Spotlight on Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin:
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist. In 1925, she became the first woman to earn a PhD in astronomy at Harvard University. In 1956, she became the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within the faculty at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Payne was the first ever recipient of the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy
She was appointed the Phillips Professor of Astronomy in 1958. Later, with her appointment to the Chair of the Department of Astronomy, she also became the first woman to head a department at Harvard.
In her 1925 doctoral thesis, she proposed that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her thesis title was Stellar Atmospheres: A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars.
Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected. In 1925, her theory ran counter to the prevailing idea that stars had a composition similar to that of the Earth, so her work was ignored. Four years later, Independent observations eventually proved she was correct.
In 1962, her thesis was famously described as the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in the field of astronomy. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics.
Cecilia Payne began school in Wendover at a private school run by Elizabeth Edwards. She was 12 when her mother moved to London for the sake of the education of Cecilia’s brother Humfry. He later became an archaeologist. Cecilia attended St Mary’s College, Paddington, where she was unable to study much mathematics or science.
In 1918 she changed schools for St Paul’s Girl School. There she was urged to pursue a career in music, but she preferred to focus on science. The following year she won a scholarship that paid all her expenses at Newnham College, Cambridge University.
Her interest in astronomy began after she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington on his 1919 expedition to the island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa to observe and photograph the stars near a solar eclipse as a test of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. She said of the lecture:
“The result was a complete transformation of my world picture. My world had been so shaken that I experienced something very like a nervous breakdown.”
She completed her studies, but she was not awarded a degree because of her sex. Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until 1948.
Payne realized that her only career option in the U.K. was to become a teacher, so she looked for grants that would enable her to move to the United States. She was introduced to Harlow Shapley, the Director of the Harvard College Observatory. Harlow had just established a graduate program in astronomy. Payne left England in 1923. This was made possible by a fellowship to encourage women to study at the observatory.
Adelaide Ames was the first student on the fellowship in 1922. Payne was the second the following year. She was described by renowned astrophysicist Lawrence H. Aller as one of the “most capable go-getters” in Shapley’s group.
After her doctorate, Payne studied stars of high luminosity to understand the structure of the Milky Way. Later she surveyed stars brighter than the tenth magnitude. She then studied variable stars, making over 1,250,000 observations with her assistants. This work later was extended to the Magellanic Clouds, adding a further 2,000,000 observations of variable stars. These data were used to determine the paths of stellar evolution.
She published her conclusions in her second book, The Stars of High Luminosity (1930). Her observations and analysis of variable stars, carried out with her husband, Sergei Gaposchkin, laid the basis for all subsequent work on such objects.
Payne-Gaposchkin remained scientifically active throughout her life, spending her entire academic career at Harvard. When she began, women were barred from becoming professors at Harvard, so she spent years doing less prestigious, low-paid research jobs. Her work resulted in several published books, including The Stars of High Luminosity (1930), Variable Stars (1938), and Galactic Structure (1954).
Shapley had made efforts to improve her position, and in 1938, she was given the title of “Astronomer.” Her title was later changed, at her request, to Phillips Astronomer. This was an endowed position, which would make her an “officer of the university”.
In order to get approval for her title, Shapley assured the university that giving Payne-Gaposchkin this position would not make her equivalent to a professor, but privately pushed for the position to be later converted into an explicit professorship as the “Phillips Professor of Astronomy”. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. Her courses were not recorded in the Harvard University catalogue until 1945.
When Donald Menzel became Director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1954, he tried to improve her appointment, and in 1956 she became the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within the faculty at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She was appointed the Phillips Professor of Astronomy in 1958. Later, with her appointment to the Chair of the Department of Astronomy, she also became the first woman to head a department at Harvard.
Her students included Helen Sawyer Hogg, Joseph Ashbrook, Frank Drake, Harlan Smith and Paul W. Hodge, all of whom made important contributions to astronomy. She also supervised Frank Kameny and Owen Gingerich.
Payne-Gaposchkin retired from active teaching in 1966. She was subsequently appointed Professor Emerita of Harvard. She continued her research as a member of staff at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, as well as editing the journals and books published by Harvard Observatory for ten years.
Payne’s career marked a turning point at Harvard College Observatory. The trail she blazed into the male-dominated scientific community was an inspiration to many. For example, she became a role model for astrophysicist Joan Feynman. Feynman’s mother and grandmother had dissuaded her from pursuing science, since they believed women were not physically capable of understanding scientific concepts. Feynman was inspired by Payne-Gaposchkin when she came across her work in an astronomy textbook. Seeing Payne-Gaposchkin published research convinced Feynman that she could, in fact, follow her scientific passions.
While accepting the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society, Payne spoke of her lifelong passion for research:
“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 understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience. The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape.”
Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin died of lung cancer on December 7, 1979, at age 79. 
She received several prestigious awards and honorary degrees throughout her career. Some posthumous recognitions include Asteroid 2039 Payne-Gaposchkin, the Payne-Gaposchkin Patera (volcano) on Venus, and the Institute of Physics Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Medal and Prize.
Her autobiography was first published in 1979, privately as The Dyer’s Hand and in 1984, publicly as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections.
We are privileged to include Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in our ECG Hall of Fame – Women of Science.
Sources:
Wikipedia / Britannica / Space.com