PasteIntroduction
There few women who successfully take a grip on the male-dominated scientific community, in comparison to the amount of women employed period; many women pursue careers in either different fields completely, or take on the more hands-on, yet lower-paid STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers (Giudice, 2014). However, there are an amount who have and who do that inarguably deserve great recognition. One of the most established and successful was Cecilia Payne, or Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin after marriage; who was also almost erased from her true revolutionary findings (Dunlop, 2015). This paper will explore not only her accomplishments, but also her obstacles and her personal life, as well as a short analysis on the importance of women in science.
P2: Life (family, schooling, traveling)
Her Life
Family and Early Life
Cecilia Helena Payne was born on May 10th, 1900 to an upper class family in Wendover, England to parents Edward John Payne and Emma Leonora Helena neé Pertz; she had two younger siblings, Humfry Payne and Leonora Florence Mary Payne (Gregersen, 2018, Stewart, 2018 and O'Conner and Robertson, 2017). Cecilia would lose her brother at the age of 34 in 1936, in the midst of her success (O'Conner and Robertson, 2017). Her father, Edward was a talented musician and drowned in a canal when Cecelia was only four, but before his death, he managed to instill a love of music in his young daughter; he played scales to her from her reaching two, and developed perfect pitch (Stewart, 2018). Her mother, Emma was of German descent and an extremely skilled artist. Emma's family was academically accomplished, and this was passed on to her children. All three of the Payne children were made sure to be well-educated: Cecilia to become an astronomer, Humfry to become an archaeologist, and Leonora to become an architect (O'Conner & Robertson, 2017 and Stewart, 2018). Below is an image of Cecilia at age four, in 1904 (Miller, 2017).
Schooling
Cecilia Payne went to a myriad of schools – some worked well, some did not. This made for a relatively rocky education experience. At age six, she began attending a school run by Miss Elizabeth Edwards, who taught her girls that women were the superior sex. Miss Edwards also ran the school with strict discipline, having her students march rather than walk, and start their days with a hymn or patriotic song. Upon leaving this school, she had strong foundations: she could speak French and German, she knew the basics of Latin, she had studied Geometry, learned algebra skills up until quadratic equations, and knew how to use a chemical balance. (Stewart, 2018). Payne had a positive review of her experience there, saying: "In six years that I spent at her school, Miss Edwards gave me a rich education. I sometimes think she taught me all I needed to know. At 12 I could speak French and German, had a basic knowledge of Latin and a full command of arithmetic. Geometry and algebra were part of our studies and I delighted especially in the solution of quadratic equations." (O'Conner and Robertson, 2017) By this same time, at home, she had become a skilled pianist at home (Stewart, 2018).
Off to London.
At age 12, Cecilia's family moved to London, which she did reluctantly; the big city of London was a stark contrast to her birthplace (Stewart, 2018). They did so mainly so that Humfry could receive an education preparatory for an eventual independent school, and here Cecilia was given a taste of a male gender bias in her society. She quoted later in life saying: "It has taken me many decades to overcome the resentments and doubts engendered in a well-meaning but bigoted atmosphere." (O'Connor and Robertson, 2017). Here, she attended St. Mary's College, which, according to her, had many downsides. She found the time split between church and education was inadequate, they did not offer German, and she was a year ahead of their mathematics department. In the end, she was asked to leave in 1917 because they could no longer provide for her. Payne claims this was the greatest service they ever provided her (Stewart, 2018 and O'Connor and Robertson, 2017).
St Paul’s Girls’ School.
Cecilia spent her senior years of high school at St. Paul Girls' School in London, where her interest in science was nurtured, and was taught music by Gustav Holst – famous composer of "The Planets." In addition to being a part of the orchestra, Holst taught her how to conduct; he urged her to become a musician, but she was set on becoming a scientist (Stewart, 2018).
Higher Education.
Payne's ambition was to begin her studies in science at The University of Cambridge, but she did not have the money for it. To attend, she would need a full scholarship: she received it. In 1919, she began studying for a botany degree, but it became more and more evident that she was far more interested in the physical sciences (Stewart, 2018 and Gregersen, 2018).
To the United States.
At that time, a woman's postgraduate career in England was limited to teaching, but Payne was an excellent student that had a passion more interested in physics than the natural sciences she was pursuing. She was told by Professor Arthur Stanley Eddington to pursue her graduate studies at Harvard College in the United States, where a woman's career wasn't so limited (Miller, 2017). Payne became a doctoral student at Harvard in 1924, and completed her famous thesis "Stellar Atmospheres" by 1925 (Miller, 2017, Williams, 2015, and Dunlop, 2015). Her thesis explained what stars are made of, the relation of stars' spectral classes to their surface temperature and color using the ionization theory, and she argued that the variation of the stellar absorption lines was caused by different amounts of ionization and that Hydrogen was the most abundant element in the universe (Dunlop, 2015). Unfortunately, astronomer Henry Noris Russell persuaded her to omit the portion of star composition from her thesis, only to publish this discovery himself four years later, only so much as mentioning Payne. This caused her to never really receive the proper credit she deserved while she was alive (Gregersen, 2018 and Dunlop, 2015). A passage from a letter from Russell to Payne read as follows: "There remains one very much more serious discrepancy, namely, that for hydrogen, helium and oxygen. Here I am convinced that there is something seriously wrong with the present theory. It is clearly impossible that hydrogen should be a million times more abundant than the metals, and I have no doubt that the number of hydrogen atoms in the two quantum state is enormously greater than is indicated by the theory of Fowler and Milne. Compton and I sent a little note to ‘Nature’ about metastable states, which may help to explain the difficulty. . . ." (Gingrich, 2017).
