The queen of the Amazon
QUESTION Does anyone recall a plane crash in the Amazon in the Seventies where a little girl, the sole survivor, emerged from the jungle several days after the disaster?
On CHRISTMAS Eve, 1971, LAnSA Flight 508 travelling from Lima, Peru, to Pucallpa, 500 miles into Peru’s rainforest, was struck by lightning and broke apart mid-air.
Everyone on board died, except one passenger — a teenage girl named Juliane Koepcke. Incredibly, she survived a two-mile fall and 11 days in the Amazon before she was rescued.
Koepcke was born in Lima on October 10, 1954. Her parents were German scientists, biologist Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke and ornithologist Maria Koepcke.
When she was 14 years old, the family left Lima and set up Panguana, a biological research station in the rainforest. Koepcke was home- schooled, and her syllabus included jungle survival techniques.
Aged 17, Koepcke returned to the German school in Lima to complete her exams, and graduated on December 23, 1971. The following day, she and her mother took the flight to Pucallpa so they could spend Christmas with her father.
Lightning struck one of the Lockheed L-188 Electra’s fuel tanks and tore off the right wing. One minute Koepcke was sitting in the window seat next to her mother, the next she was falling through the air, still strapped to her seat, and her mother had vanished.
According to media reports, Koepcke recalled falling head- first, with the seatbelt digging into her stomach and a canopy of trees spiralling towards her. Then she lost consciousness. She suffered relatively minor injuries: concussion, a fractured collarbone, a gash on her leg, eye injuries and a small cut on her arm.
But this was only the beginning of her troubles. She shared the jungle with jaguars, scorpions, piranhas, alligators and poisonous snakes camouflaged as leaves, which she couldn’t see because she had lost her glasses. The days were sultry and hot. By night, she was lashed with icy rain. Koepcke relied on the survival skills taught by her father. She foraged for food and knew she should trek downstream to find civilisation. When she came across a small boat, she rubbed herself with gasoline to protect herself from bugs.
She was finally rescued by fishermen, and a local pilot flew her to hospital.
Koepcke’s story was told in a 2000 documentary, Wings Of Hope, by director Werner Herzog. She accompanied him on a visit to the crash site, a journey she described as ‘a kind of therapy’ for her.
Jeremy Gray, Chepstow, Monmouth.
QUESTION What were the achievements of Emmy Noether, the mathematician described by Einstein as a genius?
On EMMY nOETHER’S death in 1935, Albert Einstein wrote an appreciation in the new York Times which stated: ‘In the judgement of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraulein noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.’
Einstein’s theory of relativity was published in 1915, forever changing the way we understand the relationship between space and time.
Yet the theory had a problem; the curved space-time of general relativity did not adhere to the physical principle known as conservation of energy, which states that energy can change forms but can never be destroyed.
Two supporters of general relativity, David Hilbert and Felix Klein, mathematicians at the University of Gottingen, invited noether to solve the problem.
By 1918, she had demonstrated that energy may not be conserved ‘locally’ — in an arbitrarily small patch of space — but will be conserved when the space is sufficiently large. She also uncovered an intimate link between conservation laws and symmetries in nature.
Our grasp of the physical world, from subatomic particles to black holes, draws heavily upon this theorem, known as noether’s theorem.
Amalie Emmy noether was born in 1882, in Erlangen, Bavaria. Her father, Max, was a celebrated mathematician.
noether was prevented from officially studying mathematics at university because she was a woman, but she was later allowed to audit classes at the University of Erlangen-nuremberg, where her father taught, earning a degree.
In 1904, she could enrol on a doctoral program at the university. After finishing her dissertation in 1907, she worked there without pay for seven years.
Her next post, at the University of Gottingen, was also denied official recognition until 1919. She moved to Pennsylvania’s Bryn Mawr College in 1933, after nazi Germany dismissed Jews from university positions.
Dr Ian smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION Why is Veles, in Macedonia, the fake news capital of the world?
VELES is an industrial town of 50,000 people, known for the production of porcelain, lead crystal and silk spinning.
In the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Veles attained infamy when it was revealed that it was host to more than 100 pro-Trump websites.
Stories peddled included the criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton, the Pope’s endorsement of Donald Trump, and fake reports of Muslim attacks.
Tech-savvy teens had discovered that, by pumping out fake news, they could be rewarded handsomely by automated advertising engines like Google’s AdSense, earning up to £13,000 a month.
It had been believed the fake news websites appeared spontaneously. However, some journalists have reported an alleged conspiracy involving Macedonian media lawyer Trajche Arsov and low-ranking members of the U.S. Republican party.
Hillary Clinton cited Macedonian content farms as one of the reasons she lost the election.
Tina slattery, Manchester. IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published, but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.