42 ASTRONOMY • FEBRUARY 2022Cecilia Payne-
Gaposchkin
MAY 10, 1900 – DEC. 7, 1979
In 1923, English-born Cecilia Helena Payne took advantage of a
fellowship to study at Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Two years later, she became the first person to earn a
Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, then the women’s college
attached to Harvard.
The doctoral thesis she wrote contained the astounding notion that
the composition of the Sun wasn’t like Earth (a widely held belief), but
rather that it — and all the other stars — was composed mainly of
hydrogen and helium. Her later work focused on stellar evolution
through the study of high-luminosity stars. She also, with the help of
her assistants, made more than 3 million observations of variable stars.17
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin spent her entire academic career at Harvard University and
its affiliated institutions. In 1956, she became the first woman in Harvard’s history to
head a department. Among the students that she advised is Frank Drake. SMITHSONIAN
INSTITUTION ARCHIVESChristiaan
Huygens
APRIL 14, 1629 – JULY 8, 1695
Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch astrono-
mer — and so much more. As far as his
astronomical achievements, he ground
lenses for refracting telescopes, invented
a better eyepiece (one with two lenses)
than those available at the time, and was
the first to correctly identify the nature
of Saturn’s rings. He also discovered
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and, by
spotting Syrtis Major on Mars, became
the first person to observe a surface fea-
ture on another planet. More tangentially
related to astronomy, he also developed
the theory that light is a wave and invent-
ed the pendulum clock.18
Aristarchus
CIRCA 310 B.C. – CIRCA 230 B.C.
The first ancient astronomer to make my list
is Aristarchus, who lived on Samos, a Greek
island close to the western coast of Turkey.
His claim to fame — and it’s a big one —
is that he was the first person to assert that
Earth orbits the Sun. And while that’s what
he’s usually remembered for, he also stated
that our planet rotates once a day and that
stars were objects like the Sun, but much farther away.
Finally, although he incorrectly calculated that the Sun was about
20 times farther from Earth than the Moon, he did write that because
they appeared the same size to us, their diameters must be in propor-
tion to their distances. PORTRAIT: ELISEEVMN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS16
Christiaan Huygens was born into a family of influence.
His father, Constantijn, was an advisor to the House of
Orange, the reigning house of the Netherlands, and
hoped his son would follow in his footsteps. Luckily for
us, Christiaan wasn’t interested. HAAGS HISTORISCH MUSEUM