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What Stars Are Made of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
A New Scientist Book of the Year
A Physics Today Book of the Year
A Science News Book of the Year
The history of science is replete with women getting little notice for their groundbreaking discoveries. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a tireless innovator who correctly theorized the substance of stars, was one of them.
It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early twentieth-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what has been called "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy," she was the first to describe what stars are made of.
Payne-Gaposchkin lived in a society that did not know what to make of a determined schoolgirl who wanted to know everything. She was derided in college and refused a degree. As a graduate student, she faced formidable skepticism. Revolutionary ideas rarely enjoy instantaneous acceptance, but the learned men of the astronomical community found hers especially hard to take seriously. Though welcomed at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked for years without recognition or status. Still, she accomplished what every scientist yearns for: discovery. She revealed the atomic composition of stars--only to be told that her conclusions were wrong by the very man who would later show her to be correct.
In What Stars Are Made Of, Donovan Moore brings this remarkable woman to life through extensive archival research, family interviews, and photographs. Moore retraces Payne-Gaposchkin's steps with visits to cramped observatories and nighttime bicycle rides through the streets of Cambridge, England. The result is a story of devotion and tenacity that speaks powerfully to our own time.
A Physics Today Book of the Year
A Science News Book of the Year
The history of science is replete with women getting little notice for their groundbreaking discoveries. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a tireless innovator who correctly theorized the substance of stars, was one of them.
It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early twentieth-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what has been called "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy," she was the first to describe what stars are made of.
Payne-Gaposchkin lived in a society that did not know what to make of a determined schoolgirl who wanted to know everything. She was derided in college and refused a degree. As a graduate student, she faced formidable skepticism. Revolutionary ideas rarely enjoy instantaneous acceptance, but the learned men of the astronomical community found hers especially hard to take seriously. Though welcomed at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked for years without recognition or status. Still, she accomplished what every scientist yearns for: discovery. She revealed the atomic composition of stars--only to be told that her conclusions were wrong by the very man who would later show her to be correct.
In What Stars Are Made Of, Donovan Moore brings this remarkable woman to life through extensive archival research, family interviews, and photographs. Moore retraces Payne-Gaposchkin's steps with visits to cramped observatories and nighttime bicycle rides through the streets of Cambridge, England. The result is a story of devotion and tenacity that speaks powerfully to our own time.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
sampled-dnr
September 16, 2020When I am reading, I often do not note who the author is, until well into the book. I feel a bit guilty about this, since I know, from my own creative endeavors (writing music) how much work goes into creating something - and I feel as though I should notice the writer, in addition to the story, the characters, and the content. Be that as it may, I was about half of the way through this book when it became VERY apparent to me that it had been written by a man. Curious about why this was all of a sudden so clear, I first checked to make sure that it had been, in fact, written by a man. Affirmative. Then, I tried to decide what it was that made me so aware of it. I am not sure yet, but I think part of the reason is that he takes so much effort to say that Cecilia wasn't interested in fashion, that she was very shy, and that she was always feeling a bit out of place - all of this is probably true, but it is the strenuous effort to make sure the reader doesn't hold this against her. It made me wonder what he would have said, if she had dressed stylishly.
And now, I am even more curious about how a woman would write about her. Unfortunately her own autobiography is not available right now from my library and it is too expensive for me to buy, just to settle this question.
More later, when I finish the book.
Second entry:
I did manage to get her autobiography from another library. It is divided into several sections, each written by a different person. One part is written by Payne herself, one written by her daughter, and the third, I am not sure. At any rate, I decided to NOT read the other sections just yet. I wanted to see what Payne herself wrote about her life. I have not finished either book (Donovan's) or section (Payne's), but I have read the parts that have to do with her life at Cambridge. As I suspected, Payne mentions very little about clothing, the harsh physical challenges of cold and long bike rides, she mainly talks about getting to know other scientists and her choices as far as learning pathways went. My surmise is that Donovan did extensive research into the era and added the relevant details as "color". They didn't seem to be as important to Payne. She did mention, however, that she was shy. I would guess at least part of that was that she was a woman among many men working in the labs. There is research that shows that group dynamics change when there are significant numbers of women in the group.
I will eventually try to read all of the other sections of the autobiography, as well as Donovan's book. They aren't that long, I have just been distracted by life.
And now, I am even more curious about how a woman would write about her. Unfortunately her own autobiography is not available right now from my library and it is too expensive for me to buy, just to settle this question.
More later, when I finish the book.
Second entry:
I did manage to get her autobiography from another library. It is divided into several sections, each written by a different person. One part is written by Payne herself, one written by her daughter, and the third, I am not sure. At any rate, I decided to NOT read the other sections just yet. I wanted to see what Payne herself wrote about her life. I have not finished either book (Donovan's) or section (Payne's), but I have read the parts that have to do with her life at Cambridge. As I suspected, Payne mentions very little about clothing, the harsh physical challenges of cold and long bike rides, she mainly talks about getting to know other scientists and her choices as far as learning pathways went. My surmise is that Donovan did extensive research into the era and added the relevant details as "color". They didn't seem to be as important to Payne. She did mention, however, that she was shy. I would guess at least part of that was that she was a woman among many men working in the labs. There is research that shows that group dynamics change when there are significant numbers of women in the group.
I will eventually try to read all of the other sections of the autobiography, as well as Donovan's book. They aren't that long, I have just been distracted by life.
February 7, 2021
This is a sensitive biography of a woman more should know about. People know Einstein’s name. They know Darwin’s name. But they don’t know the name of the woman who discovered what stars are made of! “Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?” People have looked up at the heavens for millennia wondering what they are. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin told us the answer! Of course she did much more. She essentially created a new subdivision of astronomy: astrophysics. Being a female hurt her career a great deal. Luckily that didn’t bother her too much, as long as she could do her research. She only became a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard in 1956, decades after her ground-breaking discovery! Ironically, when she finally did become chairperson of the Astronomy department, it pretty much ended her own research due to lack of time. All three of her children graduated college and remained in the general field of Astronomy which indicates to me that even though the science was first in her life, she was a successful enough parent that her children were interested in what she was interested in. Her daughter in particular seemed very close to her. She died of lung cancer in 1979, the year I graduated from high school. I’m so glad that a post on FB mentioned Payne-Gasposchkin and made me find this book in the library.
