REST IN POWER
bell hooks obituary

Trailblazing writer, activist and cultural theorist who made a pivotal contribution to Black feminist thought

bell hooks in 2018. She wrote 40 books in a career spanning more than four decades. Photograph: Holler Home/The Orchard/Kobal/Shutterstock

Margaret Busby
Fri 17 Dec 2021 14.57 GMT

A trailblazing cultural theorist and activist, public intellectual, teacher and feminist writer, bell hooks, who has died of kidney failure aged 69, authored around 40 books in a career spanning more than four decades. Exploring the intersecting oppressions of gender, race and class, her writings additionally reflected her concerns with issues related to art, history, sexuality, psychology and spirituality, ultimately with love at the heart of community healing.

Using storytelling as effectively as social theory, she was creatively agile in a range of genres, including poetry, essays, memoir, self-help and children’s books, as well as appearing in documentary films and working in academia. However, her outstanding legacy may be her pivotal contribution to Black feminist thought, first articulated in her 1981 book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which examined both historical racism and sexism, going back to the treatment of Black women from enslavement to give context to continuing racial and sexual injustice.
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The daughter of Veodis Watkins, a postal worker, and his wife, Rosa Bell (nee Oldham), she was born Gloria Jean Watkins in the small rural town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and her upbringing was affected by being part of a working-class African-American family in the US south, initially educated at racially segregated schools. A gifted child, she enjoyed the poetry of William Wordsworth, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Gwendolyn Brooks, and was encouraged to write verse of her own well before she reached her teens. Scholarships enabled her to study at Stanford University, in California, where she earned a BA in English in 1973, and she took an MA in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976.

That year she began teaching at the University of Southern California, and during her time there her first publication, the poetry chapbook And There We Wept (1978), appeared under the pseudonym bell hooks – a name she adopted in tribute to her maternal great-grandmother, styling it in lowercase so as to keep the focus on her work rather than on her own persona.

She had begun writing her major work, Ain’t I a Woman – its title referencing a celebrated speech by the 19th-century Black abolitionist Sojourner Truth – as an undergraduate. Harshly criticised from some quarters, the book eventually achieved influential status as a classic that centres Black womanhood. Another key title, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), is a critique of mainstream feminist theory in which Black women exist only on the margins, with the women’s liberation movement being primarily structured around issues relevant to white women with class privilege.

The journalist and media consultant Joan Harris recalled the historical context, when “it was almost considered anathema, almost traitorous, if you were Black also to be a ‘feminist’” and joining a white women’s group was not an option, given the differing concerns at the time. Harris said: “Bell’s work clarified things … Her work, her presence, made me, and so many others, feel validated during a truly fraught time.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, hooks taught at a number of educational institutions, among them Yale University, Oberlin College and the City College of New York. In 2004 she joined the faculty of Berea College in her native Kentucky, where in 2014 the bell hooks Institute was established. She received the American Book awards/Before Columbus Foundation award for Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (1990) and was nominated for an NAACP Image award for her 1999 children’s book Happy to Be Nappy.

An advocate of anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-capitalist politics, she produced radical writings that shaped popular and academic discourse. Her books illuminated a wide range of topics, evidenced by just a selection of the titles: Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989); Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (with Cornel West, 1991); Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992); Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies (1996); We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2004); and Soul Sister: Women, Friendship, and Fulfillment (2005).

Her writing resonated far beyond the US, and her work was translated into 15 languages. Invited to London for the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in 1991, she spoke and took part in debates and readings, engaging with local activists. In my 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa I included the title essay from her collection Talking Back, which in many ways encapsulates the origins, motivation and inspiration that propelled her forward from early in life.

“In the world of the southern black community I grew up in, ‘back talk’ and ‘talking back’ meant speaking as an equal to an authority figure. It meant daring to disagree and sometimes it meant just having an opinion,” she explained. For a child, to speak when not spoken to was to invite punishment, so was a courageous act, an act of risk and daring. It was in that world that the craving was born in her “to have a voice, and not just any voice, but one that could be identified as belonging to me … Certainly for black women, our struggle has not been to emerge from silence into speech but to change the nature and direction of our speech, to make a speech that compels listeners, one that is heard.”

Her spirit refused to be crushed by the somewhat harsh reception her first work received and, tellingly, she wrote: “Now when I ponder the silences, the voices that are not heard, the voices of those wounded and/or oppressed individuals who do not speak or write, I contemplate the acts of persecution, torture – the terrorism that breaks spirits, that makes creativity impossible. I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanisation and despair.”

For hooks, it was “that act of speech, of ‘talking back’, that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject – the liberated voice”.

She is survived by four sisters, Sarah, Valeria, Angela and Gwenda, and a brother, Kenneth.

bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), writer, born 25 September 1952; died 15 December 2021

bell hooks’ writing told Black women and girls to trust themselves

Deborah Douglas

The feminist writer created a vocabulary that helped us to learn, grow, and forgive – and above all to understand

‘The beauty of hooks was her ability to bring philosophy to the people.’

 Photograph: Holler Home/The Orchard/Kobal/Shutterstock
Fri 17 Dec 2021 

Having just the right words to explain what’s happening keeps you from feeling, well, crazy.

When the world learned of the passing of bell hooks, the renowned feminist, public intellectual, author, and professor on Wednesday, at her home in Berea, Kentucky, it was the value and accessibility of her words that resonated with Black women, whose understanding of themselves and their own work was transformed by hooks.

One day in her 20s, the right words came to Natalie Bullock Brown

Her then boyfriend gave her copy of Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery (1993), which made her feel seen and loved. Through tears and hard swallows, Bullock Brown, now a documentary film-maker and interdisciplinary studies professor at North Carolina State University, revealed how the world broke open when she first inhaled those pages.

hooks “inspired and motivated me to want to understand what I was experiencing,” said Bullock Brown, describing the ways she had come crashing into sexism and racism as a girl, then a woman. “I felt pricked. I felt like, ‘Oh my, God, she’s talking to me.’ I wanted to heal. That’s really what Sisters of the Yam is about.”

