42 Facts About Vera Rubin

Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates.

Vera Rubin uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves.

Vera Rubin's legacy is described by The New York Times as "ushering in a Copernican-scale change" in cosmological theory.

Vera Rubin spent her life advocating for women in science, and was known for her mentorship of aspiring female astronomers.

Vera Rubin Florence Cooper was born on July 23,1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the younger of two sisters.

Vera Rubin's father, Philip Cooper, was an electrical engineer at Bell Telephone.

Vera Rubin's mother, Rose had worked at Bell Telephone calculating "the costs of installing phone lines" prior to her marriage.

The family moved to Washington, DC, in 1938, where ten-year-old Vera Rubin developed an interest in astronomy while watching the stars from her window.

Vera Rubin attended public school at the Coolidge Senior High School, graduating in 1944.

At Vassar College, Vera Rubin was a member of the honors society Phi Beta Kappa.

Vera Rubin earned her bachelor's degree in astronomy in 1948.

Vera Rubin attempted to enroll in the astronomy program at Princeton, but was barred due to her gender.

Vera Rubin was accepted to Harvard's program, but declined the offer on the basis that she was getting married, and her future husband, a graduate student in physics, was based at Cornell University.

From this work, Vera Rubin made one of the first observations of deviations from Hubble flow.

Additionally, Vera Rubin's research provided early evidence of the supergalactic plane.

Vera Rubin completed her work at Cornell with the award of her 1951 master's degree.

Vera Rubin studied next at Georgetown University, where she earned her Ph.

Vera Rubin's dissertation, completed in 1954, concluded that galaxies clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed through the universe, a controversial idea not pursued by others for two decades.

Vera Rubin served for a year as an instructor of Mathematics and Physics at Montgomery College, Maryland.

Vera Rubin joined the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1965 as a staff member in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.

An initiating faculty member of the Vatican Observatory Summer School, Vera Rubin continued this relationship through subsequent decades, providing dedication remarks for the opening of the VATT, the Vatican's telescope on Mount Graham.

Vera Rubin retired from the Carnegie Institute in 2014 as Senior Fellow of Astronomy in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.

At the Carnegie Institution, Vera Rubin began work related to her controversial thesis regarding galaxy clusters in tandem with Kent Ford, making hundreds of observations using Ford's image-tube spectrograph.

Vera Rubin investigated the rotation curves of spiral galaxies, again beginning with Andromeda, by looking at their outermost material.

Vera Rubin observed flat rotation curves: the outermost components of the galaxy were moving as quickly as those close to the center.

Vera Rubin further uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies based on the visible light and the observed motion.

Vera Rubin's research showed that spiral galaxies rotate quickly enough that they should fly apart, if the gravity of their constituent stars was all that was holding them together; because they stay intact, a large amount of unseen mass must be holding them together, a conundrum that became known as the galaxy rotation problem.

Vera Rubin's results came to be cited as evidence that spiral galaxies were surrounded by dark matter haloes.

Vera Rubin's calculations showed that galaxies must contain at least five to ten times more mass than can be observed directly based on the light emitted by ordinary matter.

Vera Rubin's results were confirmed over subsequent decades, and became the first persuasive results supporting the theory of dark matter, initially proposed by Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s.

However, Vera Rubin did not rule out alternative models to dark matter inspired by her measurements.

Vera Rubin was described by Sandra Faber and Neta Bahcall as one of the astronomers who paved the way for other women in the field, as a "guiding light" for those who wished to have families and careers in astronomy.

Vera Rubin married in 1948, when her husband, Robert Joshua Vera Rubin, was a graduate student at Cornell University, and she herself had recently graduated from Vassar.

Vera Rubin was 23 years old and pregnant with her second child when she began her doctoral studies.

Vera Rubin's children recalled later in life that their mother made a life of science appear desirable and fun, which inspired them to become scientists themselves.

Vera Rubin was Jewish, and she shared that she saw no conflict between science and religion.

Vera Rubin's older sister, Ruth Cooper Burg, was an attorney who later worked as an administrative law judge in the United States Department of Defense.

Vera Rubin died "of natural causes" at age 88 on the night of December 25,2016.

Vera Rubin had dementia and was living in an assisted living facility.

When Vera Rubin was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1981, she became only the second woman astronomer in its ranks.

Vera Rubin said that despite her own election to the NAS, she continued to be dissatisfied with the low number of women who were elected each year, and she further said it was "the saddest part of [her] life".

Discussion of the issue continues, as posthumous honors and recognition have proliferated, and Vera Rubin's name is regularly mentioned in articles listing the 20th century women who missed out on scientific Nobels.