Natalie Portman - Scientist

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/science/01angier.html?ref=natalieportman

by mhb • 15 years ago

388 162 15 years ago

ajays• 15 years ago

That was an interesting article. I wish more of the media would highlight Natalie Portman's scientific cred.

The last sentence, "You can be a scientist, but if you want your name in lights, you’d better play one on TV." made me a little sad. Eventually, we get what we celebrate; if we celebrate being a cheerleader (or a beauty queen) more than being a scientist, then we'll get more of those. I don't know how much progress a society can make if everyone aspires to be a cheerleader.

On a positive note: I've been watching bits and pieces of Jeopardy's "Teen Championship" and girls are doing very well in that! I hope the finals is an all-girls affair, that would be great.

weego• 15 years ago

"I wish more of the media would highlight Natalie Portman's scientific cred"

Can I ask why? It wouldn't make a difference to her performances, so if she chooses to not use her scientific creds why should anyone feel the need to mention them? It doesn't validate her as a person anymore than if she was a talented actress who used to be a waitress.

petercooper• 15 years ago

I think ajays said why: Eventually, we get what we celebrate; if we celebrate being a cheerleader (or a beauty queen) more than being a scientist, then we'll get more of those.

I'm going to stuff words into ajays' mouth but if someone as "cool" as Natalie Portman can be so intelligent, that perhaps helps to counter a little of the anti-intelligence schtick that's common in some areas of life.

That said, many famous people are more qualified and intellectually agile than their public personas and media coverage give them credit for..

smhinsey• 15 years ago

It's not about her, it's about the little girl who is growing up thinking she could never be a scientist because it's too hard or girls can't do math or whatever inaccurate stereotype.

blhack• 15 years ago

>Can I ask why?

Because it would encourage a lot of people to become interested in science.

nickolai• 15 years ago

I'm not sure the idea was to validate her as a person. It was more to reprupose her from being a "beauty idol" to being a "scientist idol"

This is important if you beleive that 1) A society with more Scientist idols would get more scientists than one with more beauty queen idols 2) A society with more scientists would be a better place than if it had more beauty queens.

nopinsight• 15 years ago

> Eventually, we get what we celebrate; ...

Serious question. I wonder why if anti-intellectualism is so widespread in the US, you guys still have some of the best native-born scientists in the world (although there are more and more imported ones). What are the offsetting factors that allow all these smart kids to pursue what they love despite the anti-intellectualism in the wider culture? Anyone with good answers please do chime in.

Also, if the quote is true, then China and India with their strong, sometimes even fanatic, encouragement on nurturing and praising smart kids (from everyone, including other kids) will take over the scientific world in due course.

Of course there are other factors that disadvantage them: funding, bureaucratic system & work environment for scientists, to name a few. But those are getting better very quickly. A key factor that slows down scientific progress in these countries though is the focus on making money and building one's wealth for societal and familial respect instead of pursuing one's passion.

In spite of the all those things, I recently read from the Economist that China will overtake the US in the number of patents granted this year or the next. (And that is probably because patents are more likely than scientific papers to help with wealth creation for its inventors and funding organizations).

jacques_chester3• 15 years ago

> What are the offsetting factors that allow all these smart kids to pursue what they love despite the anti-intellectualism in the wider culture?

If it's like Australia, it's because when you escape adolescent daycare, you discover at university that there are people as smart as you. Often smarter.

And it's bloody marvellous.

vacri2• 15 years ago

Why be sad? It's the way of things. A scientist does science, interested in analysing something. An actor is interested in presenting themselves to huge numbers of people and being popular in doing so. It's the whole point of the job - the actor's job is inherently self-promoting; it can't exist without some form of self-publicising.

maxklein• 15 years ago

Nobody is idly "celebrating" any actor. What people celebrate are people who entertain them. Scientists are not entertaining. Fundamentally, it's a selfish activity.

burgerbrain4• 15 years ago

I find this articles lack of hot grits disturbing.

