williams, who led the research team. When a semen sample is placed on a specially designed chip under a microscope, the STAR system – which stands for Sperm Tracking and Recovery – connects to the microscope through a high-speed camera and high-powered imaging technology to scan the sample, taking more than 8 million images in under an hour to find what it has been trained to identify as a sperm cell. The system instantly isolates that sperm cell into a tiny droplet of media, allowing embryologists to recover cells that they may never have been able to find or identify with their own eyes. 'It's like searching for a needle scattered across a thousand haystacks, completing the search in under an hour and doing it so gently, without any harmful lasers or stains, that the sperm can still be used to fertilize an egg,' Williams said. 'What's remarkable is that instead of the usual [200 million] to 300 million sperm in a typical sample, these patients may have just two or three. Not 2 [million] or 3 million, literally two or three,' he said. 'But with the precision of the STAR system and the expertise of our embryologists, even those few can be used to successfully fertilize an egg.' It's estimated that the male partner accounts for up to 40% of all infertility cases in the United States, and up to 10% of men with infertility are azoospermic. 'This often is a really heartbreaking and shocking and unexpected diagnosis,' Williams said. 'Most men who have azoospermia feel completely healthy and normal. There's no impairment of their sexual function, and the semen looks normal, too. The difference is that when you look at it under a microscope, instead of seeing literally hundreds of millions of sperm swimming, you just see cell debris and fragments but no sperm.' Treatment options for azoospermia traditionally have included uncomfortable surgery to retrieve sperm directly from a patient's testes. 'A part of the testes gets removed and broken into little pieces, and you try to find sperm there,' Williams said. 'It's invasive. You can only do it a couple of times before there could be permanent scarring and damage to the testes, and it's painful.' Other treatment options may include prescription hormone medications – but that will be effective only if the person has an imbalance of hormones. If no other treatment options are successful, couples may use donor sperm to have a child. Williams said the STAR method can be a new option. 'It really was a team effort to develop this, and that's what really drove and motivated everybody, the fact that you can now help couples who otherwise couldn't have that opportunity,' he said. Although the method is currently available only at the Columbia University Fertility Center, Williams and his colleagues want to publish their work and share it with other fertility centers. Using the STAR method to find, isolate and freeze sperm for a patient would cost a little under $3,000 total, he said. 'Infertility is unique in a way in that it's such an ancient part of the human experience. It's literally biblical. It's something we've had to contend with through all of human history,' he said. 'It's amazing to think that the most advanced technologies that we currently have are being used to solve this really ancient problem.' It's not the first time doctors have turned to AI to help men with azoospermia. A separate research team in Canada built an AI model that could automate and accelerate the process of searching for rare sperm in samples from men with the condition. 'The reason AI is so well-suited for this is AI really relies on learning – showing it an image of what a sperm looks like, what the shape is, what characteristics it should have – and then being able to use that learning algorithm to help identify that specific image that you're looking for,' said Dr. Sevann Helo, a urologist at Mayo Clinic with specialty interest in male infertility and male sexual dysfunction, who was not involved in the STAR method or the research in Canada. 'It's very exciting,' she said. 'AI, in general, at least in the medical community, I think is a whole new landscape and really will revolutionize the way we look at a lot of problems in medicine.' The STAR method is a novel approach to identifying sperm, but AI has been used in many other ways within fertility medicine too, said Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a San Francisco-based reproductive endocrinologist and host of the podcast 'The Egg Whisperer Show.' 'AI is helping us see what our eyes can't,' Eyvazzadeh, who was not involved in the development of STAR, wrote in an email. For instance, AI algorithms, such as one called Stork-A, have been used to analyze early-stage embryos and predict with 'surprising accuracy' which ones are likely to be healthy. Another AI tool, CHLOE, can assess the quality of a woman's eggs before she may freeze them for future use. 'AI is being used to personalize IVF medication protocols, making cycles more efficient and less of a guessing game. It's also helping with sperm selection, identifying the healthiest sperm even in difficult samples. And AI can now even predict IVF success rates with more precision than ever before, using massive data sets to give patients personalized guidance,' Eyvazzadeh said. 'The common thread? Better decisions, more confidence, and a more compassionate experience for patients.' The new STAR system is 'a game-changer,' she said. 'AI isn't creating sperm – it's helping us find the rare, viable ones that are already there but nearly invisible,' she said. 'It's a breakthrough not because it replaces human expertise, but because it amplifies it – and that's the future of fertility care.' But there is also a growing concern that the rushed application of AI in reproductive medicine could give false hope to patients, said Dr. Gianpiero Palermo, professor of embryology and director of andrology and assisted fertilization at Weill Cornell Medicine. 'AI is gaining a lot of traction nowadays to offer unbiased evaluation on embryos by looking at embryo morphology,' Palermo said in an email. 'However, current available models are still somewhat inconsistent and require additional validation.' Palermo said the STAR approach needs to be validated and would still require human embryologists to pick up sperm and inject them into an egg to create an embryo for patients undergoing IVF. 'Maybe the AI addition may help to retrieve the spermatozoon a little faster and maybe one more than the embryologist,' said Palermo, who was not involved in the development of STAR but was the first to describe the method of injecting sperm directly into an egg. Since he pioneered that method, it has become the most-utilized assisted reproductive technology in the world. 'In my opinion, this approach is faulty because inevitably some men will have no spermatozoa,' Palermo said of the STAR method, 'doesn't matter how their specimens are screened whether by humans or a machine.'