For so many, the beauty of hooks, known for such titles as Ain’t I A Woman? (1981), All About Love (1999), and Teaching to Transgress (1994), was her ability to bring philosophy to the people, said Saida Grundy, a feminist sociologist of race and ethnicity and a professor at Boston University.
Hers was a language that radically changed how Black women process their lives

“There is this idea that of all the humanities, philosophy is sort of the most erudite, the most prestigious or the most inaccessible, and what she’s doing is inviting Black people in particular but really marginalized people [in general] into this space of thinking about their own experience in ways of critical thinking or esoteric exercise,” Grundy said.

In empowering people “to have some command over how you think about yourself”, hers was a language that radically changed how Black women process their lives, Grundy said. “There is nothing that should be inaccessible about marginalized people being able to make thought of their own lives. That’s powerful.”

kihana miraya ross, a professor of African American studies at Northwestern University, said hooks’ writing had gripped her as a graduate student. “Her writing is so powerful and so important, but it’s also so clear. She has always been a role model for me in that way: no shade to people who don’t write like that, but I think that when you can say things clearly it means you understand what you’re saying.”

The accessibility of hooks’ words was exactly what Bullock Brown said she needed at a time when she felt all over the place.

“I didn’t really realize my value,” she said. “I didn’t recognize the issues that are specific to Black women and the ways that I was experiencing them. It was like a beautiful, really loving way to just kind of help me to begin to be centered and grounded in some reality and truth that may have taken me longer to really reconcile.”

Like me, Bullock Brown grew up in what I describe as “the remnant aura” of the civil rights movement in my book US Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events that Made the Movement (2021). Surrounded by Black striving and excellence, there was a palpable energy that suggested to Black girls that it was up to us to make good on the opportunities won by that movement.


bell hooks remembered: ‘She embodied everything I wanted to be’

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I’ve realized I grew up bound up in a sense of duty to excel but also a requirement to know my place. This surfaced in big and small ways, like on Sundays when my teen cousin, Reginald, would stop by for dinner, and my grandmother would order me to set a plate at the head of the table for him. I didn’t mind feeding him, but resisted the social programming to promote him to a place of honor simply because he was born male.

Similarly, Bullock Brown said she spent years unpacking the social messages to conform to specific, and limiting, ideas of what a woman is supposed to be – married with children – messages imparted in particular by her father.

“Part of the reason why I needed language is because there was a way my potential, my ability, even my own brilliance, to whatever extent that might exist, was muted because I’m a woman, because I was a girl,” she said. “A part of that experience was also not being encouraged to trust my own thoughts.”

A bespoke language created by hooks helped Bullock Brown learn, grow, and forgive. hooks matters because she helped so many of us Black women and girls to trust ourselves and articulate why.

“Our experiences as Black women and femmes is not going to be universal in the sense that we all go through the same thing; we’re not a monolith,” Bullock Brown said. “And yet, there’s a way that I think bell describes our experience that is both universal and specific.”


Deborah Douglas is the co-editor in chief of The Emancipator, a collaboration between Boston University and the Boston Globe, set to begin publishing original commentary in 2022

As we grieve bell hooks, let’s remember all that she taught us
Shanita Hubbard

The many of us whose writing is informed by her work will continue to use our words to fearlessly contend with white supremacy while never letting patriarchy off the hook

‘Even without meeting her, bell was our instructor.’ 

Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images
Thu 16 Dec 2021

On Wednesday, 15 December 2021 the world became a dimmer place. bell hooks, the brilliant, trailblazing author, cultural critic, feminist, poet and professor, died of an undisclosed illness. The news was first announced by her niece. I learned of it while scrolling social media. Before I could even digest what I had read, my phone exploded with texts from other Black women. I didn’t need to read them to know what they would state – I knew my sisters were hurting. We lost someone who transformed our thinking and gave us the language to challenge systems of oppression and the unique ways they harm Black women.

In her book Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, bell hooks brilliantly explores racism, feminism, class and patriarchy – or institutionalized sexism, as she called it. The book opens with a chapter tracing contemporary imagery of Black women in America back to the brutality of slavery. The book holds no punches; bell hooks explains how the suffrage movement excluded Black women and the ways that the civil rights movement didn’t always address the distinct needs of Black women. Like bell hooks herself, the work is complex and thought-provoking.

Aint I a Woman? was the first bell hooks book I read. I was in my final semester of graduate school at the time. At 23, I considered myself to be socially conscious. Prior to engaging with her work, I would wax poetic about injustice and the ways that systemic racism effectively launched weapons of mass destruction in my community. I would tell you that the “war on drugs” was nothing short of a war on Black men, and how the prison-industrial complex was another form of slavery. While the data indicates that there is a disproportionate number of Black men incarcerated, I failed to consider how these same systems of oppression also harmed Black women specifically. I did not have the range or language to even consider the ways in which race, class, and gender intersect and how this should frame my work and thinking around criminal justice reform. The more I studied her work the more I realized how much of my formal education left me with gaping holes in my thinking.

It was bell hooks who helped me understand that even when we talk about our collective freedom from racism this must also include fighting against sexism. Any fight against oppression that doesn’t include contending with sexism is not freedom at all – for Black women it’s merely an unspoken agreement to devalue an entire aspect of our personhood. This revelation started a radical transformation in me. I began to love my community differently. I developed a love for my community that wasn’t afraid to interrogate any narrative or practice that failed Black women. Because, as hooks’s work demonstrates, love without analysis is merely appreciation. She planted a seed that I’m still watering with her work.

bell hooks’s work shaped generations of Black women. Candice Marie Benbow, an essayist and the author of the forthcoming book Red Lip Theology, shared how bell hooks impacted her life. “bell hooks taught me that there is powerful specificity in my Black womanhood,” she told me. “That our lives require critical engagement and generous care. She loved us. When few loved Black women, she loved us well. She laid the blueprint so many of us are trying to follow. She was my teacher. I never met her but she taught me as well as she loved me. And, whenever I read her or listened to her, I felt it.”