April 25, 2025
4.5 stars (it took me a bit to get into it, or it took the author a while to get past all her early life stuff)
I'm absolutely here for a book about a female astronomer in the era of male astronomers.
I'm absolutely here for a book about a female astronomer in the era of male astronomers.
March 24, 2021
I read the book after seeing an article on Facebook about Cecilia Payne, who became the first female astronomer and professor of astronomy at Harvard U. The book was somewhat dry, full of details and technical information about the different science and astronomy studies. It was interesting to find out about her life and the turns it took from her childhood to grown woman. She made many firsts, from the early 1920's to 1956.
May 11, 2020
My review for the Literary Review (an excellent magazine!)
Cecilia Payne (as she then was) made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science when she was not quite 25 years old. She found out what stars are made of. What she found was so astonishing that at first nobody (literally, not anybody) believed it could be right. The fact that she was a young woman, in the mid-1920s, telling her older male colleagues that they were in error did not help. A few years laster, some of those older male colleagues found out that she was right, but even then credit for the discovery largely went to them. Proper recognition came slowly, and late, but it did eventually come. By the time I studied astronomy, forty years after her breakthrough, at least those in the trade knew the significance of her work.
Donovan Moore’s book is welcome not just because it sets the facts straight for a wider audience, but because it is the proverbial good read, which sets her achievements in the context of her times. Indeed, this is more important here than the science, since all you really need to know about that is in the title of the book. For thousands of years people have looked at the stars and wondered what they are; in the mid-1920s a young woman in her own mid-20s, was the first, and for a time the only, person who knew. What more do you need to know to appreciate the achievement?
Donovan doesn’t pretend to be a scientist, and he doesn’t always get what science there is in the book exactly right. He also sees England through slightly out of focus American spectacles. But none of this matters a jot. It is the story that matters here.
And what a story! Born in 1900, appropriately at the start of a new century, to respectable middle-class parents in Wendover, Cecilia Payne “ought” to have learnt the feminine arts, got married, and raised a family. But among her other aspects of rebellion against the system, as a child we find her asking why Jesus couldn’t have been a woman, and by her early teens we find her translating for her own benefit a book on the Linnean classification system from German and French.
It was just about acceptable for a girl to study botany, and this got her to Cambridge, where at that time (and until 1947!) women were allowed to study and take exams, but could not be awarded degrees. Moore brings this period to life, providing ample material for a TV mini-series, as we learn how Payne switched from botany to physics, then became fascinated by astronomy after attending a lecture by Arthur Eddington, who had measured the bending of starlight during a solar eclipse and confirmed the accuracy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
By the time she completed her studies, Payne was an accomplished amateur astronomer with the run of the Cambridge Observatories. But the only work available to her was as a schoolteacher, and although she would (as later events proved) have made an excellent teacher, she longed to do research. America was marginally more enlightened, and armed with glowing references and a tiny scholarship (but no degree certificate) she settled at the Harvard Observatory.
The observatory had a history of employing women to do the painstaking work of analysing and cataloguing data, which had led them to make several important discoveries while still being regarded as mere “computers”, not real scientists. Payne was different, and with the independence provided by her scholarship insisted on being given a real research job to do. This involved studying the spectra of stars, and is what led her to discover that the stars are not made of the same mixture of elements as the Earth, but are largely composed of hydrogen. The breakthrough would eventually lead to an understanding of how stars work, how the elements are made in their interiors, and how those elements are scattered through space to become new stars, planets, and in one case at least, people.
The work formed the basis of Payne’s thesis for the first PhD to be awarded to a female physicist at Harvard — although to placate the reactionary Chairman of the Harvard Physics Department it was technically awarded by Radcliffe College. The thesis described how Payne had used spectroscopy to discover what stars are made of. But she was “persuaded” by her superiors to include a disclaimer which became notorious to my generation of students:
Although hydrogen and helium are manifestly very abundant in stellar atmospheres, the actual values derived from the estimates of marginal appearance are regarded as spurious.
What Payne, who was always careful with her use of language, did not say is who regarded them as spurious! It certainly was not her. And the caveat soon became redundant. In 1962, a leading astronomer described the work as “the most brilliant thesis ever written in astronomy”.
The story so far occupies three-quarters of the book, but only a third of Payne’s life. I could have wished for more about her later achievements, even though these were inevitably overshadowed by her first discovery. But perhaps I am being greedy. She certainly was not, and when honours and awards eventually came her way she offered advice that still applies to all aspiring scientists:
Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.
John Gribbin is the author of Stardust (Penguin) and is a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.
Cecilia Payne (as she then was) made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science when she was not quite 25 years old. She found out what stars are made of. What she found was so astonishing that at first nobody (literally, not anybody) believed it could be right. The fact that she was a young woman, in the mid-1920s, telling her older male colleagues that they were in error did not help. A few years laster, some of those older male colleagues found out that she was right, but even then credit for the discovery largely went to them. Proper recognition came slowly, and late, but it did eventually come. By the time I studied astronomy, forty years after her breakthrough, at least those in the trade knew the significance of her work.
Donovan Moore’s book is welcome not just because it sets the facts straight for a wider audience, but because it is the proverbial good read, which sets her achievements in the context of her times. Indeed, this is more important here than the science, since all you really need to know about that is in the title of the book. For thousands of years people have looked at the stars and wondered what they are; in the mid-1920s a young woman in her own mid-20s, was the first, and for a time the only, person who knew. What more do you need to know to appreciate the achievement?
Donovan doesn’t pretend to be a scientist, and he doesn’t always get what science there is in the book exactly right. He also sees England through slightly out of focus American spectacles. But none of this matters a jot. It is the story that matters here.
And what a story! Born in 1900, appropriately at the start of a new century, to respectable middle-class parents in Wendover, Cecilia Payne “ought” to have learnt the feminine arts, got married, and raised a family. But among her other aspects of rebellion against the system, as a child we find her asking why Jesus couldn’t have been a woman, and by her early teens we find her translating for her own benefit a book on the Linnean classification system from German and French.
