Natalie Portman - a scientist

Intel Science Talent Search is a contest that Intel has been conducting in America for 69 years. High school students take part in it, and their scientific projects are quite serious, which require hundreds of hours of preparation and research. Suffice it to say that the winners and semi-finalists of this competition, continuing their scientific career, won seven Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, two Fields medals in mathematics, not counting other prestigious awards. Now the pleiad of the most talented schoolchildren-scientists has another prestigious award - the Oscar for the best actress of 2010.

On the night from Sunday to Monday, 29-year-old Nathalie Portman received an Oscar for her role as Nina, a mentally ill ballerina from the movie “Black Swan”. Never before has this statuette been given to an actress with such a scientific background.

In the late 90s, as a student of Syosset High School in Long Island, she made it to the semifinals of the Intel science competition. Everyone who participated in such competitions (for a number of years Intel held similar competitions in the CIS countries) knows how much effort and sleepless nights requires the preparation of a qualitative report based on its own original scientific work. This achievement alone speaks of the level of self-discipline and purposefulness of Natalie Portman.
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But that is not all. By the time she left school, Natalie Portman was already a rising movie star. At the age of 13 she starred in Luc Besson’s film “Professional / Leon” (as Matilda) and in several other films of famous directors with such actors as Julia Roberts, Jack Nicholson, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore and others. She even played the role of queen the planet Naboo in the movie "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones", after which she became an idol of teenagers. And what does a rising star do after school? She goes to Harvard to study neuroscience and brain evolution!

“I taught at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Vassar, and I was given the privilege of teaching many capable guys,” said Abigail A. Baird, one of the teachers at Portman at Harvard University. “But among them there were very few such really bright ones like Natalie, who had enormous intellectual power and who worked as fiercely as she could.”

Natalie Portman is one of several outstanding actresses who have a serious scientific background (scientific degrees, scientific articles, etc.). In addition to her, you can call Khedi Lamarr , who in the 1940s was called "the most beautiful woman in Hollywood," while she was an outstanding physicist. In 1942, she patented a spectrum expansion system, a way to increase the efficiency of information transmission using modulated signals through a channel with strong linear distortions. She called her system "jumping frequencies."

Another screen star is Danica McKellar, a mathematician who, with the highest marks, graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles. She starred in such TV series as Twilight Zone and Babylon 5, and also played a major role in the TV series Wonderful Years (6 seasons). She later wrote two best-selling books “Math Doesn't Suck So Bad” (Math Doesn't Suck) and Kiss My Math to help girls in high school to fall in love with this science.

Well, many contemporary audiences know Polish-born actress Mayim Bialik, who plays the role of Amy Farrah Fowler in the popular series The Big Bang Theory. Like Natalie Portman, she began to act in films from childhood (pictured 14-year-old girl at the awards ceremony in 1989). However, this did not distract her from her scientific career: she graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles with a degree in neurobiology, as well as her character in the film.

via NY Times Science