Biography
Barbara-Ann G. Lewis, in her Violin and Viola Repair Shop,4531 Sargent Ave., Castro Valley, CA.
Growing up in the Philippines, (Filipino father, Irish mother), I was 7 years old in 1941 when the Japanese Army occupied the Philippines in WW II, leading to home-schooling, physical deprivation–especially hunger, witnessing inhumanity, but also the humanity of the individual enemy. A lieutenant from the U.S. army of Liberation taught me the rudiments of flying an army observation airplane and fascinated by the biography of the Wright brothers and news articles about Chuck Yeager, I decided to become a test pilot. Convinced by my mother that no one would hire me, that dream gave way to chemistry, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and Madame Curie. With a B.S. in Chemistry (1953), my first paying job was in the Bureau of Soils in Manila, leading to research in the chemistry of soils and plants until 1961 when I was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship to study soils at the University of California, Berkeley. Accompanied by my husband and two small daughters, I completed my master’s degree in Soil Science, lost my husband to an American woman, and returned to the Philippines with my daughters in 1963. Back in the Bureau of Soils, I set up a radioisotope laboratory for use in soil and plant research. About a year later, I was offered a grant from the University of California at Berkeley, and again accompanied by my two small daughters, returned to the 7th-heaven world of academic research. After 9 years, I completed my PhD. “What took so long? ”… I lost track of time. I married a young graduate student in physics brave enough to take on two children and a dog, as well as a wife, and we had a son; I became thoroughly involved in the selenium ion which had unpredicted roles in soils and plants. Eventually, job hunting in the real world, I might as well have applied as a test pilot–I was ignored/turned down 126 times. My husband landed a post-doc position at the University of Chicago. We piled the 3 kids and dog into an old Chevy without a working heater and drove into our first snow of Chicago. I took a post-doc position at Argonne National Laboratory and spent the next 7 years learning while evaluating environmental impacts of nuclear and fossil-fueled power stations.
That experience gave me a pathway back to academia at Northwestern University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the first female faculty member of that department. I concentrated my research efforts in the area of reclamation and revegetation of mining and waste disposal lands, including radioactive sites. For this work, I was awarded the Palladium Medal by the National Audubon Society/American Association of Engineering Societies.
I retired reluctantly from NU at age 72 and returned to school to learn violin making. Our home in Castro Valley, California includes a workshop where I repair violins and violas for the local school district, and enjoy visiting with our 3 children, their spouses, and 6 grandchildren.