Cecilia Payne ~ Discovered What The Universe Is Made Of

Cecilia Payne

“Since her death in 1979,
the woman who discovered what the universe
is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque.

Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery.

[…]

Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity,
that Charles Darwin discovered evolution,
and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time.

But when it comes to the composition of our universe,
the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom
in the universe is hydrogen.

And no one ever wonders how we know.”
—
Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition
Cecilia Payne gets for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money
on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies,
but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree
because she was a woman,
so she said to heck with that
and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D.
in astronomy from Radcliffe College,
with what Otto Strauve called
“the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover
what the universe is made of, she also discovered
what the sun is made of
(Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer,
is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition
is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions
four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything
about variable stars
(stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates).

Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.

Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor
from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking
the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department
and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations
of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

 

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin




Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Gender:	Female
Birth:	May 10, 1900 Wendover, Buckinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
Death:	December 07, 1979 (79) Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
Immediate Family:	Daughter of Edward John Payne and Emma Leonora Helena Payne Wife of <private> Gaposchkin Sister of Humfry Payne and <private> Payne
Added by:	Tommaso Valarani on December 13, 2018
Managed by:	Tommaso Valarani
Curated by:	Tommaso Valarani

About
history
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin (née Payne; May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979)
was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis
that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium.

Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time,
which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth.

Independent observations eventually proved she was correct.
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/03/105351/womens-history-mont...

 

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of
has not so much as received a memorial plaque.

Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […]

Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity,
that Charles Darwin discovered evolution,
and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time.

But when it comes to the composition of our universe,
the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen.
And no one ever wonders how we know.”
—
Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets,
even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because at that time there's not much exposure for woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of,
she also discovered what the sun is made of
(Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition
is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne
—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars
(stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates).

Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.

Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard,
and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department
and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

Photograph: Schlesinger Library.