Even without meeting her, bell was our instructor. She brilliantly theorized about radical love, healing and community in a way that caused us to consider unimaginable possibilities. Rhonda Nicole Tankerson, a singer-songwriter and digital marketing consultant, told me that she met bell through words. “bell hooks came later (in my 20s), as I began to explore Black feminists thought and scholarship. Her writings on love have been especially important in challenging my own understandings and expectations when it comes to seeking and experiencing it, romantically and otherwise. She made me dream of possibilities that I never knew could exist.”

bell hooks’s legacy consists of possibilities and reimagining love. This is especially true for Dr Jenn M Jackson, a writer and professor. “Her legacy, amongst other things, shows us that our work must be rooted in a deep love for our people and an unwavering commitment to holding grace for ourselves as we struggle,” they told me.

There is no single Black woman, cultural critic, feminist, poet, or professor among us that can carry bell hooks’s legacy alone. Nor can we heal from this loss alone. Fortunately, we don’t have to. She has already given us the blueprint for both. When we hurt over her death we will heal together as she taught us: “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”

For the great many of us whose writing is informed by her work, we will continue to use our words to fearlessly contend with white supremacy while never letting patriarchy off the hook. This is a collective action and we are all needed. Because as bell hooks taught us, “No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’ … No woman has ever written enough.”

Shanita Hubbard is an adjunct professor of sociology and the author of the forthcoming book Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto For The Well-Being of Black Women

thank you, bell hooks


The feminist icon, who has died aged 69, leaves behind a rich, powerful legacy

Anita Mureithi
16 December 2021, 4.57pm

bell hooks gave us the language and the courage to speak boldly about Blackness in an imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy |
Kevin Andre Elliott. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

There’s a quiet stillness that lingers in the air when you learn that someone you looked up to for years has passed, even if you never got to meet them. Yesterday, it felt like time stopped for a moment as the collective mind grappled with the sorrow of knowing that our time on earth with a legend had come to an end. bell hooks, or Gloria Jean Watkins was an inspiration. She always will be. A bestselling writer, feminist, poet and activist, who challenged us to think critically and look at the world through an intersectional lens. She changed people’s lives. She changed mine. There are generations of feminists who do not know who or what we would be without her teachings. She has guided us to live courageously and speak loudly.

I came across bell hooks’s ‘All About Love: New Visions’ during a tumultuous time. “When love is present the desire to dominate and exercise power cannot rule the day.” ‘All About Love’ invites us to define love beyond our ideas of what it is and what we think it looks like. It teaches us to challenge the prevailing cis normative, patriarchal notion that the nuclear family and romantic love are the most important expressions of love. It helps us think about love in a wider context, in terms of social justice, community and self-love. hooks said that “there can be no love without justice” and she emphasised that love is part of the journey to freedom; that truly living by a love ethic could bring about societal change.

On race, gender, politics and radical self-love, bell hooks shaped me into the woman and feminist that I am today, a sentiment that has been shared broadly by so many in the outpouring of love and gratitude on social media.

In ‘Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics’, hooks argued that “true resistance begins with people confronting pain… and wanting to do something to change it”. Her analysis of the importance of acknowledging and confronting the pain that we have experienced in order to move beyond it was powerful and still rings true today. The premise of theory as a place for deep transformation and healing on a personal and societal level led to a profound paradigm shift for me.

When I read her nuanced critique of white feminism in ‘Ain’t I a woman?: Black Women and Feminism’, I was entranced. “It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’ to focus on the fact that to be a ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.” In the book, which is titled after a line in American abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech in favour of women’s rights, hooks addressed the effects of the intersection of racism and sexism on Black women in ways that to this day, still resonate for so many of us. bell hooks was one of the leading intersectional feminists who made the critical connection between race, other marginalised identities, class, political history and feminism. She made feminist theory more inclusive and accessible for millions of people, including me.

She explained political theory in a way that made sense and found the words to describe the complex emotions that many of us often feel. For young, Black women trying to navigate hostile societies and find our place in the world, this was everything. She gave us the language and the courage to speak boldly about Blackness in an imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. She had the ability to take a collective experience and articulate it in a way that made her work feel deeply personal. In ‘Remembered Rapture: The Writer At Work’, she said: “No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’... No woman has ever written enough.” I have carried these words with me ever since I first read them.

No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’... No woman has ever written enoughbell hooks

The beauty of hooks’s commentary was that while her analyses showed a fervent love for Black women, it was also universal in that everyone could learn from her literature, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. There are lessons in her teachings for each and every person.

Her work shows that there is a place for radical feminism in our everyday lives. From engagement within our communities to our personal relationships. In ‘Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics’, hooks says that: “To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.”

What consoles us, as she takes her place with the ancestors, is the lifetime of work and wisdom that she has left behind. Even if, like every other woman, she didn’t write enough.

Feminism wouldn’t be what it is without the contributions of revolutionaries like bell hooks. May her teachings live on in our actions and in our words.

May she rest in love.

bell hooks remembered: ‘She embodied everything I wanted to be’

The activist and acclaimed author of Ain’t I a Woman and All About Love has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute to her

A life in quotes: bell hooks

bell hooks, author and activist, dies aged 69

bell hooks. Photograph: Karjean Levine/Getty Images


Reni Eddo-Lodge, David Olusoga, Jay Bernard, Johny Pitts, Jeffrey Boakye, Margaret Atwood, Candice Carty-Williams, Aminatta Forna, Afua Hirsch

Thu 16 Dec 2021 

Reni Eddo-Lodge. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

Reni Eddo-Lodge: ‘When I tried to develop my own writing, I read hers’

British journalist and author of the bestselling Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

It was bell hooks who planted the seed of a book in my brain. In a 2013 in-conversation event with Melissa Harris-Perry, she said she didn’t trust the internet, that a plug could be pulled at any time and that everything we put there could one day be lost. I was writing for the internet at the time – ephemeral articles that often got swept away on busy timelines. Hearing her musings persuaded me to slow down on putting my work online, and instead seek to put my political energy towards writing something physical that could be held and referred to, handed to someone, used as a tool.

But long before being influenced by her conversation with Melissa Harris-Perry, I had read her work voraciously. I first discovered it in my early 20s when I was navigating the whiteness of British feminism. Her writing wasn’t in print in Britain at the time, so PDFs of her work, such as Ain’t I a Woman, would circulate among activist groups. It served as a balm to those of us seeking refuge from white feminist hostility.

bell hooks in New York City, 1996. 

