Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Cecilia Payne later Cecilia Paine Gaposhkin was born
Speaker 1: May tenth, nineteen hundred or one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago today if you're listening to this episode on
Speaker 1: the day it comes out. She made truly revolutionary discoveries
Speaker 1: about the chemical makeup of stars, and she's really one
Speaker 1: of my favorite people I've ever learned about on this show.
Speaker 2: Our episode on her originally came out on November ninth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 2: a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. A couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: We got a pile of listener requests for an episode
Speaker 1: on Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin. She was an astronomer who made
Speaker 1: a lot of firsts, including being the first person to
Speaker 1: figure out that stars are made of mostly hydrogen and helium.
Speaker 1: Usually when we get a whole bunch of listener requests,
Speaker 1: one right after the other, I can figure out what
Speaker 1: prompted them, like usually there was a Google doodle, or
Speaker 1: there's a viral post that's circulating around this time. It
Speaker 1: was kind of a mystery because there is a new
Speaker 1: biography that came out earlier this year, which is Donovan
Speaker 1: Moore's What Stars Are Made Of, which is beautiful.
Speaker 2: I recommend it.
Speaker 1: And there have been some viral posts, but none of
Speaker 1: this lined up with when we got this file of requests.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, when I tried to
Speaker 1: go through our inbox so I could make a list
Speaker 1: of all the listeners that I wanted to thank here
Speaker 1: at the top of the episode, I found nothing. Zero emails.
Speaker 1: I remember them coming in, yet I could not find them.
Speaker 1: Honestly though, this feels like just a mysterious gift from
Speaker 1: the universe, because by the time I got to this
Speaker 1: end of the research for this, I.
Speaker 2: Just loved Celia Paynekubashkin.
Speaker 1: I don't love the sexism she faced that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, but like her whole story I really
Speaker 1: delighted in She grew up in a society that just
Speaker 1: did not prioritize education for girls and that regarded women's
Speaker 1: academic ambitions as suspect. But her determination and her creativity
Speaker 1: at getting around that just was so delightful to me.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to talk about today. So
Speaker 1: Cecilia Payne was born in Wendover, England, on May tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred. Her father, Edward was a barrister and a historian,
Speaker 1: and her mother, Emma, was an artist. Cecilia was the
Speaker 1: oldest of Edward and Emma's children, with a younger brother,
Speaker 1: Humphrey and a sister, Leonora. From a very early age,
Speaker 1: Cecilia was curious and imaginative, with a keen memory and
Speaker 1: sharp observation. Their home was full of music, art and literature,
Speaker 1: and they had a large library. They were a pretty
Speaker 1: comfortable middle class family. They had enough money to afford
Speaker 1: house hold help, and that allowed Emma to keep working
Speaker 1: as an art copyist even when her children were still
Speaker 1: really small. But that changed after Edward's sudden death when
Speaker 1: Cecilia was four. Edward had married Emma somewhat later in life,
Speaker 1: and he died the day after Christmas nineteen oh four,
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty.
Speaker 2: His body was.
Speaker 1: Found in a river where he had apparently drowned. He
Speaker 1: had been experiencing some heart trouble and some dizziness, which
Speaker 1: may have contributed to his death, but it's just not
Speaker 1: clear exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: Although Emma received a widow stipend after Edward's death, it
Speaker 2: really didn't match what his income had been, and money
Speaker 2: was a lot tighter. Even so, Emma tried to make
Speaker 2: sure that her children were immersed in culture. She would
Speaker 2: scrape together enough to travel and attend concerts and go
Speaker 2: to museums. The children's upbringing also wasn't always conventional. When
Speaker 2: Cecilia asked for a bedtime story, her mother read her
Speaker 2: The Odyssey. When Emma decided Cecilia was too old for stories,
Speaker 2: Cecilia started by telling herself stories at bedtime, before moving
Speaker 2: on to making up bedtime stories for her younger sister,
Speaker 2: ohth Cecilia was really bright and driven to learn. When
Speaker 2: she started school, she had some struggles the teachers at
Speaker 2: the little school across the street from their home, which
Speaker 2: she was attending. They encouraged her, but Cecilia was also
Speaker 2: left handed, and they taught her to write with her
Speaker 2: right hand. This really deeply frustrated her, so she taught
Speaker 2: herself to be more ambidextrous and to do things like
Speaker 2: right upside down, using techniques and exercises from a pamphlet
Speaker 2: that her great grandfather had written that pamphlet was called
Speaker 2: painting with both Hands. I know so many people who
Speaker 2: were natural lefties that were forced to write right handed,
Speaker 2: and it was never delightful for anybody.
