I
n the early 20th century, astronomers be-
lieved in a uniformity principle that held
that all objects in the universe were made
of the same elements, in approximately
the same amounts. In 1925, however,
Cecilia Payne, a Ph.D. student at Har-
vard, discovered that stars are composed
of a million times more hydrogen than was
previously assumed. But because she was
young and female, the scientific community
rejected her findings. It would take several
decades before Payne-Gaposchkin received
the recognition she was due. In What Stars
Are Made Of, using compact and skill-
ful prose, Donovan Moore charts Payne-
Gaposchkin’s scientific life from grade school
standout to world-class astronomer.Moore includes impressive context on the
misogyny that existed within British aca-
demic society at the turn of the 20th cen-
tury. He notes, for example, the Cambridge
University tradition wherein, when women
entered a lecture hall, the roomful of men
would stomp along in time with the women’s
footsteps. It was a culture of discrimination
that at times turned violent, as it did on 24
October 1921, when the university announced
its decision to grant women “titular de-
grees,” and a furious mob of Cambridge men
stormed the women’s college, bashing in its
iron gates with a coal cart.
The reader meets physics luminaries and
future Nobel Prize winners in the Cavendish
laboratory, where Payne-Gaposchkin trained
as an undergraduate. The lab was directed by
J. J. Thomson when she arrived and Ernest
Rutherford when she left. (Thomson, inci-
dentally, believed that women “simply did
not have the intellectual capacity to be world-class physicists.”) Payne-Gaposchkin was also
taught by Niels Bohr, whose quantum theory
of atomic structure would enable her to come
to her own revolutionary conclusions.
By the end of her time at Cambridge, it had
become clear to Payne-Gaposchkin that she
would never be employed as an astronomer
in England. So she secured a fellowship at the
Harvard Observatory and moved to America.
Here, she was granted research opportuni-
ties, but the discrimination she had experi-
enced at home continued.
One of the most egregious perpetrators of
this discrimination was Harvard’s president,
Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who declared that
Payne-Gaposchkin would never be named a
professor as long as he was alive. “Lowell had
tried to limit Jewish enrollment at Harvard to
15 percent, and he tried to ban black students
from living in the freshman dorms. In both
instances, the Harvard Board of Overseers
overruled him,” writes Moore. “The board did
not overrule him, however, when he decreed
in 1928 that women should not receive teach-
ing appointments from the Harvard Corpora-
tion.” Payne-Gaposchkin was devastated: “ ‘I
had no official status,’ Cecilia recalled. ‘I was
paid so little that I was ashamed to admit it
to my relations in England.’”
Despite these and other hardships, Payne-
Gaposchkin’s accomplishments were remark-
able. She wrote several books and more than
270 journal articles, was elected to both the
Royal and American Astronomical Societ-
ies and the American Philosophical Society,
earned an honorary doctorate from Smith
College, and was the first woman to receive
the American Astronomical Society’s lifetime
achievement award. In 1956, after Lowell’s
death, she was named the first female pro-
fessor at Harvard. She died just before the
election that would have admitted her to the
National Academy of Sciences.
To Moore, Payne-Gaposchkin was the clas-
sic driven scientist. “She endured everything
from laboratory slights to classroom derision
because there was no choice. She was driven
to understand, which meant that nothing in
the way would stop her.” This is a view Payne-
Gaposchkin echoed in her own memoir: “Do
not undertake a scientific career in quest of
fame or money. There are easier and bet-
ter ways to reach them. Undertake it only if
nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else
is probably what you will receive.” j
10.1126/science.aba9179SCIENCE LIVESA new biography tells the tale of an accomplished
astronomer’s barrier-breaking life
By Jennifer CarsonSexism and the stars
What Stars Are Made Of:
The Life of Cecilia
Payne-Gaposchkin
Donovan Moore
Harvard University Press,- 320 pp.
INSIGHTSIMAGE: PATRICIA WATWOOD
20 MARCH 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6484 1311The reviewer is a physics professor and freelance writer in
Los Angeles, CA, USA. Email: [email protected]SCIENCEBOOKS et al.