Photograph: Karjean Levine/Getty Images

But her writing wasn’t only on feminist fractures. She was prolific, writing dozens of books across subjects – race, feminism, class, capitalism, masculinity, academia, children’s rights, spirituality and love. Her writing on love, in particular, served as a guiding light for me and so many others. Hers was an expansive analysis, with an intelligent feminist practice shining through, mooring those of us who had lost our way. Her first book was written when she was an undergraduate, but her entire body of work held an ancestral wisdom. She reminded feminist dissidents of the better world we were working towards.

When I tried to develop my own writing, I read hers. She embodied everything I wanted to be, writing with a compassion, care and clarity that I aspire to emulate in my own work.

Upon the news of her passing, I cried under my mask on a London bus, the gravity of her influence on me hitting like a gut punch. I wish I’d credited her more. But after the initial shock has subsided, I felt gratitude: for the work she’d given all of us and for it reaching me at the right time. For both of our times on this planet overlapping in such a way that I got to watch her holding court on a stage in New York from a box room in London. For the seed that was planted.

David Olusoga. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Observer

David Olusoga: ‘She urged me to broaden my horizons’

British historian, broadcaster and author of Black and British: A Forgotten History

I met bell hooks just once. It was the early 2000s and I was producing a television documentary about how African Americans had, since civil rights, created a unique intellectual culture that had generated a great pantheon of black public intellectuals. hooks, one of the stars of that phenomenon, was inevitably one of the key interviewees. I can remember very little about my interview with her, carried out in a Manhattan brownstone belonging to one of her friends. But I remember a great deal about what happened next. After the interview we all went for drinks and the real questioning began. hooks interrogated me about my background, my education and above all my ambitions. She suggested books I should read, people I should meet and over a couple of hours was ceaselessly encouraging – as well as clever and funny.

She urged me, a young black TV producer she had only just met, to broaden my horizons and not limit my ideas of who I might become. Her urging was inflected with that sense of drive that highly educated African Americans so often possess and that Black Britons are so often in awe of. At a time in my life when the TV industry seemed so determined to assign me a pigeonhole and place limits on my expectations, her warmth and generosity was almost overwhelming. We finished our drinks, she smiled, wished me luck and was whisked away in an oversized American car, heading off to her next appointment. I always hoped I would see her again, but never did. To my shame I never got the chance to let her know how much our meeting had meant to me.

Jay Bernard. 

Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Jay Bernard: ‘She passed on the deceptively simple idea that to love is to think, and to think is to love’

Writer, artist and activist from London whose poetry about the New Cross Fire has won them the Ted Hughes Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award

I first read bell hooks after I graduated from university, a very lost and depleted person. I moved to the other side of the world and found Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community, which helped me begin to unlearn the problematic, and frankly racist, liberalism I had picked up during my degree. For me, bell hooks’ influence can be felt in that she passed on the deceptively simple idea that to love is to think, and to think is to love.

bell hooks during an interview for her book Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work in 1999. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

It is very difficult to put this into practice and her books hold nothing back in telling us to try. She is now done speaking. Whether we do it is entirely down to us.

Johny Pitts. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Johny Pitts: ‘She taught an entire generation that we weren’t there simply to be commodified’

British presenter, photographer and author of Jhalak prize-winning Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. He is the curator of The Eyes issue 12: The B-Side, which features black photographers and quotes from bell hooks

As well as focused rage, true activism involves innovation. bell hooks had it all, but it was particularly her outstanding interventions around the notion of the “oppositional gaze” that powered me up as a black writer and photographer. The idea that not only did I have the right to exist as a documentarian, but the very fact of my looking back was an act of resistance. She taught an entire generation that we weren’t there simply to be gawped at and commodified, but could – should – participate in the production of images.

Jeffrey Boakye. Photograph: Jeffrey Boakye

Jeffrey Boakye: ‘Her words will remain vital, stirring and rooted in compassion’

Author of Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored and Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials and the Meaning of Grime

In times of such division and ideological polarisation, it feels like we need, more than ever before, the clarity of thought and passionate integrity that bell hooks so completely embodied in her work. Generations of thinkers owe a debt to her legacy of thought in areas of racism, feminism, marginality and their various intersections. Her words will remain vital, stirring and ultimately rooted in the soil of compassion. A salute to a towering figure of criticality, whose (lowercase) name is now synonymous with the most serious and incisive interrogations of who we are.

Margaret Atwood. Photograph: Jeremy Chan/Getty Images

Margaret Atwood: ‘Her dedication to the cause of ending “sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” was exemplary’

Twice Booker-winning author of more than 50 books, including The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin and The Testaments

bell hooks embodied amazing courage and deeply felt intelligence. In finding her own words and power, she inspired countless others to do the same. Her dedication to the cause of ending ‘sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression’ was exemplary.

Her impact extended far beyond the United States: many women from all over the world owe her a great debt.

Candice Carty-Williams. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

Candice Carty-Williams: ‘The legacy she leaves behind is monumental and enduring’

British author of the bestselling novel Queenie. She won the book of the year the 2020 British Book Awards, becoming the first black woman to do so

bell hooks was a writer whose scope of sensibilities taught me, nourished me, engaged me. But it was her writing on love that changed my life after a friend forced me to read All About Love, a book that I knew would contain so much power and truth that I was afraid of its contents. bell hooks will be missed, but the legacy she leaves behind is monumental and enduring, much like the ideals of love she put to the page.

Aminatta Forna. Photograph: PR

Aminatta Forna: ‘She took care to put me at my ease’

Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer of the memoir The Devil That Danced on the Water and four novels: Ancestor Stones, The Memory of Love, The Hired Man and Happiness

I met bell hooks as a young reporter when I was sent to interview her for the BBC’s Late Show. This was back in the early 90s. She took care to put me at my ease, played music, made tea for us and complained about not being able to find anyone to braid her hair where she lived in Greenwich Village. In the ensuing interview she predicted the so-called “culture wars”, which I guess now, looking back, had already begun in the US. She said that one day the centre would have to shift. And she was right.

 

Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Afua Hirsch: ‘She exploded the false binary between the personal and the academic’

British journalist, former barrister and bestselling author of Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging

Reading bell hooks was an experience of profound relief. She had powerfully identified and articulated, with characteristic intellectual rigour, phenomena which I instinctively perceived but had never seen vocalised. Her writings on the crushing of black women’s sexual integrity, on the foundational racism of the “women’s movement”, and on the narratives that continue to divide and conquer black gender norms are searingly contemporary, in spite of the fact she began writing them decades ago.

