In 1919, students at Cambridge University added tickets to lectures given by astronomers who had just returned from a trip off the west coast of Africa.
Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin, a 19-year-old undergraduate at the time, received additional tickets. Lectures changed her life I inspired her To become an astronomer.
“I don’t think I’d sleep for three nights,” she wrote later.
Similarly, Payne Gaposhkin changed astronomy when he proposed what a star was. Scientists later came to accept her ideas, but even attempt to embrace them, but Payne Gaposhkin faced discrimination and rejection throughout her prominent career.
What did Cecilia Payne discover?
By the mid-1800s, astronomers thought Same element Constituting life on Earth also constituted stars, comets and other planets. Advances in telescopes allowed scientists to see the sky in new ways, but many continued to think the same way.
In 1924, Payne Gaposhkin was a doctoral student in physics at Harvard University. She was completing her undergraduate course at Cambridge University in the UK, but the school did not grant women a graduate degree and had to come to the US for advanced research.
Using a telescope at Harvard Observatory, Payne Gaposhkin saw the universe in a new way.
“She calculated that stars are mostly made of hydrogen, like a million times more hydrogen than the scientific community had expected.” What are you doing: The life of Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin.
read more: Who was Anna Mani and how was she a pioneer of women in STEM?
Leave Cecilia Paine and the door open
at that time, Atomic fusion It was not yet a thing, and scientists thought that the Sun had an elemental composition similar to the Earth. Payne-Gaposchkin performed spectral analysis. This discovered that the stars are almost entirely composed of hydrogen and helium.
Even Payne-Gaposchkin was initially surprised by her outcome. However, she trusted mathematics and presented her findings in her doctoral thesis. She was right, but the leading scientists in the field of astrophysics were not prepared to embrace new ideas, especially from graduate students.
“When she showed her discovery [Henry] Norris Russell, director of Princeton Observatory, the then American dean of astronomy, told her she was wrong. Moore says. She rewrites the paper and states that hydrogen is almost certainly not as outstanding as she found. ”
largely Certainly, Moore says it was Pain Gaposhkin’s path, “I knew one day I knew it was right.”
Amazing career
Payne-Gaposchkin actually turns out to be correct Now accepting the stars (including the sun) consists of 73% hydrogen and 25% helium.
As the scientific community adapted to the idea that stars and sun were not the same as Earth, Pain Gaposhkin detractors rushed forward to assert their own credibility.
“A few years later, she was proven in the FAC by the very man who told her she was wrong. Norris Russell. He got his credit,” says Moore.
History later corrected itself, and Payne Gaposhkin became known as the scientist who truly identified what a star was. However, Payne-Gaposchkin is less recognised than other scientists who also made critical discoveries.
Star decision
After Payne-Gaposchkin revised her paper by hedging hydrogen as “are likely not particularly noticeable,” she was able to graduate with a PhD. 1925. She was subjected to “nearly universal skepticism” about her ideas, but Moore says she believed in her and didn’t succumb to criticism. She also remained determined to have an astronomy career despite her field being almost entirely male and highly unwelcome for women.
“In the end it paid off,” Moore says. “She was finally recognized for her discovery, married, raised her family and was appointed Harvard University’s first female professor. She later became chairman of the Harvard Department of Astronomy.”
The scientist later recalls Payne Gaposhkin’s achievements and her determination to be part of the science community opens doors for other women who would one day do the same. Bella Rubin -Who discovers that dark matter dominates in the universe and receives initial pushback -Quoting Payne Gaposhkin as inspiration.
In the end, Payne Gaposhkin won. Three years before her death in 1979 She received Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Astronomical Association. Ironically, the award was named in honor of Henry Norris Russell, one of her early detractors and one of the scientists who tried to assert her work.
“It was very difficult for women to be taken seriously in the 1920s. Unfortunately, she found herself in that position, and it’s a shame that it hasn’t changed much,” says Moore.
read more: How Vera C. Rubin revolutionized dark matter
article sauce
Our Author discovermagazine.com Our articles use peer-reviewed research and high-quality sources, and editors review scientific accuracy and editing criteria. Check out the sources used below in this article.
Emilie Lucchesi writes for some of the nation’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a PhD. Within communications from the University of Illinois University of Chicago, I focus on media framing, message construction and stigma communication. Emily has written three non-fiction books. Surviving her third Light in the Dark: Ted Bundy, released on October 3, 2023 by the Chicago Review Press, co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