Speaker 1: No. I my preschool teachers kept telling me to put
Speaker 1: the pencil in the hand that felt most comfortable in
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: so I just imitated what the other children were doing,
Speaker 1: And like I to this day don't know if I
Speaker 1: really should have learned to write with my left hand.
Speaker 1: And that's why my penmanship has been terrible my entire life,
Speaker 1: or maybe my penmanship is just terrible for my entire life.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody scribbling. My dad was a lefty that
Speaker 2: was pushed to right handedness, and his penmanship has always
Speaker 2: been a little bit fraught, looking like it always looks stressed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But when Cecilia was eight, she was out in the
Speaker 2: family's orchard when she spotted a bee orchid growing in
Speaker 2: the grass. She recognized it not because she had seen
Speaker 2: one before, but because her mother had described one to
Speaker 2: her once. And when she convinced her mother that yes,
Speaker 2: there really was a bee orchid growing out in the orchard,
Speaker 2: Emma had the gardener transplant it to a better location,
Speaker 2: and after this experience, Cecilia decided that the one thing
Speaker 2: she wanted to do was study nature and science. It
Speaker 2: was a few years before she could really do that though.
Speaker 2: When Cecilia was twelve, the family moved from Wendo, which
Speaker 2: was a little more rural surrounded by woods and hills,
Speaker 2: to the Bayswater neighborhood of London. They moved there for
Speaker 2: the sake of her brother Humphrey's education, to give him
Speaker 2: access to a better public school. Cecilia was enrolled in
Speaker 2: a parochial school called Saint Mary's. That school was really
Speaker 2: not a good fit for Cecilia, though. A big part
Speaker 2: of her school day was religious instruction, which really did
Speaker 2: not interest her so much so that she would pretend
Speaker 2: to feint to try to get out of going to chapel.
Speaker 2: She also tried to get a bookbinder to make her
Speaker 2: an addition of Plato in a Bible cover so that
Speaker 2: she could read classical philosophy during her religion classes. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: that brilliant plan was sorted because the bookbinder said no
Speaker 2: to it. Yeah, apparently the bookbinder was appalled by that
Speaker 2: very suggestion. On top of all of that.
Speaker 1: Girls who've truly wanted to learn and who excelled at
Speaker 1: school were viewed with a lot of suspicion. When Cecilia,
Speaker 1: who was in the youngest class, came in second out
Speaker 1: of the entire school school in a year end exam,
Speaker 1: she wasn't praised for her performance. The other students were
Speaker 1: scolded for allowing her to beat them. Classes for girls
Speaker 1: were also mostly focused on reading and writing, not on
Speaker 1: the subjects that Cecilia felt a real passion for.
Speaker 2: Cecilia turned to the family library to try to make
Speaker 2: up for what she saw as huge holes in her education.
Speaker 2: And while she did love theater, opera, music, and literature,
Speaker 2: which were all represented there, which she really wanted to study,
Speaker 2: with science and there were almost no books on science
Speaker 2: on the family shelves. She finally found one book on botany,
Speaker 2: but it was in German and French, which she did
Speaker 2: not speak, so she got a dictionary from school and
Speaker 2: laboriously translated that book into English. She turned to this
Speaker 2: kind of resourcefulness again and again during her education, including
Speaker 2: for example, transcribing an entire textbook from the library by
Speaker 2: hand before she started at Cambridge because she could not
Speaker 2: afford to buy a copy of her own.
Speaker 1: Eventually, the tea that Saint Mary's started to get really
Speaker 1: tired of Cecilia's persistence at demanding to study science and
Speaker 1: to be more challenged in her schoolwork. In addition to
Speaker 1: trying to teach herself outside of school, she was essentially
Speaker 1: badgering her teachers into tutoring her in other subjects than
Speaker 1: the ones that the school offered. Finally, somebody told her
Speaker 1: that the only way she might be able to study
Speaker 1: science was as part of training to become a school teacher,
Speaker 1: so she volunteered to teach Sunday school classes to try
Speaker 1: to prepare herself. Although she focused her Sunday school teaching
Speaker 1: a lot more on science than on the Bible.
Speaker 2: Today's lesson dandeliance what Cecilia spent years as Saint Mary's
Speaker 2: butting up against all kinds of barriers to the education
Speaker 2: that she wanted for herself, and that, of course, was
Speaker 2: frustrating and exasperating for everyone involved. Teachers and administrators saw
Speaker 2: her behavior as inappropriate and disruptive, and when she was
Speaker 2: seventeen and had just a year left to go, she
Speaker 2: was expelled. However, it does seem that the headmistress of
Speaker 2: Saint Mary's, wrote a letter encouraging Saint Paul's Girls' School,
Speaker 2: which had been established by the Worshipful Company of Mercers,
Speaker 2: to allow her to enroll there for her last year.