And yet as a young black woman, it was bell’s generosity in sharing her own experience of love, sexuality and gender that provided the conduit for her work to reach me in such a personal and direct way. She exploded the false binary between the personal and the academic through her truth-telling, and it continues to inspire me to this day.

Montreal archdiocese independent ombudswoman receives 75 formal complaints

MONTREAL — An independent ombudswoman hired by the Montreal Roman Catholic archdiocese said Wednesday she has received 75 formal complaints — including 46 related to abuse — dating back to 1950 until the present day.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The cumulative report published Wednesday by Marie Christine Kirouack, who was hired by the church this year, is composed of complaints against members of the church that were filed between May 5 and Nov. 30.

Thirty complaints involve allegations of sexual abuse from 1950 to the present day, and another 16 complaints are connected to alleged psychological, financial, physical or spiritual abuse.

Kirouack's report says 10 complaints have been referred to outside investigators and nine others have been forwarded to religious communities.

She says she also received about 30 complaints that fell outside her purview, including COVID-19-related complaints and 13 complaints for abuse suffered by Indigenous Peoples.

Kirouack says in a statement that listening to people about their suffering is an important part of her job and that she hopes the latest report encourages others to file complaints.

Her appointment in May 2021 was one of the key recommendations stemming from a report in November 2020 by former Superior Court justice Pepita G. Capriolo, into the church's handling of the case of an ex-priest sentenced to eight years in prison in 2019 for sexually assaulting two minors.

Capriolo concluded the church had a culture of secrecy, lacked accountability and was more interested in protecting the reputation of ex-priest Brian Boucher than of addressing the sexual abuse.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 15, 2021.

The Canadian Press

After 3 tense months, Spanish volcano eruption may be over

MADRID (AP) — Residents on the Spanish island of La Palma dared to hope Wednesday that their volcanic eruption is over after almost three months of unnerving daily explosions, earthquakes, rivers of molten rock and a huge ash plume containing toxic gases.

The Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands off northwest Africa fell silent on Monday evening, and scientists said its 36 hours or so of negligible activity might signal the beginning of the end of the eruption. Scientists won’t rule out a resurgence of volcanic activity, which previously abated only to return with renewed force, but say it is unlikely.

“We cannot be 100% sure, as the volcano has been playing a few tricks over the last weeks,” Valentin Troll, a geology expert with Sweden’s Uppsala University and co-author of a geology study of the Canary Islands, told The Associated Press.

“But many parameters have now subsided, and I think the volcano is indeed in decline now,” he said.

The Canary Islands government said that “volcanic activity has fallen to almost nothing.” Some wisps of white smoke floated from the crater Wednesday morning. As the eruption petered out, scientists ventured out on foot to the lip of the crater to take up-close gas readings for the first time in three months.

Low and sustained levels of activity must be observed for 10 days for scientists to formally declare the end of the eruption, María José Blanco, a volcanologist and spokeswoman for Spain’s National Geographic Institute, told reporters.

The eruption, which began on Sept. 19, is the longest on record on La Palma and has been a milestone for islanders, many of whom live from farming and tourism. The volcanic Canary Islands are a popular European vacation destination due to their mild climate.

No injuries or deaths have been directly linked to the La Palma eruption, and life has continued largely as normal on most of the island of 80,000 residents. However, several thousand people were forced to abandon their homes and farms as they were engulfed by lava and a section of La Palma's southwestern side is severely damaged.

For some locals, relief at the weakening eruption was tempered by frustration at government promises of help they say has failed to materialize.

“Being able to see the sun properly for the first time in nearly three months, sleeping at night without tremors, totally changes the picture," said Francisco Javier López, a 61-year-old resident of the village of Todoque. “But the future remains bleak.”

López lost his home of 30 years during the first few days of the eruption and says he is living in an overpriced rented apartment in a nearby village. The future of his paragliding business, which employed him and his wife, also evaporated as lava buried the takeoff and landing strips at the top of the Cumbre Vieja mountain range.

López complained that despite pledges of free accommodation, subsidies and financial aid from national, regional and local officials, almost nothing has actually reached the La Palma residents affected by the volcano.

“The volcano has taken away our houses, including our past and memories,” he told the AP. “But politicians are taking away our future and our hope.”

Fiery molten rock flowing from Cumbre Vieja down toward the sea has destroyed around 3,000 buildings. The fields of thick, black hardened lava have entombed banana plantations, ruined irrigation systems and cut off roads.

The hardened lava covers around 1,200 hectares (about 3,000 acres), according to the Canary Islands volcanic emergency unit, Pevolcan. Where the molten rock has poured into the Atlantic Ocean, rocky deltas have formed over 48 hectares (120 acres), Pevolcan said.

The eruption has drawn scientists from around the world to La Palma. They have been using cutting-edge technology to examine it from land, sea, air and even space.

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Barry Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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Follow AP stories on volcanic eruptions at https://apnews.com/hub/volcanic-eruptions.

Aritz Parra And Barry Hatton, The Associated Press

First-Ever 'True' Millipede With 1,306 Legs Discovered Deep Underground in Australia

Although the name millipede comes from Latin for "thousand feet", before now no species has been found with more than 750 legs. After the discovery of a new millipede with 1,306 legs however, this arthropod is finally living up to its name.

© Marek et al, Scientific Reports 2021 A male Eumillipes persephone.

The new species is Eumillipes persephone – emillipes translating as "true-thousand-foot", with Persephone being the Greek goddess of the underworld. The wriggly creature was found 60 meters (197 feet) underground in a mining drill hole in the Eastern Goldfields Province of Australia.

Based on the four creatures analyzed so far, E. persephone has up to 330 segments on its body, and can measure up to 0.95 millimeters (0.04 inches) wide and 95.7 mm (3.77 inches) long. This millipede has a cone-shaped head with antennae and a beak, but no eyes.



A female E. persephone with 1,306 legs. (Marek et al., Scientific Reports, 2021)

"Among the earliest animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen, and with some extinct species that grew to two meters in length, millipedes have lived on this planet for more than 400 million years," write the researchers in their paper describing the find.

