Dianna Cowern: The Wonder Woman who teaches science

Decades ago, the great astrophysicist Carl Sagan alerted us to what he called a combustible mix — we are living in a world that is increasingly dependent on science and technology, while paradoxically enough, at the same time, creating a culture that celebrates scientific ignorance. 

Among the things that worried Sagan most was the increasing level of scientific ignorance among our world leaders, who speak for humankind. Until his last breath, he hoped things would turn for the better.

He wasn’t the only one; Stephen Hawking didn’t give humankind much of a chance to survive another geological epoch before destroying itself. 

When Sir Arthur Eddington experimentally confirmed the predictions of Albert Einstein through his famous gravitational lensing experiment in 1919, it became front-page news on many national dailies. The episode involving the Higgs-Boson hardly got the global attention it deserved in 2012. 

Something happened in the intervening century, from the early 1900s to the early 2000s. Scientific readership has significantly declined among the general global populace. 

Could the involvement of scientists in the world wars have led people to distance themselves from the sciences? Was scientific progress too fast for the world to catch on? Have other forms of entertainment supplanted scientific curiosity? 

After all, in the words of the economist Daniel Cohen, “television offers immediate gratification to the viewer, to the detriment of pastimes that require learning, like playing a musical instrument.” 

Relishing the scientific high is very similar to delighting in classical music. Each demands a sufficient time investment. Nobody becomes a connoisseur in a day. That the world has become impatient is evident in the significant reduction in the average word-length of a sentence in books published between the early and the late 1900s. 

Yet, the hopeful wonderer within me predicts that the recent lunar (Chandrayaan) and Mars (Mangalyaan) explorations by India and those by other countries (including, for example, the Lucy mission of the United States) will, in the coming years, keep the spark of general scientific interest alive with a cumulative effect that exceeds that of, say, the Big Bang Theory (which was yet another attempt at making scientists look cool). 

Whenever I think about how my interest in the pure sciences has remained alive, I remain in gratitude for the top science communicators that include Sagan, Hawking, Michio Kaku, Leonard Mlodinow, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins, among a few others. 

This article is dedicated to Wonder Woman, who shares a common space with these heroes. You are probably thinking of a superhero known for her athleticism and physical strength. Both share the same first name, but Dianna Cowern (notice the double ‘n’) is so much more. 

Cowern has engaged in the athleticism of the mind with a formal training in physics that has led her to leap the highest wall — the one between scientists and everyone else. Through her scientific video-content, she has kept the sense of wonder alive in children who are under 10, in their teens, and even those who are at least in their thirties and forties. 

Physics is Cowern’s strength. But the science educator has been battling the effects of long COVID for over a year to recover her physical strength and we hope it returns soon, just as we wished Wonder Woman would always fight and succeed.

In January 2023, she shared on social media that she had a mild case of COVID-19 about six months ago. Now, the brilliant educator is facing a myriad of debilitating symptoms like persistent fatigue, brain fog and even emotional instability among other illnesses.  

Cowern reached out to all who needed help with an understanding of physics and, more generally, to those who felt intimidated by the demands of the formal sciences. In India, where tertiary-level textbooks are often a luxury, the only thing that keeps the pupil going is the innate desire to learn more. 

In her avatar as the Physics Girl (the title of her YouTube channel), Cowern has fueled an innate curiosity to the extent that it has left many with the desire to see more scientific content from her – and they have eagerly waited for the next video for some time now. With every passing day, the wishes for her recovery become stronger. 

In her endeavour to scientifically educate the populace, she, along with the other heroes, has taught us that the boundaries of language, religion, geography, history, politics, colour and culture blur away in these higher forms of human involvement. 

Science unites people in its own way. Cowern has reached out to the rich and the indigent alike, as she has in equal measure to people of all races, languages and ethnicities, among other things, perhaps with a subliminal understanding that each scientifically-literate individual plays a crucial part in a global connectome. 

Wonder Woman has fought off many villains from distant stars who have ever wanted to cause trouble on our planet — a pale blue dot floating in eternal cosmic vastness. The inhabitants of this pale blue dot feel grateful to Cowern for reaching out and wish to see this Wonder Woman back in action to fight scientific ignorance – a truly global problem of the day.

Scientific ignorance, in turn, associates with other issues such as global warming, the nuclear arms race and pollution, to name a few (and is unfortunately supported by an army of bellicose and recalcitrant private interests that frequently oppose scientific wisdom with an attitude of intransigence). 

We wish Cowern recovery in a globally unified voice.

Subrato Banerjee is assistant professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and behavioral scientist, Centre for Behavioral Economics, Society and Technology (BEST) Brisbane

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

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