Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Anglo-American astronomer and astrophysicist Date of Birth: 10.05.1900 Country: USA

Biography of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was an Anglo-American astronomer and astrophysicist who made significant contributions to our understanding of the composition and evolution of stars. Born on May 10, 1900, in Wendover, England, she was the second of three children to Emma Leonora Pertz and Edward John Payne, a London barrister, historian, and skilled musician.

After her father's death when she was just four years old, Cecilia's mother took on the responsibility of raising the children. Payne attended St Paul's Girls' School for her education. While her mother allocated funds for her brother's higher education, Cecilia was left without the same opportunity. However, in 1919, she earned a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she studied botany, physics, and chemistry. It was during her time at Cambridge that she attended lectures by Arthur Eddington, who sparked her genuine interest in astronomy by sharing his experiences observing and photographing stars during a solar eclipse expedition to Principe Island in the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of Africa.

In Cambridge, women were not granted academic degrees until 1948. Initially, Cecilia believed that her only career path would be in education. However, she eventually mustered the courage to write a dissertation, becoming the first person to earn a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Radcliffe College in 1925. Her dissertation, titled "Stellar Atmospheres: A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars," was hailed by astronomer Otto Struve as "without a doubt, the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy." Payne accurately correlated the spectral classes of stars with their actual temperatures, utilizing the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Meghnad Saha. She demonstrated that differences in line intensities in star spectra were related to varying degrees of ionization at different temperatures, rather than different elemental compositions. Payne correctly hypothesized that hydrogen was the predominant component of all stars, not just the Sun.

In 1931, Payne obtained American citizenship. During a trip to Europe in 1933, she met astrophysicist Sergei I. Gaposchkin in Germany. She assisted him in obtaining a visa to the United States, and they married in 1934. The couple had three children, including their daughter Katherine, who left her own mark in history as a talented seamstress, imaginative knitter, and avid reader.

Payne-Gaposchkin continued her research on high-luminosity stars, aiming to understand the structure of the Milky Way. She later turned her attention to variable stars, making over 1.25 million observations with the help of her assistants. Expanding her research to the Magellanic Clouds, Cecilia added another two million observations of variable stars. These data were instrumental in determining the paths of stellar evolution.

When Donald Menzel became the director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1954, he began assisting Cecilia, and by 1956, she became the first woman to be appointed a full professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. She later became the chair of the Astronomy Department.

It is known that astrophysicist Joan Feynman initially succumbed to the persuasion of her mother and grandmother, avoiding a career in science. Her family sincerely believed that women were not capable of understanding scientific terms. However, when Feynman encountered Cecilia Payne's works in an astronomy textbook, any doubts about her true calling vanished.