jleyank3• 15 years ago

I know it's (barely) related to the current thread, but Queen has an astrophysicist as a lead guitarist... Face it, some people can pull this multi-discipline s*ht off.

matthiaswh• 15 years ago

Brian May's story is pretty impressive. He left school while pursuing his PhD when Queen became popular. Over 30 years later he finished his studies and obtained his degree.

m0nastic2• 15 years ago

There's also Brian Cox (there must be something in the UK water about turning out musicians/physicists):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)

zavulon2• 15 years ago

I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the comments, getting more and more depressed thinking as I'm the only old codger who remembers this meme. I am happy to find out I'm not the only one!

jleyank3• 15 years ago

Don't worry. Some of us old codgers still enjoy themselves.

nicpottier• 15 years ago

Ya, I did the same, and upvoted the comment when I saw it.

Would love to see the battle of votes on that comment. But sheesh, isn't it ok to have a little fun now and then. I mean it is even kinda on topic. :)

Anechoic3• 15 years ago

He's not mentioned in the article, but Dylan Bruno from Numb3rs is an MIT grad (we both played on the football team) and, coincidentally, acted in a movie opposite Ms. Portman :)

Woodie Flowers always used to say that we need an "LA Engineer" (a play on "LA Law for you younger folks) to bring science and engineering into the mainstream. I always cringe at shows like Big Bang Theory that portray smart folks as socially inept - given that association, it's no surprise that many kids would rather be "dumb and cool" than "smart and nerdy" when in fact smart people are just like everyone else.

jhamburger6• 15 years ago

Popular entertainment has tons of smart, cool people- Just none of them spend all their time with solitary, sedentary activities on a computer or in a lab. How many times do you see a 'mission impossible' type hero who goes around kicking ass for most of the movie but suddenly turns into a hacker when he gets to a computer terminal?

Anechoic3• 15 years ago

Just none of them spend all their time with solitary, sedentary activities on a computer or in a lab

That's just it - the folks that do spend there time on a computer or in a lab (off the top of my head: the goth girl from NCIS, the Law & Order lab techs, Chloe on 24) all have some sort of anti-social nerd personality type.

Why can't there be a computer tech who works hard at his/her job, has a beer after work, watches sports, etc like everyone else?

brown9-24• 15 years ago

I always cringe at shows like Big Bang Theory that portray smart folks as socially inept

Fringe makes science look pretty cool, IMHO.

spullara• 15 years ago

I'd take Fringe over Big Bang Theory any day. BBT feels like mockery to me.

scott_s5• 15 years ago

From what I've seen of Fringe, it makes a mockery of science.

mbreese3• 15 years ago

I always cringe at shows like Big Bang Theory that portray smart folks as socially inept ... when in fact smart people are just like everyone else

I think thats what Big Bang Theory does best... portray smart people who are socially inept as someone that anyone can relate to. In the show, they are just regular people trying to get by, find love, etc... well, except for Sheldon.

To me, its amazing that a show that is completely over the top nerdy is incredibly popular.

burgerbrain4• 15 years ago

On the other hand, I'm completely unamazed that a show that reinforces negative geek stereotypes while passing itself off as an accurate and fair representation is incredibly popular.

StudyAnimal• 15 years ago

Come on, she is an actress with a BA in Psychology. Lets have this discussion again when she gets her PhD. Until then, perspective.

HSO2• 15 years ago

Exactly. I have no doubt she is very intelligent and _could_ have been a scientist if she had chosen to. But until she publishes her own peer-reviewed research or gets an advanced science degree, she is "an actress with a BA in psychology", thank you. She's impressive enough w/o artificial hype.

poet3• 15 years ago

She has published peer reviewed research: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... (her actual name is Natalie Hershlag). One of the co-authors is Jerome Kagan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Kagan. Seems good enough to me. Certainly not a career scientist; very few would be with another venture making millions. But she has walked the walk. There's no hype here.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

The point wasn't the degree. But more that she made the semifinals of the Intel Science Talent Search -- that in itself is prestigious, but at the same time (and I quote):

"She’d been in films directed by Woody Allen, Tim Burton and Luc Besson, appeared opposite Julia Roberts, Jack Nicholson, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore and I’m getting tired of typing celebrity names here. She took on the major role of Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy that rocketed her to international fame."

