Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; – ) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist. In her 1925 doctoral thesis she determined that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium.

Her 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. Independent observations eventually proved that she was correct.

Despite completing her studies, Payne was unable to receive a degree from the University of Cambridge as a woman. In America, she was unable to receive her PhD from Harvard University, as they did not grant doctoral degrees to women at the time. She instead received her doctoral degree from Radcliffe College – a female liberal arts college that started as a program within Harvard.

Overcoming barriers for women in science, her work on the cosmic makeup of the universe and the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics. She was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society while she was a student at Cambridge and later became the first recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s prestigious Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy. Her success also opened the door for countless female astronomers, including her Harvard colleague, Helen Sawyer Hogg, and in 1956, she was appointed Harvard’s first female Professor and female Department Chair. Provided by Wikipedia