It was just about acceptable for a girl to study botany, and this got her to Cambridge, where at that time (and until 1947!) women were allowed to study and take exams, but could not be awarded degrees. Moore brings this period to life, providing ample material for a TV mini-series, as we learn how Payne switched from botany to physics, then became fascinated by astronomy after attending a lecture by Arthur Eddington, who had measured the bending of starlight during a solar eclipse and confirmed the accuracy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
By the time she completed her studies, Payne was an accomplished amateur astronomer with the run of the Cambridge Observatories. But the only work available to her was as a schoolteacher, and although she would (as later events proved) have made an excellent teacher, she longed to do research. America was marginally more enlightened, and armed with glowing references and a tiny scholarship (but no degree certificate) she settled at the Harvard Observatory.
The observatory had a history of employing women to do the painstaking work of analysing and cataloguing data, which had led them to make several important discoveries while still being regarded as mere “computers”, not real scientists. Payne was different, and with the independence provided by her scholarship insisted on being given a real research job to do. This involved studying the spectra of stars, and is what led her to discover that the stars are not made of the same mixture of elements as the Earth, but are largely composed of hydrogen. The breakthrough would eventually lead to an understanding of how stars work, how the elements are made in their interiors, and how those elements are scattered through space to become new stars, planets, and in one case at least, people.
The work formed the basis of Payne’s thesis for the first PhD to be awarded to a female physicist at Harvard — although to placate the reactionary Chairman of the Harvard Physics Department it was technically awarded by Radcliffe College. The thesis described how Payne had used spectroscopy to discover what stars are made of. But she was “persuaded” by her superiors to include a disclaimer which became notorious to my generation of students:
Although hydrogen and helium are manifestly very abundant in stellar atmospheres, the actual values derived from the estimates of marginal appearance are regarded as spurious.
What Payne, who was always careful with her use of language, did not say is who regarded them as spurious! It certainly was not her. And the caveat soon became redundant. In 1962, a leading astronomer described the work as “the most brilliant thesis ever written in astronomy”.
The story so far occupies three-quarters of the book, but only a third of Payne’s life. I could have wished for more about her later achievements, even though these were inevitably overshadowed by her first discovery. But perhaps I am being greedy. She certainly was not, and when honours and awards eventually came her way she offered advice that still applies to all aspiring scientists:
Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.
John Gribbin is the author of Stardust (Penguin) and is a Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.
April 5, 2025
A solid read about an important female scientist who defied the odds and succeeded in an era that didn't make it easy for her. Not very gripping I'm afraid, hence the four stars
March 18, 2020
Sospecho que el nombre de Cecilia Payne le dice poco a los que no pertenecen a la pequeña tribu de astrónomos. Mas aun, temo que muchos astrónomos también desconocen su genialidad. Sin embargo, Payne fue uno de los más grandes astronom@s que haya existido, y de la que se dijo que escribió la tesis doctoral más brillante en la historia de la astronomía.
La historia es así: hace ~100 años todos los astrónomos creían en un principio de uniformidad, donde todo el Universo estaba compuesto básicamente del mismo modo que la Tierra: carbono, silicio, estaño, etc. Una especie de extensión del principio de Galileo.
Payne demostró que todos estaban equivocados. Uniendo mecánica estadística, la incipiente teoría atómica y las mejores observaciones espectrales de la época, demostró que es el hidrógeno el ingrediente principal de todas las estrellas, y que los metales de hecho existen en cantidades ínfimas. También demostró que las diferencias entre los espectros de las estrellas se pueden explicar como diferencias de presión y temperatura en sus atmósferas. De paso inaugurando esa pequeña disciplina que conocemos como astrofísica.
El resto de la comunidad astronómica tardó años en darle la razón, o incluso en entender su trabajo. Muchos más años pasaron para que Harvard la reconociera como profesora, a pesar de ser de dictar clases por tres décadas y ser la astrónoma más brillante de esa universidad.
El libro está bien escrito y se lee rápido. Solo lamento que se detenga tan poco en los innumerables otros descubrimientos que ella realizó.
La historia es así: hace ~100 años todos los astrónomos creían en un principio de uniformidad, donde todo el Universo estaba compuesto básicamente del mismo modo que la Tierra: carbono, silicio, estaño, etc. Una especie de extensión del principio de Galileo.
Payne demostró que todos estaban equivocados. Uniendo mecánica estadística, la incipiente teoría atómica y las mejores observaciones espectrales de la época, demostró que es el hidrógeno el ingrediente principal de todas las estrellas, y que los metales de hecho existen en cantidades ínfimas. También demostró que las diferencias entre los espectros de las estrellas se pueden explicar como diferencias de presión y temperatura en sus atmósferas. De paso inaugurando esa pequeña disciplina que conocemos como astrofísica.
El resto de la comunidad astronómica tardó años en darle la razón, o incluso en entender su trabajo. Muchos más años pasaron para que Harvard la reconociera como profesora, a pesar de ser de dictar clases por tres décadas y ser la astrónoma más brillante de esa universidad.
El libro está bien escrito y se lee rápido. Solo lamento que se detenga tan poco en los innumerables otros descubrimientos que ella realizó.
July 5, 2024
5 stars for Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin!!!
Unfortunately only 3 stars for the book. I’m glad I read it and it was so interesting to learn about Cecilia’s life and her incredible contributions to astrophysics, but the book dragged on a bit and was tough for me to finish. This was audio which is not easy for me, but still! Still glad I read it! I might look for another book about Cecilia. Her life was fascinating!
Unfortunately only 3 stars for the book. I’m glad I read it and it was so interesting to learn about Cecilia’s life and her incredible contributions to astrophysics, but the book dragged on a bit and was tough for me to finish. This was audio which is not easy for me, but still! Still glad I read it! I might look for another book about Cecilia. Her life was fascinating!
January 6, 2022
In my younger star-lit years – literally – and well before completing my first university degree, I shared a fascination with a lifelong friend of those twinkling heavenly jewels that dotted the night sky. Our indisputable career at the age of 12 was going to be in astronomy. When my friend received a wonderful refractor sporting a 75mm objective and a 400mm focal length for his birthday, we spent uncountable cloudless nights together, peering at Copernicus and Serenity, the craters and seas that scarred the moon; the mysterious sanguine surface of Mars (our favourite), and even the rings of Saturn. Oohing and aahing, the magnificent heavens were limitless in their secrets…..and we owned them!
At 15, our love of astronomy lingered. Its unfathomable vastness had become our mistress. James Bond, Q and Goldfinger arrived, and turned our heads to the laboratory, and suddenly we wanted to be industrial chemists, shaking test-tubes and boiling Erlenmeyer flasks – set to become famous and revered inventors. Within a year we discovered girls, and after all of these discoveries, I majored in Physics and my friend became a priest.
