Скачать или смотреть The Historic Female Astronomer You NEED To Know About!

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin is a Badass bitch! We science nerds know Neil Degrasse Tyson – who was the 7th black dude ever to become an astrophysicist. Total badass.

Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know what the universe is made of. The reason is that the person who discovered what the universe is made of is – shock – a women. And her story is going to blow your mind.

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gap-osch-kin was a born in the UK, made in America astronomer, and first female astrophysicist.

She studied botany, physics, and chemistry at Cambridge university but was never granted a degree because, Cambridge didn’t grant degrees to women – obviously.

She realized if she stayed in the realized in the U.K. her only career option was to become a teacher, so she moved to the US as what I like to call an academic refugee.

In 1925 she became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College (now known as part of Harvard University). At the time her thesis is called "undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy”.

What was so brilliant about it? She applied ionization theory to show that the Sun's spectrum contained huge amounts of hydrogen. This was a big deal because up until now everyone thought that the sun was basically made of the same stuff as earth – carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. She then figured that if the sun was mode mostly of hydrogen, maybe that’s what all stars are made of – and she theorized that Hydrogen would be the most abundant element in the Universe.

Now her supervisor Henry Norris Russell was like – no way that the universie is made of hydrogen, damn girl, shut yo mouth. He basically wouldn’t let her publish this idea because it SO contradicted common wisdom, BUT four years later this guy Russell figured out the same thing a different way, and took full credit for the discovery. Russell is thus a massive douche, but he is still the douche who often gets credited with the discovery that the universe is mostly made of hydrogen.

Back to Cecilia – during her career at Harvard, she and her team made over 2 million observations of stars, AND figured out the structure of our galaxy, the milky way. She was also the first woman in the world to be given the title Astronomer, and the first Harvard woman to be promoted to full professor. BUT Since her death in 1979, this incredible woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery.

Now March just happens to be Women’s History Month! .So if you like me, believe that this badass bitch deserves a little more credit, and maybe like a chapter or a mention in physics text books – we can be the change you want to see in the world. Head on over to our Facebook page and SHARE the SHIT out of this graphic from our friends at IFL Science celebrating Cecillia Helena Payne-Gap-osch-kin and her total badassadree. Go! Go share.

This video is presented by Jayde Lovell, shot by Taylor Sassman, and edited by Eliza Miller at Youtube Space NYC.

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"Crypto" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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