To be honest, I'm not sure there's any degree where the mere act of receiving it would be more impressive than the above feat.

haploid• 15 years ago

"To be honest, I'm not sure there's any degree where the mere act of receiving it would be more impressive than the above feat."

Because being in the presence of popular people is a major accomplishment, right? Far greater an accomplishment than the defense of any original PhD thesis, right?

I can drive to the Viceroy hotel bar right now and be in the presence of a random A-list celebrity if I so choose. By your logic, that act alone sets me worlds apart from the entire body of original research being done by PhD candidates all over the world.

I will never understand the nature of being starstruck. If I want to shut down my rational faculty, I have a bottle of Glenkinchie at the ready.

ciupicri• 15 years ago

I'm more impressed by Dolph Lundgren - an action movie actor - who has a MS in Chemistry and who was studying for a PhD when he decided to become an actor.

poet3• 15 years ago

Not just a PhD. He had a Fullbright at MIT. You'll find his biography either incredibly inspiring or depressing.

asolove• 15 years ago

"Marie Curie - Actress" would have been more interesting.

zephjc• 15 years ago

Marie Curie in "Bride of the Toxic Avenger"?

ErrantX• 15 years ago

For the geeky types, she has an Erdős–Bacon number of 6 :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number...

EDIT: it is 6, not 5, sorry

RiderOfGiraffes3• 15 years ago

I do so desperately want a small walk-on part in a film with Kevin Bacon to get an Erdős–Bacon number of 3.

I know, I know, it's hardly a worthy ambition. But still.

<sigh>

eru2• 15 years ago

Have you tried asking him? A hand-written letter might just work.

ajju• 15 years ago

In honor of her scholarly pursuits, beauty and skill as an actor, we gave one of our products the internal codename 'Natalie' last year.

brown9-24• 15 years ago

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out another "scientist" (minor) actor not mentioned in this article:

- speaks Swedish, English, Spanish, some German, some French, some Japanese, and some Italian

- awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

- has a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney (1982)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolph_lundgren

jhamburger6• 15 years ago

Kind of ironic to be so gifted in so many areas, and yet be famous for something you're not even good at.

mbreese3• 15 years ago

And that none of the above information appears in the wikipedia page...

Edit: I just can't read... it's there as mentioned below.

gamble2• 15 years ago

One bad movie pays more than a year in the lab.

pchristensen2• 15 years ago

I don't know, he was pretty good at pretending to be a Russian boxer.

Oh, you mean acting.

roel_v3• 15 years ago

Man people like this make me feel so inadequate.

sp_• 15 years ago

Or how about this fellow who has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry, a PhD in law, and was an Olympic swimmer but is best known for his movies where he gets into fights with other guys (pretty much everybody in my age bracket in Germany and some other European countries knows him).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Spencer

Edit: He is also a jet pilot, helicopter pilot, holder of multiple patents, and a startup founder with a successful exit as Wikipedia shows! :)

rospaya• 15 years ago

I'm lost for words.

Nick_C• 15 years ago

I also say, 'Wow'. Pretty much everyone in Australia in my age bracket knows him too. Funny that Terrence Hill was always cast as the smart guy and Bud as the dumb companion.

defen• 15 years ago

You forgot "European karate champion". My favorite Dolph story is that he put Stallone in the ICU for 8 days:

> Sylvester Stallone has stated that the original punching scenes filmed between him and Dolph Lundgren in the first portion of the fight are completely authentic. Stallone wanted to capture a realistic scene and Lundgren agreed that they would engage in legitimate sparring. One particularly forceful Lundgren punch to Stallone's chest slammed his heart against his breastbone, causing the heart to swell and his breathing to become labored. Stallone, suffering from labored breathing and a blood pressure over 200, was flown from the set in Canada to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica and was forced into intensive care for eight days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_IV