Speaker 2: Saint Paul's was far more focused on the academic success
Speaker 2: of its students than Saint Mary's had been, and once
Speaker 2: she got there, Cecilia was finally encouraged in her pursuit
Speaker 2: of science, and she excelled in other courses there as well,
Speaker 2: including polishing her skills in public speaking and studying music,
Speaker 2: which was actually being taught by Gustav Holst, who was
Speaker 2: not a famous composer. Yet when Holst finished his orchestral
Speaker 2: suite that's known as the Planets, Cecilia was actually one
Speaker 2: of the students who got to hear a performance of it.
Speaker 2: That is the coolest. Later on, Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin wrote
Speaker 2: in her autobiography that the first time she walked through
Speaker 2: the door at Saint Paul's, she thought, quote, I shall
Speaker 2: never be lonely again. Now I can think about science.
Speaker 2: She finally had the freedom to really pursue her ami ambitions,
Speaker 2: and one of those ambitions was to go to Cambridge,
Speaker 2: which we'll talk about after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Although Cecilia Payne really thrived in the year that she
Speaker 1: spent at Saint Paul's, she still had a huge amount
Speaker 1: of catching up to do if she wanted to go
Speaker 1: to the University of Cambridge. It wasn't just the challenge
Speaker 1: of getting into school there. She could only afford to
Speaker 1: go if she got a scholarship and aside from her
Speaker 1: self taught knowledge of botany from that book, she translated
Speaker 1: herself out of the dictionary. She was way behind in
Speaker 1: all the sciences and in math, but she devoted herself
Speaker 1: to catching up, and in the end, not only did
Speaker 1: she get into Cambridge, but she also scored well enough
Speaker 1: on a competitive exam to earn the only scholarship that
Speaker 1: was big enough to cover all of her expenses in full.
Speaker 1: Cecilia started at Newnham College, which is a women's college
Speaker 1: at Cambridge, in nineteen nineteen. Getting into Cambridge, though, did
Speaker 1: not mean that she had left behind the kind of
Speaker 1: sexism that was such a big part of her earlier education.
Speaker 1: Newnham is a women's college, and it had strict rules
Speaker 1: for students' behavior, from standards of dress to curfews to
Speaker 1: a ban on male visitors. There were also specific rules
Speaker 1: for Newnham students when they attended lectures or other functions
Speaker 1: at other Cambridge colleges, and even though all the students
Speaker 1: at Cambridge were meeting the same academic requirements regardless of
Speaker 1: their gender, only men were actually awarded degrees. There were
Speaker 1: also expectations about which courses women should take. There wasn't
Speaker 1: really a barrier to studying the natural sciences in general,
Speaker 1: but from the first part of their time at Cambridge,
Speaker 1: women's studying the natural sciences were expected to focus on botany.
Speaker 1: Botany was like the women's science. Students selected two other
Speaker 1: subjects to go along with that primary focus, and the
Speaker 1: companion courses for botany were typically zoology and chemistry. So
Speaker 1: if a woman wanted to study science at Cambridge during
Speaker 1: this time, it was just generally understood that she would
Speaker 1: start out studying botany, zoology and chemistry.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, because ladies like flowers and animals. Correct
Speaker 2: In spite of Cecilia's childhood experience with the bee orchid
Speaker 2: and her self taught study of botany by this point,
Speaker 2: she was really a lot more interested in chemistry and
Speaker 2: physics at the same time, trying to make either of
Speaker 2: those her primary course of study seemed incredibly risky, given
Speaker 2: how shaky her earlier instruction in these subjects had been,
Speaker 2: and in the math that was required, which she was
Speaker 2: also behind on, and in the uphill battle she would
Speaker 2: face as a young woman pursuing either of these subjects.
Speaker 2: So she initially chose to study botany and chemistry as expected,
Speaker 2: but she added physics to that rather than zoology. But
Speaker 2: on December second of nineteen nineteen, Cecilia Payne had an
Speaker 2: experience that completely shifted her focus, much like the discovery
Speaker 2: of that bee orchid had when she was a child.
Speaker 2: This time it was a lecture by Arthur Stanley Eddington.
Speaker 2: Eddington had been part of an expedition to view the
Speaker 2: total solar eclipse that took place on May nineteenth of
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen, and that expedition was to measure how the
Speaker 2: Sun's gravity affected light from stars. We talked about that
Speaker 2: expedition in our twenty seventeen episode on historical eclipses. The
Speaker 2: data gathered during this eclipse supported Einstein's theory of general relativity,
Speaker 2: and Cecilia was absolutely captivated by this lecture, She later
Speaker 2: wrote quote, the result was a complete transformation of my
Speaker 2: world picture. When I returned to my room, I found
Speaker 2: that I could write down the lecture word for word.