So when a book title such as this appeared randomly on my monitor recently, I instantly imagined it sitting alongside my treasured and ageing collection of astronomy books, gracing my bookshelves. The oohing and aahing had returned. The title was all astronomy, physics and chemistry. Its potential was bursting out of its hard-board covers and I was licking my lips. And what an eye-opening read it was!
Born a Taurean in 1900 England, Cecilia Helena achieved many firsts in her most industrious and illustrious lifetime.
- The first child (of 3) to Edward and Emma Payne.
- The first woman to be awarded a PhD in Astronomy.
- The first woman to receive the American Astronomical Society award.
- The first woman to be appointed Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University (1956). Harvard was America’s oldest, founded in 1636, and established as an all-male institution of learning.
Cecilia was an intelligent and exceptional, sparkling spirit; obvious from early childhood. A young prodigy, she taught herself to become ambidextrous, as she was a frowned-upon inherent left hander. She could write backward, upside-down, and upside-down backward. She read prolifically as she loved books and wished to learn what they could teach her. She conversed comfortably in French and basic Latin, and was fluent in English, German and Italian.
At the age of 19, she entered Cambridge University (UK) on a scholarship – at the end of the First World War and at the dawn of many historic scientific breakthroughs. She became aware of the conflict between science and religion, and wondered why Jesus was a man and not a woman. Art was just as emotional for her as science. She was different from her classmates – unremitting determination, and highly focused – ignoring the ‘inequality’ of the times. The young women who enrolled at Cambridge were seen as ‘visitors’ rather than ‘students’ by the male fraternity. As in other arenas, women had to abide by different rules than men, eg: in the early 1900s, Cambridge women, whether student or faculty, could not take out books from the library unless a man signed for them.
She bicycled to the nearby Cavendish Laboratory, where precise measurement and teamwork were hammered into her. What a time! She rubbed shoulders with the best minds – past and future Nobel Prize winners – Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry, 1908) and Neils Bohr (Physics, 1922).
With no professional future for her in Britain, Cecilia moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of Harvard University, where she submitted her heavens-breaking dissertation on the composition of stars, like our own sun, and gained her PhD (1925). In Cambridge, UK, only men were awarded degrees in the 1920s, not women.
Her findings, that stars are 98% Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He) by mass, and for every 2000 atoms of H, there are 126 atoms of He, were disputed by the entrenched scientific establishment which believed in Eddington’s theory of uniformity. Cecilia’s ‘protector’, Henry Norris Russell, cautioned her to reconsider the wording of her conclusion, which she did, yet, years later, he proved the accuracy of her work and reversed his opinion.
Cecilia married Sergei Gaposchkin in March 1934, a short, flamboyant Crimean who studied under Albert Einstein (Physics, 1921) and Max Planck (Physics, 1918), and who completed his PhD at the University of Berlin. They raised two children, and worked together at Harvard, until her death of lung cancer in December 1979 after 50 years of chain-smoking.
She was a woman of Physics and of Astronomy, and Donovan Moore has assembled a very professional and readable account of a woman who was shy, extremely intelligent and dedicated, and who absorbed the wisdom of all those learned minds around her.
She had not only survived a time when science, and its memorable institutions, were a bastion of maleness, but authored 284 publications and discovered what stars were made of.
At 15, our love of astronomy lingered. Its unfathomable vastness had become our mistress. James Bond, Q and Goldfinger arrived, and turned our heads to the laboratory, and suddenly we wanted to be industrial chemists, shaking test-tubes and boiling Erlenmeyer flasks – set to become famous and revered inventors. Within a year we discovered girls, and after all of these discoveries, I majored in Physics and my friend became a priest.
So when a book title such as this appeared randomly on my monitor recently, I instantly imagined it sitting alongside my treasured and ageing collection of astronomy books, gracing my bookshelves. The oohing and aahing had returned. The title was all astronomy, physics and chemistry. Its potential was bursting out of its hard-board covers and I was licking my lips. And what an eye-opening read it was!
Born a Taurean in 1900 England, Cecilia Helena achieved many firsts in her most industrious and illustrious lifetime.
- The first child (of 3) to Edward and Emma Payne.
- The first woman to be awarded a PhD in Astronomy.
- The first woman to receive the American Astronomical Society award.
- The first woman to be appointed Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University (1956). Harvard was America’s oldest, founded in 1636, and established as an all-male institution of learning.
Cecilia was an intelligent and exceptional, sparkling spirit; obvious from early childhood. A young prodigy, she taught herself to become ambidextrous, as she was a frowned-upon inherent left hander. She could write backward, upside-down, and upside-down backward. She read prolifically as she loved books and wished to learn what they could teach her. She conversed comfortably in French and basic Latin, and was fluent in English, German and Italian.
At the age of 19, she entered Cambridge University (UK) on a scholarship – at the end of the First World War and at the dawn of many historic scientific breakthroughs. She became aware of the conflict between science and religion, and wondered why Jesus was a man and not a woman. Art was just as emotional for her as science. She was different from her classmates – unremitting determination, and highly focused – ignoring the ‘inequality’ of the times. The young women who enrolled at Cambridge were seen as ‘visitors’ rather than ‘students’ by the male fraternity. As in other arenas, women had to abide by different rules than men, eg: in the early 1900s, Cambridge women, whether student or faculty, could not take out books from the library unless a man signed for them.
She bicycled to the nearby Cavendish Laboratory, where precise measurement and teamwork were hammered into her. What a time! She rubbed shoulders with the best minds – past and future Nobel Prize winners – Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry, 1908) and Neils Bohr (Physics, 1922).
With no professional future for her in Britain, Cecilia moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of Harvard University, where she submitted her heavens-breaking dissertation on the composition of stars, like our own sun, and gained her PhD (1925). In Cambridge, UK, only men were awarded degrees in the 1920s, not women.
Her findings, that stars are 98% Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He) by mass, and for every 2000 atoms of H, there are 126 atoms of He, were disputed by the entrenched scientific establishment which believed in Eddington’s theory of uniformity. Cecilia’s ‘protector’, Henry Norris Russell, cautioned her to reconsider the wording of her conclusion, which she did, yet, years later, he proved the accuracy of her work and reversed his opinion.