Jun82• 15 years ago

"Hedy Lamarr complained bitterly that people would look at her face and assume there was nothing behind it. Perhaps it was a case of projection. “When you see a very beautiful face, it’s stunning, and you yourself become stupefied,” said Lisa Heiserman Perkins, who has completed a documentary about Lamarr. “So you project your own stupidity onto the person you’re looking at.” "

Now, maybe I'm projecting my own stupidity to this remark but it just seems hare-brained. This effect is very easy to understand: many beautiful people you've met before have little/no interest in science, i.e. appear to be stupid, so your subconscious Bayesian learner assigns a low probability to the gorgeous woman you see having invented a new spread spectrum technique.

btilly• 15 years ago

And yet, there is actually a positive correlation between physical attractiveness and IQ.

Jun82• 15 years ago

True, but in most cases this IQ may be dormant, since from an early age attractive people learn that they can get what they want without working as hard as other people. It's like weight lifting on the moon!

alex1• 15 years ago

Here's the paper she entered into the Intel Science Talent Search: http://www.natalieportman.com/articles/1998/chemicaleducatio...

acconrad4• 15 years ago

I'm envisioning a Chuck-Norris-esque meme evolving from said article. Personally, I'm much more of a fan of Greg Graffin, frontman of Bad Religion and Evolutionary Biology PhD from Cornell, who also happens to be a faculty member at UCLA: http://www.spotlight.ucla.edu/faculty/greg-gaffin_bad-religi...

jacques_chester3• 15 years ago

Regrettably, the meme-space vis-a-vis Natalie Portman has already been staked out by hot porridge made of roughly ground corn.

acconrad4• 15 years ago

I see this image (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KMqOPeCgoT0/S_ABM6dl-II/AAAAAAAAF0...) atop a radiantly-colorful meme backdrop, a la Courage Wolf, with such sayings as "I Just Divided By Zero" and "Maybe You Should Have Kept Your Documents in the Cloud, Tesla"

nhebb• 15 years ago

All right everyone [insert brisk clap-clap], get back to work. Natalie Portman isn't wasting her day wondering about your scientific (or acting) credentials, so you've got better things to do than worry about hers. Go work on your business or some other more fruitful activity.

tokipin• 15 years ago

one of the reasons i loved Avatar is because the foundation of its universe is relentlessly scientific and natural, on top of which there is spiritual and social goodness

another movie like this that comes to mind is The Incredibles, which despite featuring superheroes has clear respect for physics

i sure wouldn't mind more movies like that. i think there is greater creativity from starting with a rigorous foundation

contol-m• 15 years ago

James Franco is very impressive as well. From his Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Franco#Personal_life :

Franco has been described as having "an unusually high metabolism for productivity...a superhuman ability to focus". Dissatisfied with his career's direction, Franco reenrolled at UCLA in the fall of 2006 as an English major with a creative writing concentration. Having received permission to take as many as 62 course credits per quarter compared to the normal limit of 19 while continuing to act, he received his undergraduate degree in June 2008 with a GPA over 3.5.

He moved to New York to simultaneously attend graduate school at Columbia University's MFA writing program, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for filmmaking,and Brooklyn College for fiction writing, while occasionally commuting to North Carolina's Warren Wilson College for poetry.[1] He received his MFA from Columbia in 2010. Franco is a Ph.D. student in English at Yale University and will also attend the Rhode Island School of Design.

erikpukinskis• 15 years ago

Franco is obviously extremely productive and very bright, but I can't help but focus on the fact that he has a full+ time personal assistant. She's up 18 hours a day with him handing the "details" of his life, so he's free to focus on whatever he wants to focus on.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of difference that would make in my life, particularly when I was in grad school.

And then I tell myself to shut up and get back to work.

ebiester• 15 years ago

So... why not make it happen? Perhaps not all of it can be done, but Tim Ferriss talks about having an outsourced personal assistant.