Speaker 1: At about the same time, Cecilia was also starting to
Speaker 1: question her choice of studying botany. Most of the material
Speaker 1: she was hearing and lectures was already familiar to her,
Speaker 1: but at the same time she was so inexperienced at
Speaker 1: the more practical side that she made mistakes that caused
Speaker 1: her to doubt herself. After Eddington's lecture, she really wished
Speaker 1: she could change her focus to astronomy, but that was
Speaker 1: flatly impossible. Astronomy was classified under math, not under natural science,
Speaker 1: and students could not jump into a totally different course
Speaker 1: of study that way. So she changed her main focus
Speaker 1: from botany to physics, and since students were allowed to
Speaker 1: attend lectures outside their particular field of study, she also
Speaker 1: went to astronomy lectures and spent as much time at
Speaker 1: Cambridge Observatory as she could with the help of astronomer L. J.
Speaker 2: Comery. She also repaired the clock at Newnham's small observatory
Speaker 2: and started spending her evenings there making observations and recording data.
Speaker 2: At one point, she ran into Arthur Eddington again at
Speaker 2: Cambridge Observatory and told him that she wanted to to
Speaker 2: be an astronomer. When he realized how set she was
Speaker 2: on this idea and how much study she had already
Speaker 2: done on her own, he recommended some journals that she
Speaker 2: could use to continue her studies, and also told her
Speaker 2: that she could use the Cambridge Observatory library. As all
Speaker 2: of this had been happening, debate had been ongoing about
Speaker 2: how women's education should work at Cambridge, and on October
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, nineteen twenty one, the Cambridge Council of the
Speaker 2: Senate voted that women would be granted titular degrees from
Speaker 2: the university. This was better than the previous setup, which
Speaker 2: was that women who completed all the requirements of the
Speaker 2: degree were awarded nothing, but it also meant that women
Speaker 2: were to be given the title of the degree, but
Speaker 2: not the degree itself. This sparked outrage, mainly from men
Speaker 2: who objected to women being acknowledged at all. In early
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three, Cecilia Payne was getting toward the end
Speaker 2: of her study at Cambridge, and she had spent those
Speaker 2: years dividing her time, adding as much as astronomy as
Speaker 2: she could to her study of physics and natural sciences.
Speaker 2: She had learned from luminaries like Nils Bohr, who was
Speaker 2: awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with Adams in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two. She also studied computing, including joining the
Speaker 2: computing section at the British Astronomical Association, and she had
Speaker 2: been elected to the Royal Astronomical Society while still a
Speaker 2: student as well. She had done all this while facing
Speaker 2: derision and resentment, not just from her male peers, but
Speaker 2: also in some cases from the faculty. At lectures women
Speaker 2: were required to sit in the front row by themselves.
Speaker 2: She described how at the start of his lectures, Ernest
Speaker 2: Rutherford would very pointedly begin ladies and gentlemen. She'd also
Speaker 2: come to understand that she just had no future as
Speaker 2: an astronomer if she stayed in England because of her sex.
Speaker 2: The only path that was really open to her was
Speaker 2: still becoming a school teacher. LJ.
Speaker 1: Comra offered to take her to a lecture that Harlow She,
Speaker 1: who was director of the Harvard College Observatory, was giving
Speaker 1: in London. Comray could introduce the two of them, and
Speaker 1: then maybe that would open a door for Cecilia to
Speaker 1: continue her education in the United States, where she might
Speaker 1: have more opportunities than she did in the UK. This worked,
Speaker 1: Payne told Shapley directly that she wanted to come to
Speaker 1: Harvard to work for him. Shapley encouraged this idea, casually
Speaker 1: suggesting that she might replace Annie jump Cannon, Harvard Observatory's
Speaker 1: curator of astronomical photographs when she retired. This was more
Speaker 1: of a reflection on the rules that women filled at
Speaker 1: Harvard rather than an actual job offer. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: sort of like offhanded, Hey, maybe you could be Annie's replacement,
Speaker 1: because obviously a woman does that job, and a woman
Speaker 1: would do that job.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: Just as going to Cambridge had required Cecilia to gain
Speaker 1: admission and also to get a scholarship, going to Harvard
Speaker 1: also required her to secure some funding, otherwise she just
Speaker 1: would not have the money to do it. On February
Speaker 1: twenty sixth, nineteen twenty three, she wrote to Shapley about
Speaker 1: trying to get a fellowship. She also got recommendations from
Speaker 1: Arthur Eddington, L. J. Comer, and her old headmistress at
Speaker 1: Saint Paul's. It really seems like she got a recommendation
Speaker 1: from every conceivable person that could give her one. She
Speaker 1: also applied for as many scholarships and fellowships as she
Speaker 1: could to try to scrape together enough money to afford
Speaker 1: her passage across the ocean, to buy appropriate clothing, and
Speaker 1: to pay for her living expenses while she was there.