Cecilia married Sergei Gaposchkin in March 1934, a short, flamboyant Crimean who studied under Albert Einstein (Physics, 1921) and Max Planck (Physics, 1918), and who completed his PhD at the University of Berlin. They raised two children, and worked together at Harvard, until her death of lung cancer in December 1979 after 50 years of chain-smoking.
She was a woman of Physics and of Astronomy, and Donovan Moore has assembled a very professional and readable account of a woman who was shy, extremely intelligent and dedicated, and who absorbed the wisdom of all those learned minds around her.
She had not only survived a time when science, and its memorable institutions, were a bastion of maleness, but authored 284 publications and discovered what stars were made of.
April 22, 2022
This was a sad and seemingly incomplete portrait of a brilliant astrophysicist, whose first 25 years of life were marked by independence, drive, and an unwillingness to let the light of her star be extinguished, followed by 50 years playing obediently in her corner unless her handlers threw her a bone. Did Cecilia really peak at 25 when she wrote her Ph.D. thesis? Such that the majority of her life after her seminal academic paper merits only 3/20 chapters? Or was there less information available about how the adult Cecilia found meaning and fulfillment... despite the fact that she was widely visible in the astronomy community up until her death and herself wrote an autobiography? These are the questions I'm not sure I'll find the answer to, and I worry I judge Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin as a boring eccentric based on the strange pacing and incomplete research in this book more than anything she expressed through her life and writing itself.
Moore writing on Cecilia's childhood paints a vivacious, headstrong, and obsessive woman who continuously found ways to circumvent English societal expectations for women of the early 1900s to chase her dream of becoming a scientist, and later, studying the stars. Frequent tangents in the biography profile other leading astronomers and physicists of the time that influenced Cecilia's line of study, leading us all a bit too directly to the topic of her graduate thesis on the chemical makeup of stars. It kind of steals the agency from Cecilia... given her unique training, the method she used to address the problem and her result seem almost obvious. Perhaps what's meant to be more remarkable is that she did it alone? Was it more common at the time for (male) scientists to work iteratively groups and the singularity of her effort distinguished her accomplishment?
Her advisors' resistance to openly allowing her to publish her radical conclusions seems less flagrant discrimination and more the nature of the (oppressive, conservative, insular, subjective) academic sector, which Cecilia must have ultimately accepted as she made research her life's work. The observatory director, Harlow Shapley, stunted Cecilia's career time and time again by using his leverage to keep her at Harvard, underpaid and unable to focus on the work she desired and Cecilia... did nothing. She impulsively married an astronomy colleague with a radically different personality, had a family of three which she barely had the time, means, or desire to care for, and when both of these things placed pressure on her career she... did nothing. A contemporary who failed to solve the same stellar spectra problem she had as a graduate student was eventually appointed to be her boss, and it was only at his insistence that she eventually got a raise and a full professorship title. After battling so doggedly to pursue the education she desired and secure a research career against long odds, where did that ambition and determination go when Cecilia needed it to advance professionally? Read according to this biography, Cecilia's life was a long lead-up to a single battle for recognition that she ultimately lost and didn’t form a turning point for her professional or personal growth. I doubt that's objectively the case. But the book's inability to posit a viable answer to how Cecilia rebounded, rebuilt, and thrived from this setback paints her life as more of a shadow of what could have been rather than the quietly triumphant rebellion that you would have wanted to believe was possible.
Moore writing on Cecilia's childhood paints a vivacious, headstrong, and obsessive woman who continuously found ways to circumvent English societal expectations for women of the early 1900s to chase her dream of becoming a scientist, and later, studying the stars. Frequent tangents in the biography profile other leading astronomers and physicists of the time that influenced Cecilia's line of study, leading us all a bit too directly to the topic of her graduate thesis on the chemical makeup of stars. It kind of steals the agency from Cecilia... given her unique training, the method she used to address the problem and her result seem almost obvious. Perhaps what's meant to be more remarkable is that she did it alone? Was it more common at the time for (male) scientists to work iteratively groups and the singularity of her effort distinguished her accomplishment?
Her advisors' resistance to openly allowing her to publish her radical conclusions seems less flagrant discrimination and more the nature of the (oppressive, conservative, insular, subjective) academic sector, which Cecilia must have ultimately accepted as she made research her life's work. The observatory director, Harlow Shapley, stunted Cecilia's career time and time again by using his leverage to keep her at Harvard, underpaid and unable to focus on the work she desired and Cecilia... did nothing. She impulsively married an astronomy colleague with a radically different personality, had a family of three which she barely had the time, means, or desire to care for, and when both of these things placed pressure on her career she... did nothing. A contemporary who failed to solve the same stellar spectra problem she had as a graduate student was eventually appointed to be her boss, and it was only at his insistence that she eventually got a raise and a full professorship title. After battling so doggedly to pursue the education she desired and secure a research career against long odds, where did that ambition and determination go when Cecilia needed it to advance professionally? Read according to this biography, Cecilia's life was a long lead-up to a single battle for recognition that she ultimately lost and didn’t form a turning point for her professional or personal growth. I doubt that's objectively the case. But the book's inability to posit a viable answer to how Cecilia rebounded, rebuilt, and thrived from this setback paints her life as more of a shadow of what could have been rather than the quietly triumphant rebellion that you would have wanted to believe was possible.
September 12, 2022
During the first two years of my graduate program in astronomy, my peers and I were required to enroll in a seminar course in which we were the ones giving a seminar talk on a given week. Each semester there was theme which was intended to be different from our research and that of the rest of the department, for example planetary astronomy or "alternate" career paths for those with a PhD in astronomy. During one of the semesters I participated, the theme was famous astronomers. In this iteration, the professor organizing the course had us randomly choose names. I ended up with Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who I had never heard of, despite holding a BS in astrophysics and MS in physics.
I have always loved historical research, especially the type that brings me into archives and in contact with primary sources, so I approached my assignment with the intention to bring to my audience not only an account of the work Payne did but also some information about her life, motivations, and experiences. Fortunately, our library had the second edition of her autobiography ("Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections 2nd Edition ") available. Along with this, resources from the American Institute of Physics, and eventually an inter-library loan of one of the few copies of her husbands self-published autobiography, I was able to piece together a life that I found utterly fascinating and inspiring. I was shocked and outraged that I had never learned about her in class, especially given that one of my earliest astronomy research projects involved determining the abundances of rare Earth elements in red supergiants (and using already known abundances to correct for estimated parameters in atomic calculations). My research directly depended on the work she did when a graduate student! In addition, I found myself enthralled by her writing style, the advice she shared with students, and the way in which her story was both something I could identify with (the passion for astronomy, love for discovery and learning, and encouraging upbringing from her parents) and also admire and aspire toward. It was thrilling to learn more about a person than I knew about most of my family members and to share what I learned with others publicly so that her work could be better appreciated.