If you are the type who could work all those extra hours, try outsourcing as many activities as possible. Start with housekeeping services, as an example, and perhaps a personal cook.

edw519• 15 years ago

Nice article.

Two sentences jumped out at me.

First:

“There are very few who are as inherently bright as Natalie is, who have as much intellectual horsepower, who work as hard as she did. She didn’t take a single thing for granted.”

then:

If anything, stories like Ms. Portman’s show that great success, like DNA, is constructed of a few basic building blocks: tenacity, focus, and the old Woody Allen line about just showing up.

No question about the importance of things like hard work, tenacity, focus, not taking anything for granted, and just showing up. We all have to do these things.

The phrase that really got me thinking was "intellectual horsepower". What is that? And how important is that?

I used to be awfully hasty in judging others, "She is really smart," or "He is so stupid". Then I learned alot from my first mentor. He taught that there often isn't much difference between someone who appears smart and someone who doesn't. Perhaps no one spent enough time with them. Maybe they have other challenges, like family, health, or circumstances. Maybe they're just a fish out of water, spending too much time on things that don't interest him. Or maybe they appear dumb because they actually believe that they are. They've been told so many times that they now believe it.

At first, he sounded like some hippie idealist. But the more we worked together, the more his teachings manifested themselves in the people we worked with. People who appeared dumb blossomed under different circumstances all the time. The were smart deep down inside where no one ever explored. (These people were mostly hourly workers who knew way more than their bosses about running the business.)

To this day, when I see phrases like, "intellectual horsepower", I cringe. We "smarties" aren't that much smarter than most other people, if we are at all.

And just to stay humble, remember: we're all just one head injury from blissful ignorance.

roel_v3• 15 years ago

Well, yes, intelligence needs to be trained, shaped, refined. But are you saying that there is no difference between humans when it comes to their maximum potential? I think everybody has an 'intelligence ceiling', and that ceiling can only be asymptotically approaches by study, hard work, circumstances etc. But that doesn't take away from the (imo) fact that there is a ceiling and that some people, no matter what they do, will never achieve the level some others do.

danssig2• 15 years ago

I think the issue here is that you're saying "if person A is good at math person B may never be able to get as good at math". This I would agree with, but I think person B might be able to get better in some area than person A ever could.

Equal in that sense, not identical.

jhamburger6• 15 years ago

To this day, when I see phrases like, "intellectual horsepower", I cringe. We "smarties" aren't that much smarter than most other people, if we are at all.

I don't think this is true at all. People who are average intelligence or below can be very successful but have no chance of succeeding in high level intellectual pursuits. People who are smart don't understand this, because to them learning anything is just a matter of effort.

I think there is truth in what you are saying, because at a certain level of intelligence, hard work and attitude become more of a bottleneck than ability. This is supported by facts as well, studies have found that success increases by IQ score, but levels off or drops at a certain point where brainpower is more of a handicap to mental health than a benefit.

TheSOB88• 15 years ago

What if the reason people are 'smart' is because of the way their brain has organized itself over the years in response to learning so much? Then it isn't that dumb people are dumb, just behind.

nbashaw• 15 years ago

I don't think IQ has much to do with success. I've met a lot of brilliant people who can't finish projects, speak up, know when to back down, etc. I think success is more about discipline, moral courage, and hard work than it is about how smart you are.

danbmil99• 15 years ago

I think at the upper levels of intelligence, you are talking about the engineering limits of the brain as a physical thinking machine. Everything is working as well as it can; in this case, I suspect the difference between the top 100th percentile and the top 10th is not all that great. That's not to say there isn't a competitive advantage, just that it levels off, like it does in athletics.

richcollins2• 15 years ago

I thought that too until I moved to San Francisco and started meeting people that consistently see things that I miss. It wasn't that they had more domain knowledge or worked harder, it was that they were just better at seeing remotely connected things.

abstractbill2• 15 years ago

That doesn't mean intelligence isn't malleable - San Francisco might just be a great environment for helping people see those connections more and more.

nostrademons4• 15 years ago

That doesn't necessarily mean that they're innately smarter than you.

