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Laurel School alumna, Amy Ritzenberg Graves ’75

Amy Ritzenberg Graves ’75

Professor of Physics and Astronomy • Swarthmore College
B.A., Mathematics and Physics, Williams College 1979
Ph.D., Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1984
Making her mark in STEM:
  • “I am living proof that you don’t have to be a science prodigy, or follow a rigid path through your education, to realize that you love STEM and can be good at it.”
  • Her path was not apparent during her days in dance club, choir and Chapel Theater at Laurel and her first exposure to physics was as a junior in college.
  • Current research on “jamming”– a phenomenon in which individual entities (li.e., salt in a salt shaker or cars on a busy road) stop flowing and become rigid at a high enough density
  • Walter Kemp Professor in Natural Sciences endowed chair at Swarthmore College
  • Fellow of the American Physical Society
  • Interest in issues of race and gender in STEM, as women and people of color are still dramatically underrepresented
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