Following my presentation, I resolved that I would one day write a book about Payne's life, using the notes I had collected for the presentation, as well as future primary source research (which clearly would require some travel to both Cambridges to obtain). As it turns out, the year I gave my presentation was the year that Donovan Moore also started his work on this book, according to the account in the forward. Although I am slightly disappointed that I did not get to write the book I wanted, I am very glad for Moore's work. It is the book that I would have liked to have written, and indeed, I do not think I would have done nearly as well or picked up nearly so many details and stories in my research. He has done a fantastic job in bringing Payne to life and in presenting her important work to a general audience. I certainly learned more about her and came to a deeper appreciation of her life.
For this book, Moore draws upon a large variety of sources. It is true that a significant amount of the information contained within the book is from the autobiography (which would be difficult for most readers to obtain). But, Moore also uses personal letters and interviews, newspaper articles, and institutional histories to provide a vivid picture of Payne's life, especially the years leading up to her PhD work and early career. He does not idolize her but presents facts within context and without embellishment, which is fitting because what Payne accomplished needs no such flurry to be notable.
Moore includes many interesting side stories and anecdotes gathered in his research that enliven the book. Another review comments on the fact that the book spends more time on her early life and less on her later years. I think that this is not a fair point as Moore does bring up information gleaned from her past students, throughout the book, and much of that information comes from later years. But, the biggest challenge about writing about Payne's later life is that there is indeed less information about those years (and I tried myself to find it when working on my project and ended up with the nearly the same result as Moore). Apart from oral history interviews with AIP, and I suppose whatever letters and articles exist in archives, there is less information. Many of her doctoral students have since passed away and there aren't many people around who can comment much on those years of her life personally. And it is not a slight on her later accomplishments and pioneering path as a the first woman to be full professor at Harvard to say that her most influential contribution and accomplishment was early in her career. And, there is a choice to be made when writing of what to emphasize. This is book is the story of Payne, but it is also of how we came to know the composition of stars.
Payne's is a story that has in recent years begun to attract much more attention, particularity on social media. For this I am very glad. It is stunning to reflect on the fact that, around 100 years ago we were only just discovering the nature of the Universe, be it that the "spiral nebula" were not within the Milky Way, that the universe is expanding, or that its baryonic composition is mostly hydrogen and helium. And though many know Edwin Hubble and Henrietta Swan Leavitt's role in two of those three discoveries, few have learned Payne's role in the third. It is time that changed and Moore has done a wonderful job alleviating this issue, if only more will read his book and share the stories as well.
I have always loved historical research, especially the type that brings me into archives and in contact with primary sources, so I approached my assignment with the intention to bring to my audience not only an account of the work Payne did but also some information about her life, motivations, and experiences. Fortunately, our library had the second edition of her autobiography ("Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections 2nd Edition ") available. Along with this, resources from the American Institute of Physics, and eventually an inter-library loan of one of the few copies of her husbands self-published autobiography, I was able to piece together a life that I found utterly fascinating and inspiring. I was shocked and outraged that I had never learned about her in class, especially given that one of my earliest astronomy research projects involved determining the abundances of rare Earth elements in red supergiants (and using already known abundances to correct for estimated parameters in atomic calculations). My research directly depended on the work she did when a graduate student! In addition, I found myself enthralled by her writing style, the advice she shared with students, and the way in which her story was both something I could identify with (the passion for astronomy, love for discovery and learning, and encouraging upbringing from her parents) and also admire and aspire toward. It was thrilling to learn more about a person than I knew about most of my family members and to share what I learned with others publicly so that her work could be better appreciated.
Following my presentation, I resolved that I would one day write a book about Payne's life, using the notes I had collected for the presentation, as well as future primary source research (which clearly would require some travel to both Cambridges to obtain). As it turns out, the year I gave my presentation was the year that Donovan Moore also started his work on this book, according to the account in the forward. Although I am slightly disappointed that I did not get to write the book I wanted, I am very glad for Moore's work. It is the book that I would have liked to have written, and indeed, I do not think I would have done nearly as well or picked up nearly so many details and stories in my research. He has done a fantastic job in bringing Payne to life and in presenting her important work to a general audience. I certainly learned more about her and came to a deeper appreciation of her life.
For this book, Moore draws upon a large variety of sources. It is true that a significant amount of the information contained within the book is from the autobiography (which would be difficult for most readers to obtain). But, Moore also uses personal letters and interviews, newspaper articles, and institutional histories to provide a vivid picture of Payne's life, especially the years leading up to her PhD work and early career. He does not idolize her but presents facts within context and without embellishment, which is fitting because what Payne accomplished needs no such flurry to be notable.
Moore includes many interesting side stories and anecdotes gathered in his research that enliven the book. Another review comments on the fact that the book spends more time on her early life and less on her later years. I think that this is not a fair point as Moore does bring up information gleaned from her past students, throughout the book, and much of that information comes from later years. But, the biggest challenge about writing about Payne's later life is that there is indeed less information about those years (and I tried myself to find it when working on my project and ended up with the nearly the same result as Moore). Apart from oral history interviews with AIP, and I suppose whatever letters and articles exist in archives, there is less information. Many of her doctoral students have since passed away and there aren't many people around who can comment much on those years of her life personally. And it is not a slight on her later accomplishments and pioneering path as a the first woman to be full professor at Harvard to say that her most influential contribution and accomplishment was early in her career. And, there is a choice to be made when writing of what to emphasize. This is book is the story of Payne, but it is also of how we came to know the composition of stars.
Payne's is a story that has in recent years begun to attract much more attention, particularity on social media. For this I am very glad. It is stunning to reflect on the fact that, around 100 years ago we were only just discovering the nature of the Universe, be it that the "spiral nebula" were not within the Milky Way, that the universe is expanding, or that its baryonic composition is mostly hydrogen and helium. And though many know Edwin Hubble and Henrietta Swan Leavitt's role in two of those three discoveries, few have learned Payne's role in the third. It is time that changed and Moore has done a wonderful job alleviating this issue, if only more will read his book and share the stories as well.
