Alumni Interview: Five Things That Matter with Marcia MacDonald Neugebauer '50

It’s hard to find a more celebrated moment in U.S. history than NASA during the early days of the space race. And Hollywood most certainly agrees, having churned out scores of biopics elevating and celebrating the brilliant minds who first placed Armstrong on the moon. Before that “one small step for man” in 1969, there were countless hours of scientific theory, space instrument creation, and many other spacecraft sent up to observe and report on the great beyond. 

Those chosen few who took part in the race for space discovery in the 1950s and 1960s might not have known at the time the part they’d play in making history. One such pioneer (though she disputes the label) is Marcia MacDonald Neugebauer ’50. Marcia was a research scientist with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1956 until her retirement in 1996. She and her team were the first to successfully measure the existence and properties of the solar wind with their tool, a curved plate analyzer (CPA), which was launched on the Mariner 2 spacecraft in 1962. 

As space discovery tended to do in the early days of NASA (created in 1958), Marcia’s work has been foundational for further space exploration and study, providing the shoulders on which today’s scientists stand. For her work, Marcia has received numerous awards, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award given by NASA. Other recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal include Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Neil Armstrong. According to NASA, the contribution of winners of this prize, “must be so extraordinary that other forms of recognition would be inadequate.”

Additionally, Marcia earned the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and the George Ellery Hale Prize from the American Astronomical Society. She was named the Museum of Science and Industry California Woman Scientist of the Year in 1967 and was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 1997. 

For someone who has contributed so indelibly to one of the most seminal moments in U.S. space exploration, Marcia is quite solidly grounded here on planet Earth. When asked about what it was like as a woman working with NASA in the 1960s, she is quick to demur and chalk up her success to “being in the right place at the right time.” 

After leaving Burr and Burton Seminary, Marcia graduated from Cornell University and earned her M.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois Urbana in 1956. After her master’s degree, Marcia got a job with JPL in California and married her husband, Gerry, her former Cornell lab partner, who went on to become chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. At the time, Marcia considered pursuing a Ph.D. at Caltech like her husband, but the school didn’t then accept women. So, she said, “I decided it might be better to get an interesting job than to keep being a student.” Marcia and Gerry had two daughters and two granddaughters. Marcia currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she continues to hold an appointment at the University of Arizona at its Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. 

As we sat down with Marcia during a sunny summer afternoon over Zoom, she talked about what it was like to innovate and discover in the field of solar wind. And, she also talked about how her love of science started right here at Burr and Burton. Marcia spent all four years at Burr and Burton, moving with her family to Vermont from Rye, NY. 

Solar wind is the Sun’s atmosphere, which is so hot that the Sun’s gravity can’t hold it down so it streams out through space. The sun is like a 3-dimensional rocket nozzle. 

 

(In the early 1960s) not everybody in the field agreed that it (solar wind) existed. There were people who thought Gene (Eugene) Parker’s (astrophysicist who predicted the existence of the solar wind) theory was correct. There were people who thought he was totally wrong, and the sun’s atmosphere didn’t expand, that it just sat there, sort of like the Earth’s atmosphere, and then there was a guy named Joe Chamberlain who was in between, who said there was a ‘solar breeze’ not a solar wind. So, we had to go and see who was right, and I played a role in deciding which theory was correct.

 

It is difficult to think of myself as one of the “Pioneers of Space Physics.” I certainly did not enter the field because of any strong pioneering spirit. It was simply a matter of being at the right place at the right time. [excerpted from Pioneers of space physics: A career in solar wind by Marcia Neugebauer] 

 

I doubt if it was tenacity, but really just the path of least resistance. If I didn’t do what I did, what would I have done? It was fun! 

 

There was a difference between manned space flight and the kind of stuff I was working on. My only interaction with the manned program was some of the astronauts set up our solar wind detectors on the moon. And that was not a good experience. We had to design it so far ahead of the actual flight, that we knew the answer we were looking for before our instruments ever got there. (Prior to the solar wind detectors being set up on the moon), there was an Explorer mission that circled the moon and could measure the solar wind in the vicinity of the moon. 

 

I always did well in math. And, looking back on things, I would always rather figure things out than memorize things. And still, I would rather do puzzles than memorize things. Mr. Redington’s physics class was one of my favorites, so I decided that physics might be a good major.

 

One thing that gave me a bit of an edge, was my father taught me to use a slide rule, and I don’t think other kids in the class had that. So, I came up with answers faster than the other kids. 

 

Outside of class, Mr. Redington helped me and gave me the materials needed to set up a phone line between my dorm room and a friend’s dorm room, so we could talk after lights out. We weren’t ever discovered for that!

 

Spending four years in the BBS third-floor dorm was a case of almost total immersion in student life. Besides going to classes, we interacted with other students in afternoon sports (soccer, basketball, skiing, softball), ate together three times a day, and went to study hall together in the evenings. I knew everyone in the dorm and in my class (of 42 people) and many of the others in the school. It was fun.

 

Mr. Henry took me to task for being on both the girls' basketball team and the girls' ski team, because they were both the same season. But their detailed schedules didn’t conflict. I didn’t learn to ski until I moved to Vermont when I was 14, so, I was no asset to the ski team. Once (in a ski race) I didn’t come in last, so I was very proud of that. I was very tall, so I was an asset to the basketball team. So, I kept on doing both despite Mr. Henry. 

 

A lot of (my career) was good luck. And a good education certainly helped. The world is changing so fast that when today’s high-schoolers finish their education they might end up doing types of work that don’t even exist today. (My advice to current students) is to do the best that they can. Everybody will find what they like to do - to each their own. 

I still think (Burr and Burton) was a great school. I often find myself telling people that I went to a private school, but there was no public school, and there still isn’t. And, it had everything a public school had plus! I talk up old New England institutions, and I’m so proud of (Burr and Burton), and the students who go there should be too.