When I first moved out to Silicon Valley and started working at Google, I met lots of people that consistently saw things that I missed. Even ones who didn't have as much experience as I did, at least in terms of year-as-a-computer-programmer.

Now that I've been here a couple years, I've found that I'm consistently seeing things that other people are missing. Even, in some cases, the same people that consistently saw things I missed when I joined.

It hasn't been because my innate intelligence has gone up. (In fact, as measured by my performance against the Starcraft: Brood War AI, my reaction time and ability to think quickly seems to be going consistently down since high school.) Rather, I've accumulated lots more domain knowledge. And it's tacit domain knowledge, little subconscious bits that are floating around the Valley culture but that people aren't aware of on a conscious level. If you don't know to look for such domain knowledge, it seems like the person is just massively smarter than you. And if you have that domain knowledge, you usually aren't aware that you have it, and so it seems like you're massively smarter than everyone else. But if you actually look closely at the leaps of logic that intelligent people make, and then trace those solutions back to the knowledge that enables them, you can almost always find some particular fact hidden away in the back of somebody's brain that accounts for it.

kmfrk• 15 years ago

I'd probably describe her success as "realized potential". She was gifted with some things congenitally (I mean just look at her), and she seems to have had some very supportive parents.

tastybites• 15 years ago

I would also add - sometimes a smart person just doesn't give a damn about impressing others.

When I deliberately dis-engage in uninteresting conversations with "smart people" I can see them judging me immediately. Sometimes I just don't want to faux-argue over inconsequential bullshit. The older you get the better you get at letting your ego go in these kinds of meaningless contests.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

> When I deliberately dis-engage in uninteresting conversations with "smart people" I can see them judging me immediately.

Agreed. And this is the perspective I have for a lot of the discussion threads here on HN. I love HN. But honestly, much of the so-called discussion here is picking at nits and stamp collecting. Even when you "win" you lose because you've wasted the time and effort that could have been better spent in the real world, or doing something to improve your financial or health situation. Not saying all discussion is bad, but one should pick and choose and get the most bang for your buck.

Jayasimhan• 15 years ago

> ..there often isn't much difference between someone who appears smart and someone who doesn't... Maybe they're just a fish out of water, spending too much time on things that don't interest him.

Amen!

deadmansshoes• 15 years ago

"Maybe they're just a fish out of water, spending too much time on things that don't interest him."

Doesn't sound too smart..

mynameishere• 15 years ago

You're right about the head injury. That's the only thing that can make any two people on earth intellectual equals.

runT1ME• 15 years ago

I guess I don't understand your need to have the phrase 'intellectual horsepower' or even 'bright' or 'smart' tied to someone's genetic makeup and potential.

If I see a really big guy in the gym lifting a ton of weight, we can agree he's strong. That doesn't make a judgement on his work ethic vs. his genetics, and it doesn't imply that people who aren't as strong don't have every bit of potential to get to where he is.

It's simply an observation on the facts of reality the way they are now. Now, I happen to be in the camp that believes you can make yourself smarter, so passing judgement on someone's intellectual horsepower in no way is me critiquing their potential.

silverbax88• 15 years ago

We are all simply products of intelligence + environment. I am however, more to the reverse of your experience. I used to believe that almost everyone could be amazing and brilliant if just given the opportunity and another set of circumstances. While I know that to be true in some cases, I also have learned over the years that many people just aren't bright enough to get advanced concepts and never will.

trunnell• 15 years ago

Intelligence is real but very difficult to quantify.

The last time I was familiar with the literature (~10 years ago), intelligence was best defined as having many dimensions. It's a collection of weakly related gifts. Spatial reasoning, for example, is a different kind of intelligence than musical ability. Perhaps someone more up to date on the science can chime in.

