At the beginning of 2023, Anamaría Font (Anaco, 64 years old) was in Caracas. He returned to the Faculty of Sciences of the Central University of Venezuela after the time gap brought by the pandemic and became the final exit ticket for many Venezuelans traveling between countries. There she met students from the Chair of Mathematical Methods in Physics, which she had taught in Venezuela since 1989. Some of them had taken on teaching positions in the same chair. “I became a scientist thanks to the environment, I lived in a time full of opportunities and I was happy to meet some young women who I taught, very intelligent and motivated,” says Font during a video call from Potsdam, Germany, where she was finally clarified. The pleasant surprise with which he returned to Germany was accompanied by a pulsating concern. “Now everything is very difficult for young people in Venezuela. Going to college is almost an act of love or a sacrifice.”
A few months ago, Font was awarded the International Women and Science Award, presented by UNESCO and the L’Oréal Foundation. Her contributions to the study of string theory, which attempts to explain elementary particles and their interactions not as points but as strings, led her there. This theory, proposed in the 1970s by Jöel Scherk and John Henry Schwarz, could provide a solution to the problem of combining gravity and quantum theory and has become an important branch of physics.
He emphasizes that the basis of this theory for Font lies in a country where he was able to benefit from better times. “I think it was thanks to the environment that I was able to get there. I was born in Anaco but grew up between Puerto La Cruz and Margarita. My father worked in the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons and I attended elementary school at Sinclair Oil Company. “Oil kind of cornered me,” he remembers. “I became interested in physics in high school, which I studied at a public high school, and what was studied then was at the level seen in university today. We had well-equipped laboratories and I had three teachers in physics, chemistry and mathematics who knew a lot. How could I motivate myself better!”
Font depicting physics students at the Faculty of Sciences of the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas (Venezuela). With kind approval
Font has always been surprised by the number of women pursuing universities and academic careers in Latin America, although in smaller numbers in leadership positions such as rectors or deans. In Venezuela, the proportion of women is high compared to Europe, he claims. It states, for example, that at least 30% of physics professors at UCV are women and that in other areas such as chemistry or biology this could even reach 50%. “In Germany there are far fewer women in science at universities and in studies. Surely there is a different culture in the family about what is expected of women and what is not. However, there are conscious efforts to change this and the proportion of women is increasing in southern European countries. In the case of Venezuela and Latin America, science faculties are relatively new, dating back to the late 1950s, and their creation coincided with the period when more women began to attend universities. I think that’s why we see more women there. There’s no historical weight of exclusion behind it. Where there is more scientific tradition, women have a harder time.”
Font recognizes the potholes that become gaps for women and the bias that prejudice brings. “To advance up the scientific ladder, the number of annual publications is taken into account, regardless of whether one is a man or a woman. This changes little by little, but if you have had a child for a year, you certainly have not produced anything and that year should not be counted. There are still many cultural prejudices, such as those of mothers or grandmothers of girls who think that it is not appropriate for women to pursue science, which is a difficult subject for them. When I started string theory there were very few women, but now there are many young women in this field and many from Latin America.”
Science in precarity
The scientist graduated from Simón Bolivar University and then continued her studies at the University of Texas, opting for government scholarships, funding from research centers and foundations and returning to the country many times to form the replacement. It is part of what she describes as the conditions that initially allowed her a scientific career and which have now been lost amid the deep economic crisis that Venezuela is experiencing, with the highest inflation in the world, and which has made her make the decision to leaving the country without packing, with a suitcase that barely weighs 23 kilos, like millions of Venezuelans who have built a huge diaspora. “My only income there is retirement from university, which with some bonuses reaches 1,600 bolívars ($50), which is not enough to live on.” Over the years, it became difficult to move between Germany, where her husband is from, and Venezuela to commute back and forth with his worries.
The higher education sector is one of the sectors most affected by the crisis. The government of Nicolás Maduro made improvements to the infrastructure of the UCV, whose headquarters are in the World Heritage University City where Font taught for nearly 30 years. However, little has been done to rebuild the human fabric that enables the generation of knowledge.
The so-called “brain drain” began the migration landslide that Venezuela has experienced in recent years with the departure of the most qualified specialists. During these two decades of Chavismo, it was difficult to do science in a precarious and highly politicized context. There are fewer researchers and those who get doctorates don’t return. “When I was there this year, I saw the lack of future for the young and not so young people. That is why my great concern is that it will be impossible to restore the university, that it will continue to be in permanent decline.”
For Font, science happens even in hostile scenarios where there are other emergencies such as poverty, but it must be supported by independent institutions. “Sustained efforts are required to get young people interested in science. And that will have to wait for primary school.” He defends science as a universal human value, as a lever for solving problems, although Chavismo in Venezuela has tried to distinguish between a science that is relevant and another that is essential to the development of the Country is not relevant to distinguish. Font also makes a statement about the fundamental sciences and theoretical physics that engage and amaze her. “There is no doubt that research at the basic science level is fundamental to development. You never know where the solution will come from, and history teaches us that results in basic science and its applications can take years. When they combined electricity and magnetism, they could not have imagined the impact it would have on telecommunications years later. “You can’t say that there is only one kind of science.”
The Venezuelan remains active in research and is interested in the development of cosmology, explanations of the origin of the universe, part of what is happening in her field. “There are many connections between theory and experiment, there are terrestrial observatories that constantly send data, other information from gravitational waves, there is everything we can find about particle physics in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, the largest particle accelerator).” big and with more energy, built in Switzerland by the European Organization for Nuclear Research), which is the maximum model we have and we need to know if it explains everything. They are one of the things that interest me most now.”
As a scientist, she is also excited to see advances in medicine to better understand how the human body works and the origins of disease at the genetic and cellular level, and with some concern that “a new space race is beginning between powers. “try to use extraterrestrial resources.
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