Speaker 2: And once again she was successful. As she prepared to
Speaker 2: leave England, astrophysicist Edward Arthur Milne suggests that if he
Speaker 2: were in her place, he would take advantage of the
Speaker 2: wealth of data available at Harvard to verify an equation
Speaker 2: that astrophysicist Mignod Saha had developed in nineteen twenty. This
Speaker 2: equation expressed the relationship between a star's pressure and temperature
Speaker 2: and the ionization of the elements in the star. We'll
Speaker 2: get so what she did with that?
Speaker 1: After one month sponsor break, Cethlia Payne left Cambridge, England,
Speaker 1: for Cambridge, Massachusetts in September of nineteen twenty three. Her
Speaker 1: fellowship at Harvard College Observatory gave her the freedom to
Speaker 1: choose the focus of her research, and, as E. A.
Speaker 1: Milne had suggested, she started studying photographic plates of the
Speaker 1: spectra of stars to try to confirm SAHA's equation to
Speaker 1: make sense of what she was doing all the way
Speaker 1: back in sixteen sixty six, Isaac Newton used a prism
Speaker 1: to separate sunlight into a continuous series of colors, using
Speaker 1: the word spectrum to describe what he saw. Later, William
Speaker 1: Wallaston and Joseph Fraunhoffer each observed that if you looked
Speaker 1: at the sun's spectrum in fine enough detail, there were
Speaker 1: dark lines within that spectrum. These became known as Fraunhoffer
Speaker 1: lines or absorption lines, but Fraunhoffer did not have an
Speaker 1: explanation for what those lines were or why they were there. Then,
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty five, Robert Bunsen built on earlier designs
Speaker 1: to develop the Bunsen burner. The Bunsen burner produced an
Speaker 1: almost colorless flame, and that made it useful for studying
Speaker 1: the light that was produced by heating or burning different elements.
Speaker 1: Not long after, Gustav Kershoff suggested that they could use
Speaker 1: a prism to separate this light into its spectrum. That
Speaker 1: would make it easier to distinguish the fine differences in
Speaker 1: flames that have really similar colors. This was an early
Speaker 1: version of the spectroscope. Through this work, Kershoff discovered that
Speaker 1: each element had its own unique set of spectral lines
Speaker 1: when it was heated, almost like a fingerprint. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about this when we talked about the
Speaker 1: discovery of helium. Emission lines come from the wavelengths of
Speaker 1: light that elements emit when they're excited, and absorption lines
Speaker 1: appear when wavelengths of light are absorbed in between when
Speaker 1: they're produced and when we observe them. Today, we know
Speaker 1: that the presence of these lines relates to the structure
Speaker 1: of the atom and what happens when adams are excited
Speaker 1: to different levels of energy. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, physicists and astronomers knew that these spectra existed,
Speaker 1: but they didn't quite know what they meant. At Harvard
Speaker 1: College Observatory, astronomers started using these spectra to classify stars.
Speaker 2: Wilhelmina P. S.
Speaker 1: Fleming, who had been the housekeeper of observatory director Edward C. Pickering,
Speaker 1: developed a classification system that was primarily based on the
Speaker 1: strength of the hydrogen lines in these spectra. Ani Jump
Speaker 1: Cannon later simplified and refined this system into one that
Speaker 1: still exists today. The types BAFG, K, and M often
Speaker 1: put into the mnemonic obia fine girl Kiss Me that
Speaker 1: was purportedly coined by Henry Norris Russell. There are also
Speaker 1: a few other classifications that can be added into that mnemonic,
Speaker 1: and some other attempts at mnemonics that are less gendered,
Speaker 1: relying on the idea that, like, you want a woman
Speaker 1: to kiss you, maybe whether she's really up for that
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 2: That includes only.
Speaker 1: Bad astronomers forget generally known mnemonics.
Speaker 2: But as was the case with Fraunhofer's discovery of absorption spectrum,
Speaker 2: canon didn't really have a sense of why stars fit
Speaker 2: into these categories or what those categories meant. She was cataloging,
Speaker 2: not analyzing or interpreting. But the Observatory did have more
Speaker 2: than two hundred thousand photographic plates documenting star spectra organized
Speaker 2: into these categories, thanks to the work of Williamina Fleming,
Speaker 2: Anti Jump Cannon, and other women at Harvard Observatory.
Speaker 1: I have Anti jump Cannon on my list for a
Speaker 1: future episode, just in case folks are like I wish
Speaker 1: you had an episode on anti jump Cannon. After getting
Speaker 1: to Harvard Cecilia Payne got to work examining these.