May 2, 2021
I don't read many biographies. However, having an Astronomy degree and some understanding of the composition of stars, I was curious about the development of that knowledge and the persons involved (which I was not taught). Having never heard the name Cecilia Payne, I was amazed by her accomplishments while saddened by her career roadblocks. I'm hopeful things have changed a lot for women in science since 1900.
August 9, 2020
What Stars Are Made Of helps to give Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin wider recognition for her remarkable life and career in astronomy. I would like to have had more details about her astronomical research than was presented here, but I still recommend the book to any interested in the history of astronomy and the important role that women have played in it.
February 28, 2021
Engagingly written. I've read Cecilia's autobiography. Moore does an excellent job of adding sketches of those she worked with, place descriptions, and historical context to her story.
Edit:
It's a few days later, and I'm still thinking about how Shapely would literally prefer to have children running around the observatory than pay the Gaposchkins enough to afford childcare.
Edit:
It's a few days later, and I'm still thinking about how Shapely would literally prefer to have children running around the observatory than pay the Gaposchkins enough to afford childcare.
June 18, 2020
Wonderful bio of Harvard's first woman professor. Born in 1900 she rubbed shoulders with some legends of science.
She was a pathfinder of astrophysics. She battled gender prejudice while making startling breakthroughs and getting a miserly wage.
Enjoy an inspiring read.
She was a pathfinder of astrophysics. She battled gender prejudice while making startling breakthroughs and getting a miserly wage.
Enjoy an inspiring read.
February 27, 2021
Well crafted story of yet another brilliant woman whose story has been in the shadows.
Dr. Cecilia Payne. Extraordinary
Dr. Cecilia Payne. Extraordinary
March 23, 2021
No wine so wonderful as thirst!
October 25, 2021
This was a very enjoyable book. It is well written and conveys the life of a remarkable yet unknown astrophysicist without getting into the technical sides of her discovery. She should have received a Nobel Prize in Physics but was never nominated despite all her accomplishments and in spite of all obstacles of her gender put there by the men of her time and profession. Never the less, she persevered, found ways to work around the obstacles; she never gave up; she was in it for the “hunt”, the joy of discovery and the search for the Truth of some new part of Nature.
Cecilia was the right woman at the right time and with the right resources at her disposal to make a phenomenal discovery: the Sun was made predominantly of Hydrogen. We take this fact for granted and yet we have only discovered it less than 100 years ago! Prior to her PhD thesis in 1925 astronomers thought the Sun was made of the same elements as the Earth but at higher temperatures! Why they thought that it is unclear. The field of quantum physics, how atoms work on the subatomic level, was just beginning. Cecilia was the first to see the relationship between physics and astronomy and utilized spectroscopic analysis of the “stars” on glass photographic plates collected by Henrietta Leavitt and the other female “computers” at Harvard to provide the proof. How she did this before the invention of digital computers is beyond me. The combination of Astronomy and Physics into what we now call Astrophysics was a monumental advance and changed how astronomers and physicists perceived the Universe.
I liked the book and recommend it to anyone with an interest in astronomy. It is an inspiration to any young women wishing to pursue a career in astronomy. It is also lesson to young men on the subtleness of discrimination against women. In recent years, more women have been advancing in astronomy which indicates to me some progress is being made.
My only critique is that I wish the author had included more information about the speeches she gave to various groups that invited her to talk at their organizations and institutions. This potential additional information might have just deepened our understanding about her life, work and the society in which she lived.
I remain dumbfounded that the general public was not aware of her research and discovery! Even today people still don’t know who she is or the importance of her discovery. If it wasn’t for this book, I probably still wouldn’t have heard of her. I am grateful to the author for writing it.
Cecilia was the right woman at the right time and with the right resources at her disposal to make a phenomenal discovery: the Sun was made predominantly of Hydrogen. We take this fact for granted and yet we have only discovered it less than 100 years ago! Prior to her PhD thesis in 1925 astronomers thought the Sun was made of the same elements as the Earth but at higher temperatures! Why they thought that it is unclear. The field of quantum physics, how atoms work on the subatomic level, was just beginning. Cecilia was the first to see the relationship between physics and astronomy and utilized spectroscopic analysis of the “stars” on glass photographic plates collected by Henrietta Leavitt and the other female “computers” at Harvard to provide the proof. How she did this before the invention of digital computers is beyond me. The combination of Astronomy and Physics into what we now call Astrophysics was a monumental advance and changed how astronomers and physicists perceived the Universe.
I liked the book and recommend it to anyone with an interest in astronomy. It is an inspiration to any young women wishing to pursue a career in astronomy. It is also lesson to young men on the subtleness of discrimination against women. In recent years, more women have been advancing in astronomy which indicates to me some progress is being made.
My only critique is that I wish the author had included more information about the speeches she gave to various groups that invited her to talk at their organizations and institutions. This potential additional information might have just deepened our understanding about her life, work and the society in which she lived.
I remain dumbfounded that the general public was not aware of her research and discovery! Even today people still don’t know who she is or the importance of her discovery. If it wasn’t for this book, I probably still wouldn’t have heard of her. I am grateful to the author for writing it.
February 21, 2025
Moore ranges over the life--particularly the scientific life--of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the astronomer who first posited the true composition of stars, and attempted to create an academic career at a time when misogyny worked to keep women out of academia. This is not my typical read--all of my nonfiction tends towards academic, rather than biographies about academics. But I picked it as a way to relate differently to my science communication courses, and I'm glad I did. While it wasn't Moore's intention, it is an excellent book on the grounds of science communication, as he focuses on the development of physics in general and astronomy in particular, primarily in the first part of the 20th century. And further, to my interest, it shows how the personal is an important part of science, how the lives of the subject and the people around her impacted their research and thinking.
He does an excellent job setting up the feel and social norms of Oxford as well; there's a bit less of that on the Harvard side, but the particular character of the observatory that Payne-Gaposchkin worked for most of her life comes through nicely. I frankly think he the male chauvinism off a bit easy in a few places, but Payne-Gaoschkin's own character and accomplishments come through very plainly. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think it's inspired me to read more biographies from the era.
