Good morning everyone,

One of the chief joys of writing Fem Fri is when I do an email about a topic and I get an email back from a reader saying, my aunt does this too! The world is full of remarkable aunts. Let's meet some of them today.

We start with Annelia Sargent. Professor Sargent is an astronomer specialising in star formation, winner of the NASA Public Service medal and was a key player in the Obama administration. And also somehow found the time to be Vice President for Student Affairs at Caltech. Honestly, this is so much to do, and she also made time for science, here's an article about one of her and her team's discoveries:

Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena last week reported the discovery of a giant disk of gas and dust that shows some of the clearest evidence yet of the early stages of the formation of planetary systems. The disk is more than 10 times the size of the solar system and is rotating around a young, massive star in the constellation Auriga. The star, designated MWC480, is 450 light-years away.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/12/science/big-gas-disk-may-form-a-new-planet-system.html

There is maybe some sort of music of the spheres connection here as we move to Leonie Holmes, modern composer. You can listen to one of her compositions here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT8Vxq7fxss

If you are at the University of Auckland, you can attend one of her lectures as she is a senior lecturer there. If you are not at the University of Auckland you can enjoy this interview:

I work on bringing out little details to create the right effect, but in quite a subversive way in that you don’t notice them until they are gone. Rhythmic simplicity is key.

https://www.sounz.org.nz/resources/999

Finally, I don't have an interview here, but I'd like you to know about Sister Marisa, another reader's aunt who founded the Marian Co-Educational School in Kolkata to give underprivileged children a good school to go to. No links here, just the opportunity to think about how every day many many aunts are out there doing unambiguously good things for the world.

I hope you have a great weekend. Please continue to tell me about your remarkable relatives.

A xx.