Post #4639401 · Elektrine

2026-09-07 08:11 UTC

In 1925, 24-year-old graduate student Cecilia Payne calculated that the Sun and other stars were composed overwhelmingly of hydrogen and helium—a result so contrary to accepted astronomy that senior astronomer Henry Norris Russell called it “clearly impossible,”.... By Deep Field · Edited by Lachlan Brown https://spacedaily.com/t-cecilia-payne-russell-hydrogen-helium-companion/ Stellar atmospheres at PG: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73996 #books #astrophysics #Womeninstem

Replies (2)

@katalogeur@mastodon.social 2026-09-07 09:34

@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social Reminds me of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, a Harvard astronomer and 'human computer' ... who, in the early 1900s, discovered how to measure vast astronomical distances. Not many years afterwards, those distances forced the recognition that we live in 'an island universe' (the Milky Way). Edwin Hubble often declared that she deserved the Nobel Prize for her work.

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@huntingdon@mstdn.social 2026-09-07 11:49

@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social Novel, early 20th century findings of a 24-yr-old woman graduate astronomy student, Cecilia Payne, turned out to be correct: stars are composed overwhelmingly of hydrogen and helium? Then senior astronomer, Henry Norris Russell, castigated her work as "clearly impossible," once again proving that progress in science often proceeds, "one funeral at a time." That is, it takes the death of a dominant figure to free a discipline from their egotistical grip.

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