Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved that she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin | |
|---|---|
| Born | Cecilia Helena Payne May 10, 1900 Wendover, Buckinghamshire, England |
| Died | December 7, 1979 (aged 79) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Citizenship | British Dual British & United States (from 1931) |
| Education | St Paul's Girls' School |
| Alma mater | Newnham College, Cambridge; Harvard University |
| Known for | Explanation of stellar spectra and composition of the Sun, more than 3,000,000 observations of variable stars |
| Spouse | Sergei I. Gaposchkin |
| Children | 3 |
| Awards | Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy (1934), Rittenhouse Medal (1961), Award of Merit from Radcliffe College (1952), Henry Norris Russell Prize (1976) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy, astrophysics |
| Institutions | Harvard College Observatory, Harvard University |
| Thesis | Stellar Atmospheres: A contribution to the observational study of high temperature in the reversing layers of stars (1925) |
| Doctoral advisor | Harlow Shapley |
| Doctoral students | Helen Sawyer Hogg, Joseph Ashbrook, Frank Kameny, Frank Drake, Paul W. Hodge |
| Signature | |
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