Glassblower Sally Prasch Keeps Alive the Ancient Craft Behind Cutting-edge Science

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From the lenses in Galileo’s 16th century telescope to today’s high-precision instruments for gravitational wave detection, glass has been the unsung hero of modern scientific research. “Glass has a 3,000 year history, and without it science as we know it can’t happen,” says Sally Prasch, UMass Amherst’s master scientific glassblower, one of a dying breed of glassblowers that used to be common in every major research university.

When one thinks of a scientist’s lab, one might imagine a space filled with bubbling beakers, fizzing test tubes, and miles of exotic glass tubing that loops a complicated path from one point to another. While some of those simpler instruments—the beakers, say—can be bought off-the-shelf from a laboratory glassware supply house, the more complex, specialized pieces that play irreplaceable roles in experiments can only be custom-made by hand.

Decades ago, every major research university had a team of its own in-house scientific glassblowers, but the profession, once a mainstay, is in danger of going extinct. Today, only a very small handful of universities employ a scientific glassblower—and UMass Amherst is one of them.

Prasch first began glassblowing when she was 13. “We moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, and my mom thought I was going to run away. So she enrolled me in an adult glassblowing class,” she says. That was all it took. Prasch soon set up a workshop in her parents’ basement and devoted the next half-century to honing her craft. It took her about 10 years of 10-hour days to feel like she was proficient.

“Whenever you see a glass apparatus inside another glass apparatus, such as with manifolds or condensers, you’re looking at something handmade. Machines simply can’t do that kind of work,” Prasch says. “And if you’re a scientist doing a new experiment, having a glassblowing lab on campus can save you an enormous amount of time and money, as designing and perfecting your new apparatus in a trial-and-error process.”

It only takes a doodle on the back of a napkin for Prasch to fire up her torch and start work on a prototype that she and the researcher will refine. “The tools aren’t always in the catalog when you’re doing cutting-edge science,” says Prasch. “And without the right tools, the science simply can’t get done.”

This story was originally published by the UMass News Office.