“‘A real love affair’: Pitt polymer physicist tells her story of science, romance and loss”

Here’s a summary: Anna Balazs is a polymer physicist at Pitt, where for decades, her work was intertwined with her husband Steven’s. He was an electrical engineer, the love of her life and her closest colleague. In 2016, she became the first woman ever to win the Polymer Physics Prize, just days after Steven died in a terrible accident. And so winning the prize was bittersweet: a lifetime accomplishment that was missing the person she most would have wanted to celebrate with.

When I interviewed Anna for a Pitt engineering oral history initiative in 2021, the first thing she told me was that she didn’t want to talk about her husband—so I agreed to stick to the science. But even though I kept up my end of the bargain, she spent most of the interview talking about him, because her science was so mixed up with their life together. The resulting interview was totally alive: whimsical, poignant and very, very romantic. Even the science is romantic! There’s this moment in there that I just love, where she describes her favorite polymer material, an oscillating gel that “beats like a little heart.” 

I created a 6-minute non-narrated feature from the interview for the oral history initiative. I’d love to share it with our listeners & I’m very open to shaping it to meet our needs.