Author: By Andželika / Source: Bored Panda
For a long time, many scientists were wrong about what the sun is made-up of until a 25-year-old student wrote an extraordinary doctor’s thesis proving that sun and other stars are made mainly of helium and hydrogen.
The student who made this groundbreaking discovery was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
However, only a few of us attribute this discovery to her, because Cecilia was robbed of the credit for one of the greatest astronomical accomplishments.
In 2002, Jeremy Knowles, the dean of the Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said about Cecilia: “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 Newton discovered gravity, that Darwin discovered evolution, even that Einstein discovered relativity. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most prevalent element in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know. … after the award of her doctorate, she lectured in the astronomy department, but her lectures were not listed in the course catalog. She directed graduate research without status; she had no research leave; and her small salary was categorized by the department under ‘equipment.’ And yet she survived and flourished”
Cecilia was born in 1900 in Wendover, England. From a young age, she dreamt of becoming a scientist and was eager to achieve her goal.
In 1919 she was awarded a scholarship for Natural Sciences at Newnham College Cambridge University. Even though Cecilia successfully completed her studies,…The post Scientists Discarded One Of The Most Groundbreaking Astronomical Discoveries Because The Researcher Was A Woman appeared first on FeedBox.