The photo above is of Cecelia Payne making observations with a blink microscope at Harvard University (Gingrich, 2017).
Late Life
In 1933 Payne traveled to Europe, originally to meet with Russian astronomer Boris Gerasimovich, who had previously worked at the Harvard College Observatory with whim she planned to write a book. In Germany, she met another Russian astronomer, Sergey Gaposchkin, who could not return to the Soviet Union because of his politics. Payne managed to find him a job at Harvard, and they went to the United States together. They got married in 1934, and now Payne-Gaposchkin was an astronomy lecturer and teacher at Harvard. In 1956, she appointed a full professor at Harvard and also went on to become the chairman of the astronomy department; these were two Harvard firsts for women (Gregersen, 2018 and Dunlop, 2015). Cecilia retired from teaching in 1966, but her work did not stop there; she continued her research as a member of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, she studied stars of high luminosity and focused on trying to understand the structure of the Milky Way (Dunlop, 2015). She was known for her wit and literary knowledge, and passed away on December 7th, 1979 in Massachusetts, USA (Gregersen, 2018 and Miller, 2017).
Published Author.
Cecilia Payne published various books throughout her life, over a span of 20+ years. These titles include, but are not limited to, "The Stars of High Luminosity," "Variable Stars," "The Dyer's Hand," her autobiography, "The Galactic Novae," and "Variable Stars and Galactic Structure," 1954 (Dunlop, 2015 and Williams, 2015).
Star Composition.
Scientists initially thought that star composition would include much heavier elements, similar to the outer crust of the earth, which is composed of heavier elements such as Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Silicon (Richmond, n.d. and Williams, 2015). This was primarily because of geochemist Frank Wigglesworth Clarke's work in 1889 on comprehensive sampling of the earth's crust and recording of its mineral composition, American physicists at the time were made to believe that the elemental abundances on our Sun and on the Earth were perfectly matched (Williams, 2015). However, in the original draft of her thesis, "Stellar Atmospheres," Payne included evidence of stars being made up of almost entirely Hydrogen and Helium, we now know this to be true (Williams, 2015 and Dunlop, 2015). Modern day, we know most stars to be 90% Hydrogen and 10% Helium, with trace amounts of any heavier elements; even the spectra of various nebulae provide similar data (Richmond, n.d.).
Women in Science
"Amid growing signs that gender bias has affected research outcomes and damaged women's health, there’s a new push to make science more relevant to them." (Giudice, 2014).
The Importance of Women in Science
Having a lack of women in science can lead to detrimental faults in invention and discovery. An uneven mix of the sexes in the STEM workforce can affect not only what we learn from research, but it can prevent women's healthcare from being the same quality as men's. Needless to say, having equal representation of the sexes in STEM fields is of the utmost importance. It has also been observed that the sex of a animal test subject matters greatly, as well as the sex of the human handling it. A study by McGill University in Montreal found that rats and mice being tested on or otherwise handled by the male researchers, even women researchers in the male researcher's clothing, were frightened and had become desensitized to the pain inflicted during research. This has brought up questioning concerning the validity of past experiments and also simply put the concern of sex effecting test results on everyone's radar (Giudice, 2014).
The Effects of Uneven Gender Distribution
Wether intentional or not, lack of detailed focus on women's body chemistry in the medical world is negatively impacting normal, everyday people. It had been accepted that a myriad of women with heart disease have gone without knowing simply because their visits to the emergency room led to misdiagnoses, heart disease and heart attack symptoms manifest and present themselves differently in women than in men. Additionally, women have suffered numerous side effects due to medications only being created in proper dosage for an average sized man. Most often, these errors are not even noticed until the drug is already on a store's shelf. Many people think there needs to be a shift in "gendered innovation," or science and technology focused on or resulting in benefits for women.
Conclusion
Cecilia Payne lived a successful life, although blemished career. She knew where her opportunities were, and she went to them; she had a drive to go out and find success in a field she knew was biased, and she got it. Even her mistakes, allowing herself to be persuaded from sharing her discoveries, serves as a lesson for anyone looking to do similar work (Dunlop, 2015). Going from student, to accomplished astronomer, to published author, to professor, Payne has most definitely served as an inspiration to women in science everywhere.
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