"Here we report the discovery of E. persephone, the first super-elongated millipede known from Australia, and the new world record holder of the animal with the greatest number of legs."

The research team thinks this new millipede is distantly related to the species Illacme plenipes, which had set the previous record of 750 legs. This particular millipede is found in the central region of California, and despite its absurd legginess, tends to grow to a length of just 25 to 40 millimeters.

Besides having so many legs and no eyes, E. persephone is also notable for its long, thread-like appearance (similar to I. plenipes) and its uniformly pale and cream-colored exoskeleton. These characteristics help mark it out as a species distinct from others.

The long bodies, multiple segments and many legs found in both I. plenipes and E. persephone could well have evolved to enable these millipedes to push and burrow through the soil more effectively, the researchers suggest.

"This telescoping locomotion, by sliding trunk segments coupled with the thrust of the legs, propels the animal through a varied and unpredictable underground microhabitat, and the increase in leg number likely contributes more pushing power to force through small crevices and openings," write the researchers.

There are still plenty of unknowns about E. persephone – what it eats, for example, and where else it might be found – but there's already enough to go on to mark it out as its own species and establish that it is a record breaker in terms of its leg count.

The researchers say the discovery of this new millipede is more evidence of the biodiversity found deep underground in the Eastern Goldfields Province, and helps to make a strong case for the region to be protected for the future.

While conditions above ground changed significantly across thousands of years, according to the researchers, the underground habitat most probably stayed stable – cool and moist. It's possible that many more discoveries are waiting to be made.

"These underground habitats, and their inhabitants, are critically understudied, despite their ecological importance in filtration of groundwater and screening of environmental toxins," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

‘The bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch has kicked it’: son’s hilarious obituary goes viral

Richard Luscombe 

Some obituary notices open with the grand achievements of a life well-lived, or the tender details of a person’s passing with loved ones at their side. The death in El Paso, Texas, of Renay Mandel Corren, however, was marked in somewhat more unorthodox fashion. “The bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck American family has kicked it,” it read.

According to the family’s obituary published in the Fayetteville Observer, Corren, who died on Saturday at the age of 84, will be mourned “in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt”.

They include her birthplace of McKeesport, Pennsylvania “where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism”; Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina “where Renay’s dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried”; and Miami, Florida, “where Renay’s parents, uncles, aunts, and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere, are all buried pretty deep”.

The remarkable – and hilarious – 1,000-word obituary was written by Corren’s son Andy, and quickly went viral after it was published on Wednesday.

The tribute to a mother known fondly to her family as “Rosie” is a partly tongue-in-cheek account of a long and eventful life, liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and encounters, some of which Mr Corren admits might not even be true. But the banter represents a loving tribute to a lady they still can’t quite believe has actually died.

“Renay has been toying with death for decades, but always beating it and running off in her silver Chevy Nova,” the obituary states.

“Covid couldn’t kill Renay. Neither could pneumonia twice, infections, blood clots, bad feet, breast cancer twice, two mastectomies, two recessions, multiple bankruptcies, marriage to a philandering Sergeant Major, divorce in the 70s, six kids, one cesarean, a few abortions from the Quietly Famous Abortionist of Spring Lake, NC or an affair with Larry King in the 60s.”

It also lists her many talents: “She played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped.”

“Renay didn’t cook, she didn’t clean, and she was lousy with money, too. Here’s what Renay was great at: dyeing her red roots, weekly manicures, dirty jokes, pier fishing, rolling joints and buying dirty magazines.”

She lived her final days: “Under the care, compassion, checking accounts and, evidently, unlimited patience of her favorite son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Lourdes Corren, of [the] world-famous cow sanctuary El Paso.”

Among the numerous family members she leaves behind, including children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is her “favorite son”, namely “the gay one who writes catty obituaries in his spare time, Andy Corren, of – obviously – New York City.”

The obituary concludes with details of a planned funeral service in May next year, “a very disrespectful and totally non-denominational memorial … most likely at a bowling alley in Fayetteville.”

Meanwhile, Mr Corren says he and his five siblings have given up on receiving an inheritance. “The family requests absolutely zero privacy or propriety, none whatsoever, and in fact encourages you to spend some government money today on a one-armed bandit, at the blackjack table or on a cheap cruise to find our inheritance,” he writes.

“For Larry King’s sake: LAUGH. Bye, Mommy. We loved you to bits.”

Dutch judge: Remove tweets comparing unvaccinated to Jews


THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A judge on Wednesday ordered Dutch right-wing populist lawmaker Thierry Baudet to take down four tweets in which he drew comparisons between coronavirus lockdown measures and the treatment of Jews under the Nazi regime, saying they “instrumentalized” the suffering of Jews.

Two Jewish organizations and a group of Holocaust survivors went to court in Amsterdam to demand the tweets be removed, describing them as “seriously insulting and unnecessarily hurtful to the murdered victims of the Holocaust, survivors and relatives.”

Among the tweets was one that called people who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus “the new Jews, the exclusionists who look the other way are the new Nazis and NSBers." NSB is the acronym for the National Socialist Movement, the Dutch branch of the Nazi party.

“The comparison you made in the contested posts goes beyond what can can be justified in the interests of robust public debate,” the judge hearing the case said. The judge's name was not immediately available.

“By equating in the messages, without any nuance, the situation of unvaccinated citizens with the fate of the Jews in the 1930s and ’40s, you make a comparison, as I said earlier, that is factually wrong and you wrongly use, in other words you instrumentalize, the human suffering of Jews in the Holocaust and the memories of them,” the judge added.

The court ordered Baudet to remove the tweets from his Twitter feed within 48 hours. If he does not, he must pay 25,000 euros ($28,000) each day that they remain online.

In a reaction on Twitter, Baudet called the judgment “Insane, incomprehensible."

"We are angry and combative. And of course we will appeal,” he tweeted.

Baudet is leader of the right-wing populist party Forum for Democracy which has five seats in the lower house of Dutch parliament.

The Jewish groups that started the civil case against Baudet welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement that it “made an important contribution to indicating the limits of the public debate.”

