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Photo: Smithsonian Institution

1900-1979

Words from Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin's obituary read, "She was a pioneering astrophysicist and probably the most eminent woman astronomer of all time,

died in Cambridge Massachusetts on December 7, 1979. In the 1920's she derived the cosmic abundance of the elements from stellar spectra and demonstrated for the first time the chemical homogeneity of the universe."

Early Life

She began her life in Wendover, England on May 10, 1900. She was born to Emma Leonora Helena (née Pertz) and Edward John Payne. She attended St. Paul's Girl's School for her early education. She later received a scholarship to Cambridge University where she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington. This began a love for astronomy. She completed her work at Cambridge, but degrees were not being awarded to women at Cambridge. This prompted Payne-Gaposchkin to move to the United States to further her education.

Education and Married Life

Payne met Harlow Shapley from Harvard University. She moved to Massachusetts and began her studies to obtain her degree.She became the first person to earn a Ph. D. in astronomy from Radcliff College. Her studies included continuing work of Annie Jump Cannon. She had sorted the spectra of several hundred thousand stars into seven distinct classes. She had made a classification system representing a sequence of decreasing surface temperatures of the stars, but no one was able to show this with proof. Payne, who had studied the new science of quantum physics, knew that the pattern of features in the spectrum of any atom was determined by the configuration of its electrons. She also knew that at high temperatures, one or more electrons are stripped from the atoms, which are then called ions. The Indian physicist M. N. Saha had recently shown how the temperature and pressure in the atmosphere of a star determine the extent to which various atoms are ionized. In 1925, she had written her thesis, "Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars." Although correct with her thesis which states that hydrogen and helium are the dominant elements of the sun and stars, another astronomer, Henry Norris Russell, convinced her to leave it out of her thesis. Russell later agreed her calculations were spot on. Her thesis was later converted to a book, Stellar Atmospheres. Payne's results were clearly received by all as both fundamental and correct. Payne had show how to "read" the surface temperature of any star from its spectrum. She proved that Cannons ordering of the stellar spectral classes was correct, and could be calculated. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a plot of luminosity versus spectral class of the stars, could now be properly interpreted, and it became a powerful analytical tool in stellar astrophysics.

While visiting the observatory in Leningrad she meets a young astronomer facing persecution because of his political views. She helps him get a visa to the United States and later marries this Russian astronomer, Sergie Gaposchkin.

Career

She published several books,including, The Stars of High Luminosity, 1930; Variable Stars, 1938; and Variable Stars and Galactic Structure, 1954. She continues to work at Harvard although the pay is not much and her classes are not even mentioned in the listing. Shapley does try to better her situation. He does give her the title of Astronomer. She also becomes department chair at Harvard. Finally, in 1956, she becomes the first female tenured professorship at Harvard. She continued to study astronomy. Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin's field of specialty was variable stars -- especially "pulsating" stars called Cepheid variables and "exploding" variable stars called novae. Those stars vary in brightness because of changes in their internal makeup. Measuring the light and velocity of these stars helps astronomers determine distances on a galactic scale. Such measurements help scientists answer questions about the origin of stars and planets. She retired in 1966. She wrote an autobiography, The Dyer’s Hand, that was posthumously collected in Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections(1984).

Honors

She was the first person to receive the Annie J. Cannon Prize, established in 1933 to recognize exceptional women in astronomy and, in 1977, was the first woman invited to give the Henry Norris Russell lecture at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Awards

• American Physical Society's Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics was renamed to the Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics in 2018
• Elected member of Royal Astronomical Society while still a student at Cambridge 1923
• Member of the American Philosophical Society (1936)
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1943)
• Emeritus Professor of Harvard University in 1967
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society in 1976
• Award of Merit from Radcliffe College in 1952
• Rittenhouse Medal from the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society at the Franklin Institute in 1961
• Honorary Degrees from Rutgers University, Wilson College, Smith College, Western College, Colby College, and the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania
• Asteroid 2039 Payne-Gaposchkin named after her
• One of the ASAS-SN telescopes, deployed in South Africa, is named after her

Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics

Beginning in 2019, an award previously known as the Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics has been renamed to honor the memory and legacy of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. The Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics will annually recognize an exemplary doctoral thesis in astrophysics research. Nominations for the award are being accepted through Friday, November 30, 2018.

Family

She and her husband had three children, Edward, Katherine, and Peter.

Quotes

"There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas." Cecilia Payne

"The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something." Cecilia Payne