Dear Williams colleagues,
I write with the promised remembrance of our colleague Karen Kwitter, the late Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Astronomy, Emerita.
Relationships were central to Karen’s work and life: she had a gift for connection that helped her translate advanced research ideas into accessible terms for her students. As her Williams colleague and friend Bill Wootters, Barclay Jermain Professor of Natural Philosophy, Emeritus, noted during her 2019 retirement celebration, Karen’s scientific “impact factor”, impressive as it was, was matched by her influence on students and colleagues.
Karen had realized at a young age that she wanted to be an astronomer. In 2008, she said, “I’d always loved to look at the stars, and I’d take my grandmother out into the backyard with me, since I was afraid of the dark. I took an NSF-sponsored astronomy course one summer in high school, and that was it. Plus, to do astronomy I didn’t have to cut anything up!” She attended Wellesley College, graduating with honors in physics and astronomy, then earned her Masters and Ph.D. in Astronomy from UCLA. She even met her future husband, Steve Souza, now Senior Lecturer in Astronomy, Emeritus, at an American Astronomical Society annual meeting.
“When I got my Ph.D. in 1979,” Karen reminisced in her own retirement speech, “jobs in astronomy were hard to find, and tenure-track jobs even harder. During graduate school I discovered that I wanted to teach as much as I wanted to do research. I was happy to learn, at a preliminary off-campus interview with Jay Pasachoff, that Williams valued both.”
It was a perfect pairing. Except for a brief stint as a visitor in Illinois, Karen spent her entire career at Williams, rising from assistant professor to full professor to Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Astronomy, with several terms as department chair along the way. Assistant Professor of Astronomy Anne Jaskot ’08 recalls the experience of studying with her. “Karen taught me in more classes than anyone else in my life,” Anne says. “These courses covered the possibility of extraterrestrial life, cosmology and the structure of the universe, and her specialty: the gas within galaxies… She ultimately shaped the direction of my entire research career by instilling in me a love of spectroscopy and of the physics and logic we use to deduce the composition of the universe.”
Karen’s own research focused on the chemical compositions of planetary nebulae, the evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars and the chemical enrichment of the Milky Way and other galaxies over time. Various of her studies have provided insight into the chemical history of galaxies, the evolution of conditions for life, and the presence in the human body of chemical traces from ancient stars. Her CV ranges from advanced technical articles in her field’s top journals to popular offerings, including a TEDx Williams talk called, “Colliding Galaxies, Exploding Stars and You,” public radio interviews and several books that she and Steve co-authored for middle-schoolers on topics in physics, astronomy and atmospheric science. She was meanwhile a principal investigator for NASA-funded projects on the Hubble Space Telescope—projects in which she frequently enlisted her students as researchers—as well as for grants from NSF and others. She directed the Hopkins Observatory and helped develop the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium that coordinates astronomical teaching and student research at Williams and seven other liberal arts colleges. For these and other extraordinary contributions she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008.
In the Williams context, Karen astutely recognized that cross-disciplinary collaboration was key to the flourishing of her small department. She partnered on numerous interdisciplinary projects over the years. She was also among the early generation of women hired as tenure-track faculty in the physical sciences. She was a fierce advocate for women at Williams, whom she insisted be treated with dignity and respect by all, and mentored many women in the sciences. She also helped diversify the ranks of her field globally, through her service on the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy.
Karen was deeply devoted to her students as people, too. To quote more from Anne Jaskot’s tribute, “She made a point of going to student concerts or performances and loved seeing what students did outside the astronomy classroom. She even invited my a cappella group to sing at the annual Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium meeting… As a graduation gift, she bought me a copy of Beowulf with the original Anglo-Saxon text. I’m not sure some of my own friends would have known to give that gift! It showed that she really knew my specific interests, which included linguistics and language history. I still don’t know how the subject had even come up, but it has always meant so much to me that my advisor knew me that well.”
Another former student, Joey Shapiro Key ’01, now associate professor of physics at the University of Washington at Bothell, paid tribute to Karen at her retirement. “I came to Williams thinking I would be a math major. My freshman year, the Introduction to Astrophysics course with Dr. Kwitter changed my mind and set me on my path to a career as an astrophysicist… I had the opportunity to travel to a total solar eclipse in Romania, worked in the campus observatory, and wrote a senior thesis on the topology of the universe with a math professor and visiting cosmologist. It was not until I became a faculty member in a predominantly male field that it occurred to me how impactful it was for me to have a female professor for my very first astrophysics course.”
To paraphrase the citation I read while honoring Karen at Commencement 2019, forty years may be a blip in astronomical time, but it was a resplendent stretch for a career. Karen Kwitter will be missed, but her impact on Williams will endure. Our thoughts go out to Steve Souza, and to Karen’s children and grandchildren, among their many loved ones, colleagues and students.
Maud