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
How do you teach computer science in the AI era?
Computer science, more than any other field of study, is being challenged by generative AI. The AI technology behind chatbots such as ChatGPT, which can write essays and answer questions with humanlike fluency, is making inroads across academia. But AI is coming fastest and most forcefully to computer science, which emphasizes writing code, the language of computers. Advertisement Big tech companies and startups have introduced AI assistants that can generate code and are rapidly becoming more capable. And in January, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO, predicted that AI technology would effectively match the performance of a midlevel software engineer sometime this year. Computer science programs at universities across the country are now scrambling to understand the implications of the technological transformation, grappling with what to keep teaching in the AI era. Ideas range from less emphasis on mastering programming languages to focusing on hybrid courses designed to inject computing into every profession, as educators ponder what the tech jobs of the future will look like in an AI economy. 'We're seeing the tip of the AI tsunami,' said Jeannette Wing, a computer science professor and executive vice president of research at Columbia University. Advertisement Heightening the sense of urgency is a tech job market that has tightened in recent years. Computer science graduates are finding that job offers, once plentiful, are often scarce. Tech companies are relying more on AI for some aspects of coding, eliminating some entry-level work. Some educators now believe the discipline could broaden to become more like a liberal arts degree, with a greater emphasis on critical thinking and communication skills. The National Science Foundation is funding a program, Level Up AI, to bring together university and community college educators and researchers to move toward a shared vision of the essentials of AI education. The 18-month project, run by the Computing Research Association, a research and education nonprofit, in partnership with New Mexico State University, is organizing conferences and roundtables and producing white papers to share resources and best practices. The NSF-backed initiative was created because of 'a sense of urgency that we need a lot more computing students -- and more people -- who know about AI in the workforce,' said Mary Lou Maher, a computer scientist and a director of the Computing Research Association. The future of computer science education, Maher said, is likely to focus less on coding and more on computational thinking and AI literacy. Computational thinking involves breaking down problems into smaller tasks, developing step-by-step solutions and using data to reach evidence-based conclusions. AI literacy is an understanding -- at varying depths for students at different levels -- of how AI works, how to use it responsibly and how it is affecting society. Nurturing informed skepticism, she said, should be a goal. Advertisement At Carnegie Mellon, as faculty members prepare for their gathering, Cortina said his view was that the coursework should include instruction in the traditional basics of computing and AI principles, followed by plenty of hands-on experience designing software using the new tools. 'We think that's where it's going,' he said. 'But do we need a more profound change in the curriculum?' Currently, individual computer science professors choose whether to allow students to use AI. Last year, Carnegie Mellon endorsed using AI for introductory courses. Initially, Cortina said, many students regarded AI as a 'magic bullet' to quickly complete homework assignments that involved writing programs. 'But they didn't understand half of what the code was,' he said, leading many to realize the value of knowing how to write and debug code themselves. 'The students are resetting.' That's true for many computer science students embracing the new AI tools, with some reservations. They say they use AI for building initial prototype programs, for checking for errors in code and as a digital tutor to answer questions. But they are reluctant to rely on it too much, fearing it dulls their computing acumen. Many students say they send out 100 to 200 applications for summer internships and first jobs. Connor Drake, who will be a senior next fall at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, counts himself lucky, having scored an interview after submitting only 30 applications. He was offered a job as a cybersecurity intern this summer for Duke Energy, a large utility company, in Charlotte. 'A computer science degree used to be a golden ticket to the promised land of jobs,' Drake, 22, said. 'That's no longer the case.' Advertisement Drake's personal AI-defense strategy is to expand his skill set. In addition to his computer science major, he has minored in political science with a specialty in security and intelligence studies -- a field where his expertise in cybersecurity could well be applied. He is president of a university cybersecurity club and has served in student government. Drake, like other computer science students, has been forced to adjust to an increasingly tough tech job market. Several factors, labor experts say, are at work. Big tech companies, in particular, have curbed their hiring for the past few years, a sharp pullback from the pandemic-era boom years. The exception is the hectic recruiting of a relatively small number of the most coveted AI experts, who are being offered lucrative pay packages. But most technology workers do not work for tech companies. Overall employment for workers in tech occupations had generally held up until recently -- down 6 percent since February, according to government statistics. Employers have sent a sharper signal with a significant pullback in tech job listings. In the past three years, there has been a 65 percent drop from companies seeking workers with two years of experience or less, according to an analysis by CompTIA, a technology research and education organization. The decline in listings for tech workers with all levels of experience is down 58 percent. 'We're mainly seeing a postpandemic unwinding of hiring and the impact of the current economic uncertainty,' said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. 'We don't really have a clear AI effect yet.' While the road ahead for computer science education may be uncertain, the market for AI-assisted software is poised for growth, experts say. AI is a productivity tool, and every new wave of computing -- the personal computer, the internet, the smartphone -- has increased the demand for software and for programmers. Advertisement This time, they say, the result may be a burst of technology democratization as chatbot-style tools are used by people in fields from medicine to marketing to create their own programs, tailored for their industry, fed by industry-specific data sets. 'The growth in software engineering jobs may decline, but the total number of people involved in programming will increase,' said Alex Aiken, a professor of computer science at Stanford University. This article originally appeared in .