Speaker 2: Plates through a jeweler's loop. She worked with an intense
Speaker 2: and unshakeable focus, some times going days without sleep, chainsmoking
Speaker 2: the whole time, rarely remembering to empty the ashtray. A
Speaker 2: lot of accounts of her office talk about the overflowing astray. Eventually,
Speaker 2: she realized that she was seeing four different ionizations of
Speaker 2: silicon represented in the spectra on the plates. This ultimately
Speaker 2: led her to the discovery that the variations she was
Speaker 2: seeing among these spectra were coming from different levels of
Speaker 2: ionization of the elements that were involved based on the
Speaker 2: stars temperature, not on actual differences in the amounts of
Speaker 2: elements that were present there. Through all of this work
Speaker 2: folded into SAHA's equation. Pain gradually came to understand that
Speaker 2: all the stars had roughly the same proportions of eighteen
Speaker 2: different elements, with hydrogen and helium being most abundant. However,
Speaker 2: this was totally contrary to the theories of the day.
Speaker 2: Most astronomers and physicists at the time were working from
Speaker 2: the principle of uniformity, that all the planets stars were
Speaker 2: made of the same elements that Earth was in about
Speaker 2: the same proportions, and while there were a few elements
Speaker 2: that did have similar proportions to what was found on Earth,
Speaker 2: she discovered that helium was one thousand times more abundant
Speaker 2: than expected, and hydrogen, which we now know is the
Speaker 2: most prevalent element in the universe, was a million times
Speaker 2: more abundant. So pain had always been ambitious, but she.
Speaker 1: Also realized that it was possible that she had not
Speaker 1: just discovered something that would completely rewrite our understanding of
Speaker 1: the stars, that maybe she had just made a mistake,
Speaker 1: like it's a shorter walk to I made a mistake
Speaker 1: than I have just discovered something that fundamentally changes our
Speaker 1: understanding of how the universe works. So she painstakingly went
Speaker 1: through her work over and over trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where she had made an error, and she could not
Speaker 1: find one because she had not made one.
Speaker 2: She was right. At this point, Harlow Shapley was trying
Speaker 2: to transform Harvard Observatory into a department of astronomy. At heart,
Speaker 2: he convinced Paine to use her findings to write a
Speaker 2: thesis which would allow her to earn the first PhD
Speaker 2: in astronomy ever to be awarded at Harvard University. At first,
Speaker 2: Paine doubted that this would be worth her time, but
Speaker 2: she ultimately agreed. However, some of.
Speaker 1: The people who were involved with reviewing and approving the
Speaker 1: thesis doubted her conclusions. In particular, Henry Norris Russell, whose
Speaker 1: work hinged on the principle of uniformity, demanded that she
Speaker 1: allow for the possibility that she was just mistaken. Her
Speaker 1: thesis included the caveat quote the outstanding discrepancies between the
Speaker 1: astrophysical and terrestrial abundances are displayed for hydrogen and helium.
Speaker 1: The enormous abundance derived for these elements in the stellar
Speaker 1: atmospheres is almost certainly not real. Russell would not have
Speaker 1: accepted Pain's thesis without this concession, so if she hadn't
Speaker 1: included it, she wouldn't have had a thesis at all
Speaker 1: or been awarded a PhD. So including this couching was
Speaker 1: a pragmatic decision. This wasn't something that she brooded over,
Speaker 1: but it was something she regretted. She would later say
Speaker 1: quote as a warning to the young, if you are
Speaker 1: sure of your facts, you should defend your position, even
Speaker 1: with its downplaying of the most revolutionary for findings in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, Atto, Struva and Delta Zieberg's called this thesis,
Speaker 1: which was published under the title Stellar Atmospheres, a Contribution
Speaker 1: to the observational study of high temperature in the reversing
Speaker 1: layers of stars. They called it quote undoubtedly the most
Speaker 1: brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy. It was also
Speaker 1: the first monograph ever to be published by the Harvard Observatory.
Speaker 1: Cecilia Paine was awarded a PhD from Radcliffe College in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five, as Harvard itself did not yet award
Speaker 1: degrees to women. Harlow Shapley had thought her work was
Speaker 1: so obviously profound and worthy that after she took her
Speaker 1: final oral exam for her PhD, he didn't tell her
Speaker 1: she had passed. She only found out after astronomer Margaret
Speaker 1: Harwood found her weeping inconsolably in her office, thinking that
Speaker 1: she must have failed. I want to time travel and
Speaker 1: hug her. I'dn't want a time travel and yell at
Speaker 1: Harlow Shapley. Well, I feel like though his thing wasn't
Speaker 1: even he was just thoughtless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like, obviously you passed. How what?
