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'Contact' character is connected to real-life expert in extraterrestrial life
Wednesday, March 22, 2000
In the movie "Contact," Jodie Foster plays a woman astronomer who searches for alien radio signals. Foster's character is based on Jill Cornell Tarter.
Tarter is the director of Project Phoenix, a privately funded program that uses radio telescopes in New Mexico and West Virginia in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). She is considered to be one of the world's leading experts in this field.
Tarter was born in the suburbs of New York City in 1944.
While in high school, Tarter took advanced placement courses in math and science at Columbia University. She recalls being told by instructors not to push herself too hard because "housewives don't need to know all this stuff."
Tarter earned her degree in engineering at Cornell University. She was the only woman in a class of 300 engineers. She applied for a scholarship for descendants of the school's founder. She was not successful because, at the time, the awards were not given to women.
Tarter went on to earn her master's and doctorate degrees in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley. It was at Berkeley she first learned about SETI and became involved in using radio telescopes to hunt for extraterrestrial life. Again, she was the only woman in the project.
Tarter doesn't like people to make too much of her "Contact" connection, but she feels it gives a "realistic view of what it is like for woman working in male-dominated professions."
-- By John G. Radzilowicz, director, Henry Buhl Jr. Planetarium & Observatory
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