He does an excellent job setting up the feel and social norms of Oxford as well; there's a bit less of that on the Harvard side, but the particular character of the observatory that Payne-Gaposchkin worked for most of her life comes through nicely. I frankly think he the male chauvinism off a bit easy in a few places, but Payne-Gaoschkin's own character and accomplishments come through very plainly. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think it's inspired me to read more biographies from the era.
November 4, 2021
I learned about a very impressive woman scientist who had to endure so many hardships to achieve almost unattainable goals. She lived at the beginning of the 20th century and it is astounding to learn that she had to bear so many financial and access-to-instrument difficulties, while putting up with suppressing male ignorance. She lived in a time the opposite gender did not hesitate to put obstacles in her way under a cloak of the all-knowing and judgmental male points of view about women's intellect and their position in a science community. I am applauding her for being a star for us and also I am applauding Donovan Moore for writing such an insightful book about a great scientific figure.
I wanna quote Sir Isaac Newton “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" and Cecilia Payne is definitely one of them
I wanna quote Sir Isaac Newton “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" and Cecilia Payne is definitely one of them
May 23, 2022
As one said, we know who discovered gravity, and who found the theory of relativity but we don’t know who found what stars are made of. Cecilia Payne was an astronomer from Harvard observatory who had crossed the Atlantic to continue her meaningful scientific career. As we see today, women have been discriminated but comparing this status to what Cecilia had been through for her life in the early 20th century would be a mistake.
She and other women seeking their careers as scientists were pressured to go back to their sole natural role, as mothers. Even Cambridge college where Cecila studied astronomy, didn’t give formal degrees to women in the back days, even though they finished just the same course as men. Given this deepened discrimination, it’s a surprise to see how star Astronomers like Cecilia could be made there. However, Cambridge and Harvard were like a melting pot of great ideas back then.
Arthur Eddington, Neil Bohr, and many other great thinkers were gathered in one place and their imagination and hardship training bring Cecilia to the critical point where she could challenge the common wisdom of that time; stars are made in the same material as Earth. If it were not for Cecilia, we could slow down our astronomical progress more than we think.
She and other women seeking their careers as scientists were pressured to go back to their sole natural role, as mothers. Even Cambridge college where Cecila studied astronomy, didn’t give formal degrees to women in the back days, even though they finished just the same course as men. Given this deepened discrimination, it’s a surprise to see how star Astronomers like Cecilia could be made there. However, Cambridge and Harvard were like a melting pot of great ideas back then.
Arthur Eddington, Neil Bohr, and many other great thinkers were gathered in one place and their imagination and hardship training bring Cecilia to the critical point where she could challenge the common wisdom of that time; stars are made in the same material as Earth. If it were not for Cecilia, we could slow down our astronomical progress more than we think.
December 13, 2024
mostly a focus on early life through her degree from radcliffe (by way of harvard observatory) to the point that i was surprised when moore said her age at tod was nearly 80 years old? wish more of her discoveries (for which she published over 300 papers) were mentioned or a focus of this book. I realize it is hard to follow discovering what stars are made of in a biography but summarizing the conclusions made from more than one of these papers (or her several books) would have been warranted
i did enjoy the information about her teaching career and ability to become a full professor of astronomy and later the chair of the department but i do wish a bit more information on her ac to al research were included
i did enjoy the information about her teaching career and ability to become a full professor of astronomy and later the chair of the department but i do wish a bit more information on her ac to al research were included
June 13, 2020
Fascinating and highly accessible historical biography of one of the world's first astrophysicists, and the scientist who correctly determined the chemistry and composition of stars. Though she faced many obstacles because of her gender, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin never gave up. She was devoted to science. She became Harvard's first Ph.D. in astronomy, and decades later, Harvard's first woman professor and first woman to chair a department. The book is a remarkable testament to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin but also a recitation of the challenges women in the first half of the 20th century faced in becoming scientists and in having their discoveries embraced by the larger scientific community.
February 24, 2021
This book taught me what chain smoking is.
No but it really is a great read -- very understandable, especially for non-fiction, and filled with all sorts of fascinating information. The fact that it took me an absurdly long amount of time to read this is entirely my fault for not reading at all these days.
Oh and shoutout to my dad for gifting it to me on my birthday a while back.
I might make a meme about Harlow Shapley. I'll put it in here if I do (I probably won't). It'd be one of the iceberg ones, cause that guy was whack. (Life long interest in ants, studied astronomy because his college hadn't opened their journalism course yet and it was second in the course catalogue (after archeology, which he couldn't pronounce).)
No but it really is a great read -- very understandable, especially for non-fiction, and filled with all sorts of fascinating information. The fact that it took me an absurdly long amount of time to read this is entirely my fault for not reading at all these days.
Oh and shoutout to my dad for gifting it to me on my birthday a while back.
I might make a meme about Harlow Shapley. I'll put it in here if I do (I probably won't). It'd be one of the iceberg ones, cause that guy was whack. (Life long interest in ants, studied astronomy because his college hadn't opened their journalism course yet and it was second in the course catalogue (after archeology, which he couldn't pronounce).)
September 8, 2024
Very engaging book on a scientist that more people need to know about. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin broke down more walls for women than just about any in academia, also discovering that the Sun was made of hydrogen and helium in the process. For her reward, she got paid very little and was not officially a professor until the late 50s, after she had been teaching for 30+ years. I will put this in my top 5 for this year once it’s all said and done.
August 21, 2022
Every mother, who has a daughter, should read this book. And then, give this book to your daughters to read. Cecilia Payne is a wonderful role model for our inquisitive daughters. And, her life is a wonderful reminder that women still have a long way to go to have equal opportunities and rights in this world. I will forever think of Cecilia when I look up at the night sky and search for stars.
December 28, 2022
My favorite book of 2022. Another fabulous woman of science, with an incredible finding about the universe. Her name should be well known.
Donovan wrote this story well covering the history and the many other contemporary scientists of this period.
Donovan wrote this story well covering the history and the many other contemporary scientists of this period.
October 4, 2023
I liked this book and Payne and her discoveries are fascinating but the ending really bothered me. Show me a biography on a male scientist where they say his kids were out of control because he was a neglectful father.
April 1, 2020
I liked it and my review for Nature Astronomy can be found here: https://rdcu.be/b3bMc
September 3, 2020
What an extraordinary life!
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