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Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

The Associated Press

EU Parliament backs tough new rules to rein in U.S. tech giants
By Foo Yun Chee 1 day ago

The logos of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU lawmakers voted on Wednesday to beef up draft rules to rein in U.S. tech giants, including extending the scope to their retailing activities and to their business users outside Europe, as part of their common position in forthcoming talks with EU countries.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA), unveiled by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager last December, sets out a list of dos and don'ts for U.S. tech giants designated as online gatekeepers with fines up to 10% of global turnover for violations, a global first.

Vestager's proposal targets Amazon, Apple, Alphabet unit Google and Facebook but the European Parliament wants to extend it to travel website booking.com, China's Alibaba and online retailer Zalando.

EU lawmakers also want the rules to apply to web browsers, virtual assistants and connected TV, adding to Vestager's list of online intermediation services, social networks, search engines, operating systems, online advertising services, cloud computing and video-sharing services.

The lawmakers' proposal would also make it easier for users to switch default settings on their services and products to rivals.

They want the Commission to do an annual report on gatekeepers, with the possibility for lawmakers to propose investigations into new services and new products.

Vestager cheered the vote.

"It sends a clear message that in our EU democracy it is not for BigTech to set the rules of the game, it is for legislators," she said in a tweet.

Lawmakers will now have to reconcile their proposal with that of EU countries and the Commission next year before the draft rules can become law.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by David Gregorio)

Mining the future: Canada's high hopes to become a global critical mineral powerhouse

OTTAWA — Getting the world to net-zero emissions by 2050 will require the production of critical minerals and metals to grow sixfold over the next 30 years, the International Energy Agency declared in a report earlier this year — and it found the current pace of growth isn't even close.

 

As electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels explode in popularity, so too does demand for the minerals that make them go. Some are familiar, like nickel, lithium and cobalt, and others are known only to those who memorized the periodic table in high school, like tellurium, bismuth and molybdenum.

Canada, having promised that all the electricity it generates and the new cars that are sold in the country will be zero-emission by 2035, is among the countries driving up demand.

As one of the world's biggest producers of raw metals and minerals, Canada also wants to be filling that demand as a key link in the supply chain for rechargeable batteries.

But even as the federal government pushes a new critical minerals strategy and forges partnerships with allies to develop supply chains that seek to tamp down China's dominance in the field, Canada's position on the world stage is already slipping.

"We're starting to do what we need to do but there's a lot of missing pieces," said Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada.

A year ago, BloombergNEF listed Canada as the fourth most important player in the world's lithium-ion battery supply chain, based on an analysis of raw material production, manufacturing and processing, environmental protections, regulatory regimes and domestic demand.

This fall, the second iteration of that report saw Canada drop to fifth, losing ground in every category.

"We've been viewed sort of as a global leader in the past," said Gratton. "We've lost ground, though."

Canada's ranking slipped because of raw materials and environmental stewardship — the latter a key point in all the sales pitches Canada makes on the world stage.

The problem is, meeting those higher standards comes at a cost, said Gratton. Canada also has to convince buyers that the premium is worth it.

"If you care about climate, and you care about the environment, and if you care about how people are treated, including Indigenous people, then buying from Canada is the right thing to do."

China is the biggest player in the battery supply chain field, both in raw materials and value-added production. Many of the alliances Canada is part of with the United States and Europe are designed in large part to whittle away at China's dominance.

Canada, second in the world in nickel production in 2008, ranked sixth in 2020. It is also sixth for cobalt, and 10th for graphite. Production of all three declined last year.

Those elements, along with lithium and manganese, which Canada could but doesn't currently produce, are the five main components of the lithium-ion batteries that run electric cars.

More than 70 per cent of Canada's nickel is sold to make stainless steel. The nickel that makes batteries is nickel sulphate. Canada does not make it, said Gratton, but it needs to in order to be part of the battery chain.

He said that is being discussed among nickel producers and bandied about as a potential project for Ottawa's strategic infrastructure funding.

But Sarah Petrevan, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, said Canada "needs to have a strategic focus about where we can win."

"We have finite resources, and so you want to make sure that you're putting those finite resources in the place that can have the biggest impact."

Quebec, said Petrevan, has done some of that strategic work of assessing their own supply chains, trying to match what Quebec makes with new manufacturing that meets demand. At least two battery production plants are in the works now in that province.

Canada, however, has not yet done a similar assessment.

Last March, Canada identified the 31 critical minerals it can produce and that at least one of its allies wants, but little has been done with that list since.

Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has been dropping broad hints about a major new battery-chain investment coming to Canada, though Petrevan said the dispute with the United States about electric vehicle incentives and trade barriers may be slowing that down.

Last spring's federal budget promised $9.6 million over three years for a battery minerals centre of excellence within the Department of Natural Resources, but nothing has happened yet. Nearly $37 million was also promised for federal research on advancing critical battery mineral processing and refining.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is expected to make both a priority early in the new year.

For his part, Gratton said Canada needs to also encourage more production in general. The Liberals made an election promise to double the mineral exploration tax credit and he hopes to see that in the next budget.

"We don't just need to sort of redirect existing production to battery metals, we also need more production," he said. "And you're only going to get that through new discovery."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 16, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

PUTSCH PLOTTERS

Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark Meadows

Richard Luscombe 

The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has been identified as the Republican who sent a message to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows the day before the deadly 6 January US Capitol riots outlining a plan to stop Joe Biden – the legitimate winner of the presidential election – from reaching the White House.

The House select committee investigating the insurrection has been looking at numerous messages sent to Meadows on and around that day, many of which were from Trump supporters urging the then-president to call off a mob of his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol building.

Meadows, whose role in events has become a central plank of the investigation, and who provided many of the messages to the committee, is facing possible contempt of Congress charges for withdrawing his cooperation.

Jordan, a staunch Trump ally whom Republicans originally wanted to sit on the committee, forwarded a text message to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot to block Biden.

The message was sent to Jordan by Joseph Schmitz, a former US defense department inspector general who outlined a “draft proposal” to pressure vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify audited election returns on 6 January.