Speaker 1: Anyway? Eventually the field of Astronomy did come to realize
Speaker 1: that Payne's conclusions about the compositions of stars and the
Speaker 1: abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe were correct.
Speaker 1: This included Henry Norris Russell, who acknowledged that fact in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine. The completion of her PhD meant that
Speaker 1: Pain no longer had fellowship money to live off of,
Speaker 1: so she started looking for a job. She got offers
Speaker 1: from other observatories and universities, but she ultimately stayed at Harvard,
Speaker 1: where she was hired as Harlow Shapley's assistant. This didn't
Speaker 1: pay very much, and she had to pawn some of
Speaker 1: her belongings to make ends meet in the gap between
Speaker 1: when her fell u ship ended and when her job started,
Speaker 1: but it was enough for her to move out of
Speaker 1: the dorm and into her own apartment as long as
Speaker 1: she had a roommate. Being Shapley's assistant also meant that
Speaker 1: Pain no longer had the freedom to choose the research
Speaker 1: that she wanted to do, and at first Shapley had
Speaker 1: her keep working with photographic plates of stellar spectra, even
Speaker 1: though there was more sophisticated technology becoming available by that point.
Speaker 1: She was also expected to teach courses for the newly
Speaker 1: established Department of Astronomy at Harvard, although since she wasn't
Speaker 1: technically on the faculty, her name was not included in
Speaker 1: the course catalog. Her students described her as very intense,
Speaker 1: sometimes intimidating, and her lectures were both beautiful and memorable.
Speaker 1: Even though she was not being paid or recognized accordingly,
Speaker 1: Chapley was definitely aware of what an asset pain was.
Speaker 1: In one letter, he described her as quote one of
Speaker 1: the most outstanding astrophysicists of America of any and all sexes.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty six, she also became the youngest person
Speaker 1: to be listed in American Men of Science. She became
Speaker 1: a US citizen in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, Cecilia Payne experienced a series of tragedies.
Speaker 1: Her closest friend from Harvard was astronomer Adelaide Ames. The
Speaker 1: two of them were so close that they had been
Speaker 1: nicknamed the Heavenly Twins. Adelaide drowned after being swept from
Speaker 1: a canoe during a sudden storm. In nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 1: While at Cambridge, Cecilia had been similarly inseparable from her
Speaker 1: friend Betty Leaf, and they had remained very close in
Speaker 1: the years that had followed. Cecilia learned that Betty had
Speaker 1: also drowned in nineteen thirty three. As she later wrote
Speaker 1: in her autobiography, quote Adelaide and Betty all that I
Speaker 1: was not beautiful, delicate, beloved were dead and I was alive.
Speaker 1: I was absorbed in my work, shy and unattractive. What
Speaker 1: was I giving? I made a silent resolve. I would
Speaker 1: open my heart to the world. I would embrace life.
Speaker 1: She decided to travel, making a trip to the Polkovo
Speaker 1: Observatory outside Saint Petersburg. During that trip, she also went
Speaker 1: to an astronomical conference in Guttengen, Germany, and there she
Speaker 1: met Sergei Gaposhkin. Kaposhkin was from Russia. His parents and
Speaker 1: most of his siblings had died during a Typhus outbreak,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the Russian Civil War had
Speaker 1: left him with no money and no documents that could
Speaker 1: prove his identity. Eventually, he had made his way into Germany,
Speaker 1: where he had earned a PhD in astronomy, but Hitler's
Speaker 1: rise to power put him in a really impossible situation.
Speaker 1: He was a Russian living in Germany without any papers.
Speaker 1: Kapashkin traveled by a bicycle for four days to get
Speaker 1: to Guttingen for this conference with the hope that one
Speaker 1: of the other astronomers there could help him get out, and.
Speaker 2: The person who helped him was Cecilia Payne. She got
Speaker 2: Harlow Shapley to offer him a position at Harvard and
Speaker 2: to contact the American consul in Germany to try to
Speaker 2: get gap Oshkin out of the country. After she got
Speaker 2: back to the United States, Cecilia personally went to Washington,
Speaker 2: d c. To try to get his visa expedited.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty four, three months after Sergei arrived in
Speaker 1: the US, he and Cecilia got married. Most of her
Speaker 1: colleagues were baffled. It did seem quite sudden, but in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways their marriage really made sense. Both
Speaker 1: of them were dedicated astronomers, and Sergei was also an artist.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was expected for women to leave
Speaker 1: the workforce after getting married, but serge was a refugee
Speaker 1: and his temporary job at Harvard paid even less than
Speaker 1: Cecilia's did. If they got married, that meant that he
Speaker 1: would be dependent on her income to survive. There would
Speaker 1: be no possible way for her to just leave the
Speaker 1: workforce because she was a married woman.
