CECILIA PAYNE-GAPOSCHKIN
“Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.”
Cecilia Payne was born May 10, 1900, in Buckinghamshire England. She was one of three children raised by her single mother Emma Helena. Her father, Edward Payne, died when she was only four. As a child, she attended St. Paul’s Girls’ School. In 1919, she won a scholarship to go to Newnham College, Cambridge University.
Her passion for astronomy began after attending a lecture by British astronomer Arthur Eddington on his 1919 expedition to the Gulf of Guinea where he observed and photographed the stars near a solar eclipse as a test of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Cecilia successfully completed her studies at Cambridge but never received a degree because of her gender (Cambridge did not grant scholarships to women until 1948).
After graduation, her only job option in the U.K was to become a teacher so she looked for ways to travel to the United States where she hoped for better opportunities. She was introduced to Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory who offered her a fellowship in his graduate program.
Shapley encouraged Cecilia to write a doctoral dissertation and in 1925, she submitted her thesis on Stellar Atmospheres: A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars. Her thesis concluded that hydrogen was the predominant constituent of stars making it the most abundant element in the Universe. When her thesis was reviewed it was rejected because it contradicted current scientific theory. Several years later, however, astronomer Otto Struve declared her thesis “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” Cecilia’s findings had since been corroborated by another team of scientists who had then taken credit for her discovery!
After her doctorate, Cecilia studied stars of high luminosity in order to understand the structure of the Milky Way. She also studied variable stars and Magellanic Clouds, making over 3 million observations that were used to determine the paths of stellar evolution.
Cecilia remained scientifically active throughout her life. Amongst many awards, she accepted the Henry Norris
- Elizabeth Chen-Baker