1. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin determined that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium in her 1925 doctoral thesis.
26 Facts About Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected by leading astrophysicists, including Henry Norris Russell, because it contradicted the science of the time, which held that no significant elemental differences distinguished the Sun and Earth.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin would go on to overcome barriers for women that she encountered in science and her success opened the door for countless women astronomers, including her Harvard colleague, Helen Sawyer Hogg.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's work resulted in several published books, including The Stars of High Luminosity, Variable Stars, and Variable Stars and Galactic Structure.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's father was a historian and musician who had been an Oxford fellow.
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When Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was four, her father died, leaving her mother to raise the family on her own.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin then studied related courses at Harvard via the program for women and Shapley persuaded Payne to write a doctoral dissertation on a topic in astronomy.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's thesis was entitled, Stellar Atmospheres; A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin demonstrated that the great variation in stellar absorption lines was due to differing amounts of ionization at different temperatures, not to varying amounts of elements.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's work resulted in several published books, including The Stars of High Luminosity, Variable Stars, and Variable Stars and Galactic Structure.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin then studied variable stars, making more than 1,250,000 observations with her assistants.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin published her conclusions in her second book, The Stars of High Luminosity.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin helped him obtain a visa to the United States, where they married in March 1934.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was appointed the Phillips Professor of Astronomy in 1958.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's students included Joseph Ashbrook, Frank Drake, Harlan Smith, and Paul W Hodge, all of whom made important contributions to astronomy.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin supervised Helen Sawyer Hogg, Frank Kameny and Owen Gingerich.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin retired from active teaching in 1966 and subsequently, was appointed Professor Emerita of Harvard.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin continued her research as a member of staff at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, as well as editing the journals and books published by Harvard Observatory for ten years.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin edited and published the lectures of Walter Baade that were entitled, Evolution of Stars and Galaxies.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's career marked a turning point at Harvard College Observatory.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin achieved the higher marks in the latter group.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin helped him get a visa to the United States.
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Payne and her family were members of the First Unitarian Church in Lexington, where Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin taught Sunday school.
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Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin died at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 7,1979, aged 79.
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Payne's granddaughter, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Gaposchkin, is a professor of late medieval cultural history and French history at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.