\u201cShe did what she thought was right,\u201d says physicist Sonia Frota-Pessoa about her mother, Elisa Frota-Pess\u00f4a. One of the first women in Brazil to graduate from physics, she was an important figure in the early research and teaching of the discipline in the country, when women were not expected to work, much less become scientists. She died of pneumonia at 97 years of age, on the night of December 28 in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n
Born January 17, 1921, Elisa Esther Habbema de Maia was captivated by physics and mathematics and wanted to become an engineer. The program, which was considered masculine, was forbidden. Then she discovered the university course of physics and, despite going against her father\u2019s will, registered in 1940 at the National School of Philosophy (FNFi). She was already married to biologist Oswaldo Frota-Pess\u00f4a (1917\u20132010), with whom she had two children: Sonia, retired professor from the University of S\u00e3o Paulo, and Roberto, general surgeon.<\/p>\n
In 1942, she became an assistant to physicist Joaquim da Costa Ribeiro (1906\u20131960) at FNFi, and continued until 1944 when she became a professor. In 1949, she was one of the founders of the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF).<\/p>\n
She wrote, in collaboration with Neusa Margem (1926\u20132015), the first article about research carried out in the institution: \u201cAbout the decay of the positive parity heavy meson,\u201d which was published in 1950 in the magazine Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ci\u00eancias <\/em>(Annals of the Brazilian academy of sciences). In this project, they analyzed photographic plates, brought from the United States by physicist C\u00e9sar Lattes, which registered the path of the pi meson, a particle that he had helped to discover and demonstrate its capacity to be detected in the first generation of particle accelerators. This type of experimental study consolidated the description of material components that were being discovered at that time.<\/p>\n At CBPF, she managed the Laboratory of Nuclear Emulsions until 1964. \u201cThey used photographic plates, coated with a layer of emulsion, exposed to cosmic rays on mountain tops, and later examined under microscope,\u201d describes Sonia Frota-Pessoa. Without experimental physics laboratories at FNFi, the students of Elisa Frota-Pess\u00f4a did their internships in the teaching laboratory she established at CBPF along with physicist Jayme Tiomno (1920\u20132011), with whom she lived from 1951 until his death.<\/p>\n During the military regime, Frota-Pess\u00f4a and Tiomno transferred to the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB), taking students with them. This did not last long. In that same year, they were among 223 professors who requested collective discharge in protest against political persecution. In 1969, she was given early retirement by the military regime at FNFi and was removed from CBPF, along with Tiomno. They went to work in Europe and the United States.<\/p>\n In 1980, the couple was readmitted to CBPF, where they continued their research and teaching. Reaching the age of retirement, Frota-Pess\u00f4a retired from CBPF in 1991 and received the title of Researcher Emeritus, and continued to work until 1995.<\/p>\n The physicist left behind two children, five granddaughters, and nine great-grandchildren, missing by very little the opportunity to know her great-great-granddaughter. The majority of them are following academic careers or are moving in this direction. The women of the family found open doors in choosing their paths. \u201cMom broke all of the taboos.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the pioneers of the study of particles, Elisa Frota-Pess\u00f4a participated in the founding of CBPF","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":292232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1601],"class_list":["post-292231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292236,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292231\/revisions\/292236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292231"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=292231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}