A portion of the message was shown by Democratic committee member Adam Schiff on Tuesday. It read: “On January 6, 2021, Vice-President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”

The plotters falsely believed Pence had the constitutional authority to reject the election results and allow rival slates of electors from Republicans in states that Biden won to decide the outcome. Pence refused to do so, and has since been castigated by Trump and his allies.

Jordan was one of five Republicans rejected from serving on the committee by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker who instead appointed Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Some commentators say the move “saved” the committee’s integrity.

The panel has accelerated its inquiries in recent days and weeks, issuing dozens of subpoenas, interviewing more than 300 witnesses and reviewing more than 30,000 documents as it attempts to tie Trump to the events of 6 January.

A clearer picture has emerged of the involvement of Trump loyalists, including senior Republican party officials such as Jordan, in the coup attempt, with questions swirling this week particularly over the role of Meadows.

Trump’s former chief of staff is revealed to have received numerous messages on the day of the riot from Republican politicians, Fox News television personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.

The text from Trump Jr was succinct. “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. He’s got to condemn this shit asap.”

Meadows replied: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”

Schiff, a California Democrat who led the prosecution in the Senate at Trump’s second impeachment in January, has argued that Meadows was at the heart of the pressure campaign on Pence, and voted for him to face contempt charges for his refusal to explain it.

“You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr Meadows about,” Schiff said during the committee’s presentation on Tuesday.

“About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice-president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.”

A new approach finds materials that can turn waste heat into electricity

Jan-Hendrik Pöhls, 

McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellow, 

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology,

 McMaster University 

The need to transition to clean energy is apparent, urgent and inescapable. We must limit Earth’s rising temperature to within 1.5 C to avoid the worst effects of climate change — an especially daunting challenge in the face of the steadily increasing global demand for energy.

Part of the answer is using energy more efficiently. More than 72 per cent of all energy produced worldwide is lost in the form of heat. For example, the engine in a car uses only about 30 per cent of the gasoline it burns to move the car. The remainder is dissipated as heat.

Recovering even a tiny fraction of that lost energy would have a tremendous impact on climate change. Thermoelectric materials, which convert wasted heat into useful electricity, can help.

Until recently, the identification of these materials had been slow. My colleagues and I have used quantum computations — a computer-based modelling approach to predict materials’ properties — to speed up that process and identify more than 500 thermoelectric materials that could convert excess heat to electricity, and help improve energy efficiency.

Making great strides towards broad applications

The transformation of heat into electrical energy by thermoelectric materials is based on the “Seebeck effect.” In 1826, German physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck observed that exposing the ends of joined pieces of dissimilar metals to different temperatures generated a magnetic field, which was later recognized to be caused by an electric current.

Shortly after his discovery, metallic thermoelectric generators were fabricated to convert heat from gas burners into an electric current. But, as it turned out, metals exhibit only a low Seebeck effect — they are not very efficient at converting heat into electricity.

SOVIET SCIENCE

In 1929, the Russian scientist Abraham Ioffe revolutionized the field of thermoelectricity. He observed that semiconductors — materials whose ability to conduct electricity falls between that of metals (like copper) and insulators (like glass) — exhibit a significantly higher Seebeck effect than metals, boosting thermoelectric efficiency 40-fold, from 0.1 per cent to four per cent.

This discovery led to the development of the first widely used thermoelectric generator, the Russian lamp — a kerosene lamp that heated a thermoelectric material to power a radio.

Are we there yet?

Today, thermoelectric applications range from energy generation in space probes to cooling devices in portable refrigerators. For example, space explorations are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, converting the heat from naturally decaying plutonium into electricity. In the movie The Martian, for example, a box of plutonium saved the life of the character played by Matt Damon, by keeping him warm on Mars.

Despite this vast diversity of applications, wide-scale commercialization of thermoelectric materials is still limited by their low efficiency.

What’s holding them back? Two key factors must be considered: the conductive properties of the materials, and their ability to maintain a temperature difference, which makes it possible to generate electricity.

The best thermoelectric material would have the electronic properties of semiconductors and the poor heat conduction of glass. But this unique combination of properties is not found in naturally occurring materials. We have to engineer them.
Searching for a needle in a haystack

In the past decade, new strategies to engineer thermoelectric materials have emerged due to an enhanced understanding of their underlying physics. In a recent study in Nature Materials, researchers from Seoul National University, Aachen University and Northwestern University reported they had engineered a material called tin selenide with the highest thermoelectric performance to date, nearly twice that of 20 years ago. But it took them nearly a decade to optimize it.

To speed up the discovery process, my colleagues and I have used quantum calculations to search for new thermoelectric candidates with high efficiencies. We searched a database containing thousands of materials to look for those that would have high electronic qualities and low levels of heat conduction, based on their chemical and physical properties. These insights helped us find the best materials to synthesize and test, and calculate their thermoelectric efficiency.

Read more: Researchers invent device that generates light from the cold night sky – here's what it means for millions living off grid

We are almost at the point where thermoelectric materials can be widely applied, but first we need to develop much more efficient materials. With so many possibilities and variables, finding the way forward is like searching for a tiny needle in an enormous haystack.

Just as a metal detector can zero in on a needle in a haystack, quantum computations can accelerate the discovery of efficient thermoelectric materials. Such calculations can accurately predict electron and heat conduction (including the Seebeck effect) for thousands of materials and unveil the previously hidden and highly complex interactions between those properties, which can influence a material’s efficiency.

Large-scale applications will require themoelectric materials that are inexpensive, non-toxic and abundant. Lead and tellurium are found in today’s thermoelectric materials, but their cost and negative environmental impact make them good targets for replacement.

Quantum calculations can be applied in a way to search for specific sets of materials using parameters such as scarcity, cost and efficiency. Although those calculations can reveal optimum thermoelectric materials, synthesizing the materials with the desired properties remains a challenge.

A multi-institutional effort involving government-run laboratories and universities in the United States, Canada and Europe has revealed more than 500 previously unexplored materials with high predicted thermoelectric efficiency. My colleagues and I are currently investigating the thermoelectric performance of those materials in experiments, and have already discovered new sources of high thermoelectric efficiency.

Those initial results strongly suggest that further quantum computations can pinpoint the most efficient combinations of materials to make clean energy from wasted heat and the avert the catastrophe that looms over our planet.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jan-Hendrik Pöhls does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.