Speaker 2: Now. In other ways, it made less sense. Over time,
Speaker 2: Sergei developed a reputation for being opinionated and hard to
Speaker 2: work with, and he openly flirted with other women in
Speaker 2: the observatory. He was a cape astronomer, but Cecilia was brilliant.
Speaker 2: In some accounts, Harvard tolerated his rough edges just to
Speaker 2: keep Cecilia there.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen thirty five and nineteen forty, they had three children, Edward, Catherine,
Speaker 1: and Peter, and Cecilia broke with convention yet again by
Speaker 1: continuing to teach while she was pregnant. Since they couldn't
Speaker 1: afford childcare, they pretty much bought the kids with them
Speaker 1: to work. Cecilia and Sergei also started doing research together,
Speaker 1: publishing a book on variable stars in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: That same year, the American Astronomical Society awarded Cecilia Payne
Speaker 1: Gaposhkin the first ever Anti Jump Cannon Prize, which still
Speaker 1: exists today and recognizes outstanding postdoctoral research by a woman.
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen thirty eight, Payn Gapashkin was finally named
Speaker 1: to the Harvard faculty with the title of astronomer. In
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen thirty nine, serge and Cecilia traveled
Speaker 1: to Paris for a conference in spite of the growing
Speaker 1: tensions in Europe, but Sir Arthur Stanley Addington was also
Speaker 1: going to be at this conference, and Cecilia wanted the
Speaker 1: chance to see him again. This actually turned out to
Speaker 1: be her last opportunity to do so.
Speaker 2: He died.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four. Germany invaded Poland just days before
Speaker 1: Cecilia and Sergei arrived back in the US aboard a ship,
Speaker 1: the French vessel called the SS Normandy.
Speaker 2: Cecilia and Sergei continued to work at Harvard during and
Speaker 2: after the war. Cecilia's name was finally included in the
Speaker 2: course catalog starting in nineteen forty five. In nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: she became the first woman to be a tenured professor
Speaker 2: at Harvard, and soon after she was also the first
Speaker 2: woman to share a department that wasn't specifically for women.
Speaker 2: At this point, her salary was doubled, but her children
Speaker 2: were still a fixture around the laboratory. The Harvard Observatory
Speaker 2: Council formally warned Peter the Youngest to stop bothering the
Speaker 2: staff in nineteen fifty eight. She was away when the
Speaker 2: meeting happened when they had this discussion, and was outraged
Speaker 2: about it. It's very embarrassing. And she was also like,
Speaker 2: he's old enough for you to be talking directly to
Speaker 2: him about these issues anyway. During her career as an astronomer,
Speaker 2: Cecilia Pangaposhkin published more than one hundred and fifty papers
Speaker 2: and several monographs, as well as multiple books on astronomy.
Speaker 2: In addition to the one we mentioned earlier. This included
Speaker 2: The Stars of High Luminosity in nineteen thirty and Variable
Speaker 2: Stars in Galactic Structure in nineteen fifty four. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, she was awarded the Henry Norris Russell Prize,
Speaker 2: which is essentially a lifetime achievement award by the American
Speaker 2: Astronomical Society and a nice irony considering his earlier appearance
Speaker 2: in this story. Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin died of lung cancer
Speaker 2: on December seventh, nineteen seventy nine. Her daughter published her autobiography,
Speaker 2: The Dyer's Hand, along with other collected writings in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four. Today there is a portrait of Cecilia Payne
Speaker 2: Gaposhkin hanging in the faculty room in Harvard's University Hall.
Speaker 2: It is in the style of vermir sixteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: painting The Astronomer, and it was painted by Patricia Wattwood.
Speaker 2: We will end with a quote from Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin
Speaker 2: quote there is no joy more intense than that of
Speaker 2: coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms
Speaker 2: of currently accepted ideas. Nature has always had a trick
Speaker 2: of surprising us, and she will continue to surprise us.
Speaker 2: But she has never let us down yet. I love her.
Speaker 2: I do too. She's marvelous and I'm so glad you
Speaker 2: picked this one.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that mysterious people asked for this a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, and now I can find no
Speaker 1: record of it. Maybe maybe someone will write and explain
Speaker 1: where they saw it, like what maybe what Facebook group
Speaker 1: or twitters read or whatever it got brought up on
Speaker 1: that got so many people excited about her story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I tried several different searches to try to try, like
Speaker 1: try to find the emails. I tried just Cecilia. I
Speaker 1: tried Gaposhkin, I tried her whole name. I remember specifically
Speaker 1: somebody said, can you do an episod so on the
Speaker 1: woman who discovered helium, And I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's quite right, quite what, but like and I
Speaker 1: like just searching helium, I also didn't find. It was
Speaker 1: just a whole big mystery.