Penzias and Wilson as Scientific Saints, or, the ritual scouring of the pigeon shit

Alexander Maxwell (May 23, 2022)

Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, which I recently bought from a charity shop and have been reading before bed, contains a chapter on cosmology. Explaining the evidence for the Big Bang, it discusses, among other things, how Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson inadvertently discovered the cosmic microwave background. In 1962, adapting an obsolete satellite transmission antenna for radio astronomy, they detected an unexpected noise. They pointed their antenna at various astronomical objects, and at New York City, but the signal came from all directions. They examined their instrument and ruled out possible radiation from the antenna itself. Eventually they reached out to Princeton University, where a team led by Robert Dicke had been making theoretical calculations that explained the signal. For their discovery, Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics.

The aspect of the narrative that caught my attention related to the examination of their instrument: Bryson wrote that Penzias and Wilson at one point “climbed back into the dish with brooms and scrubbing brushes and carefully swept it clean of what they referred to in a later paper as ‘white dielectric material,' or what is more commonly known as bird shit” (Bryson, 2016: 29). While Bryson attributes the memorable phrase “white dielectric material” to both Penzias and Wilson, other accounts credit Penzias alone (e.g. Guth 1998: 61; Chapan 2020: 68). While I have not been able to track the original phrase, I can confirm that when announcing their findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Penzias and Wilson (1965) made no aviary references at all. In his Nobel Prize lecture (1978: 475), furthermore, Wilson described how he and Penzias “evicted the pigeons and cleaned up their mess,” also referring obliquely to “a white material familiar to all city dwellers.”

Several accounts of Penzias and Wilson's great discovery refer to the “white dielectric material.” Indeed, one Ph.D. thesis has even referred to “the infamous ‘white dielectric material'” (Maseda 2015: 14). Neil DeGrasse Tyson (2017: 23) describes Penzias and Wilson finding “a white dielectric substance (pigeon poop).” Alan Guth (1998: 61) wrote that “the scientists put some effort into cleaning off the ‘white dielectric material' … with which the pigeons had coated the throat of the antenna.” Emma Chapman (2020: 68) glosses the “white dielectric substance” as “pigeon excrement,” and Macrus Chown (64) as “pigeon shit.”

Not all authors include a reference to “white dielectric material,” but accounts of Penzias and Wilson never fail to describe the cleaning of the shit. Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time (1995: 46) notes that Penzias and Wilson “discovered bird droppings in their detector.” Stephen Arnold (2020: 34-35) described how they “took a broom to the inside of the horn antenna to clear it from the countless bird droppings,” David Harland (2003: 149) how they “scraped off the accumulated bird droppings.” Kitty Ferguson (2004: 99) has them “evicting the pigeons and clearing away their droppings.” The humour magazine Cracked has Penzias and Wilson “cleaning out the pigeon crap” (see Hales 2020: 165). Clive Gifford's Quick History of the Universe (2020: 32), a children's book, even introduced the discovery as “a short story about pigeon poo.”

Why do so many accounts of the cosmic microwave background place such importance on pigeon droppings? A comparison with hagiography might provide some insight. Throughout the history of Christianity, from antiquity to the post-colonial world, religious entrepreneurs have told stories about the lives of saints and martyrs. Indeed, Christian leaders have devised new saints and new martyrs everywhere Christianity has spread. The association of Saint Patrick with Ireland is perhaps particularly best-known in the English speaking world, but Saints Cyril and Methodius are equally important to the Slavs. Both Japan and Uganda have their own martyrs (Turnbull 1993; Mubiri 2012; Brockey 2017).

Devising new saints enables Christian leaders to tailor the Christian message to local conditions. Potential Irish converts perhaps better relate to the deeds of a saint in Ireland; Ugandan believers perhaps find more inspiration in the sacrifice of Ugandan martyrs. While saints are held up as extraordinary individuals who deserve admiration and emulation, they must also be relatable. To appreciate the saint's goodness, the target audience for hagiographic narratives must be able to see themselves in the saint.

In narratives of popular science, the story of Penzias and Wilson resembles a narrative of a saint's life. The heroes may suffer setback and doubt, but they eventually succeed, and deserve admiration/veneration. Being awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for physics, furthermore, elevates Penzias and Wilson to a list of honoured figures that somewhat resembles the list of canonised saints. Their names are inscribed on a long list of outstanding figures not all of whom are remembered today, but which collectively form a heroic pantheon, even if neither saints nor Nobel laureates formally qualify as actual gods.

Cleaning the pigeon droppings, then, perhaps makes Penzias and Wilson more relatable to the non-scientific audience. The public at large does not understand how to construct a radio telescope, and can struggle to appreciate the technical achievements of radio astronomers. Anybody and everybody, however, is capable of understanding what it means to clean up after birds. Insofar as scientific biographies resemble hagiography, then, it seems that Penzias and Wilson are fated eternally scour pigeon droppings, much as Saint Francis of Assisi eternally tames the wolf or kisses the leper.

Bibliography

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