In any case, attempts to squash all those dimensions into a single numerical scale (like an IQ) hide a lot of information and can be very misleading.

jacques_chester3• 15 years ago

IQ is the KSLOC of the psychometrics world.

vacri2• 15 years ago

Way back when I was studying intelligence there were a number of specialties, but there were three broad groups that these specialties seemed to cohere under:

1) Algorithmic intelligence: the layman's usual picture of intellegence around working with concepts, figures, space, so on and so forth

2) Verbal intelligence: working with language and expression, vocabulary, etc

3) Social intelligence: being able to read people and social situations

This was the state of play ~15 years ago and things may have restructured, but it points out that acuity can be in places other than the usual geeky fare. The sales guy that can sell you something you don't want and make you feel good about it is able to read your cues and formulate responses to counter 'incorrect' behaviour.

nostrademons4• 15 years ago

Intelligence may or may not have multiple facets, but the "multiple intelligences" fad proposed by Howard Gardner was basically shown to be bunk, devoid of any real scientific evidence.

brm• 15 years ago

I read this: “There are very few who are as inherently bright as Natalie is, who have as much intellectual horsepower, who work as hard as she did. She didn’t take a single thing for granted.”

As: Few people who have the same level of intelligence she does, work as hard as she did.

As I understood it, the professor was saying that she outworked her peers, not that she was the smartest of the group but that her work ethic made her exceptional in an already smart group

nuxi• 15 years ago

And let's not forget Tom Cruise. No, wait...

sabat• 15 years ago

I like Natalie. I can't help but wonder, genuinely, if some of her academic success was influenced by her star stature. I've seen evidence that she is indeed quite bright. On the other hand, how many profs are going to give Natalie Portman a B?

Devilboy2• 15 years ago

Now that you mention it, how is Emma Watson doing at Brown University?

fistofjohnwayne• 15 years ago

Headline: Rich Person Does Well.

anon7865• 15 years ago

I found this article deeply irritating. I didn't even get through the whole thing, but the message was clear. Sure it is great to be a scientist...but everyone really wants to be a movie star. This makes me want to puke. Shining a bright, glowing light on those who are already drenched in adoration and celebrity. The implication is that if you're "just" a great scientist, you still must live with the bitter knowledge that you aren't loved by the masses. And to have the gall to call this a "science" article. This is the sort of shlock that belongs in People magazine.

The New York Times has been reduced to gawking.

commanda• 15 years ago

What I find fascinating about Hedy Lamarr's patent is that it formed the basis, many decades later, for spread-spectrum communication tech used by wifi and CDMA networks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Frequency-hopping_s...

quizbiz• 15 years ago

Does this girl have a flaw? haha

J3L2404• 15 years ago

My favorite celebrity/scientist is Mira Aroyo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Aroyo. Musician, model and a published research geneticist from Oxford University's Biochemistry department. She co-authored an article published in Molecular Microbiology in 2003 and sometimes sings in her native tongue - Bulgarian.

away• 15 years ago

The fact that she would rather make movies with Ashton Kutcher instead of spending time trying to solve the problems that plague mankind show what type of person she really is.

jleyank3• 15 years ago

... well paid??

iamdave• 15 years ago

No it doesn't. Not one bit.

random_voice• 15 years ago

She went to Harvard while filming movies (with a grueling schedule to boot). How many of you can say that you went through an equal or greater gauntlet?

I for one believe that shows intelligence and hard work.

acconrad4• 15 years ago

Inspired by a comment in this thread, I created a "Courage Natalie" meme generator so you can have fun with how smart she is: http://memegenerator.net/courage-natalie

Aron• 15 years ago

Each of the actresses highlighted is Jewish.

rogercosseboom• 15 years ago

Dexter Holland, lead singer of the California Punk group The Offspring, was valedictorian at his High School has a BS and MS from USC, and is currently ABD for a PhD in Molecular Biology.

Additionally he has, not only his pilot's license, but his APTL license (which requires 1500 flight hours) and is a certified Flight Instructor who has made a round-the-world flight in 10 days.

davesausage• 15 years ago

Well yeah...she is Jewish.

Natalie Portman - Scientist

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