Thursday, May 15, 2025

Cross-post: More Than a Name – Why Women in Physics Deserve Context

This cross-post from astrobites features an interview with Dr. Claire Davies from the University of Exeter on how female role models in STEM are presented in the media and why they deserve more context for their success. 

Dr. Davies has pioneered ‘PRISM Exeter’, a city-wide network for LGBTQ+ STEM students and professionals, and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter and the Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. 

Dr. Claire Davies wearing glasses and smiling
Dr. Claire Davies
Photo: University of Exeter
In the interview, Dr. Davies states, "I’ve recently seen an infographic that shows a brief history of the roles of women in science and innovation. The way it presents it looks a bit misleading, as it implies that seemingly no women contributed to science between 2000 BCE and the 1700s. And when you look at some of the featured women, it’s just their name and a statement of what they did – you miss out on a lot of context and circumstances that made them extraordinary. It also doesn’t connect to the development of women’s rights throughout history – how wealthy you had to be to access education, or the role of your parents. I wish we weren’t at the stage where it’s just showing that women just existed."

Read the full interview on why women in physics deserve context at astrobites.

Thursday, May 8, 2025

Women Reinventing Science - Part 3

Eds Note: We’re delighted to share with our readers excerpts from The Reinvention of Science by Bernard Jones, Vicent Martínez and Virginia Trimble, which describes women scientists who helped reinvent science. To learn about the book, watch a video summary.

In honor of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (May 10, 1900), please enjoy the below excerpted text.


By Vicent J. Martínez, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universitat de València

C. Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979). Image Credit: broadway-stages.com


To Cambridge, Harvard University, came in 1923 Cecilia Helena Payne (1900–1979), fresh from the Cambridge (UK) influence of Arthur Stanley Eddington (a strong believer in uniformity) and from the labs of Ernest Rutherford. She carried with her an understanding of the beginning of quantum mechanics, in particular the idea of Meghnad N. Saha (1893–1956) that the fraction of atoms of a particular element that would have electrons in the right orbits to absorb particular wavelengths of light would be a (quite steep) function of the temperature of the gas. She also had just enough fellowship money to enable her to choose her own research topic, looking toward a doctorate. She chose to make use of some of the enormous number of spectrograms of stars of different colors, hence having different temperatures, sitting in the Harvard plate vaults.

Payne wrote up her work and shared the draft with her advisor, Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory. He (and everyone else quickly) said, indeed all stars have the same chemical composition, and it is like the Sun and Earth, except that dominance of helium and hydrogen. That cannot be right, he said. Shapley shared the draft with Russell, who was to be her external examiner. Yes, said Russell, magnificent, indeed the best astronomy thesis I’ve seen except for Shapley’s. But the dominance of H and He cannot be right. She should say it is somehow spurious. The thesis was modified accordingly (and later she said she very much regretted having to do so, but it was politically the only possible choice). Thus, in 1927 H.N. Russell, R.D. Dugan, and J.Q. Stewart, in their classic text Astronomy could write that

Miss Payne [though her PhD had come in 1925] had shown that the gas pressure was low in stellar atmospheres, that the hottest stars had surface temperatures up at least to 35,000 K, and that the uniformity of composition of stellar atmospheres appears to be an established fact.

But the behavior of hydrogen, helium, and to a lesser extent of oxygen was “puzzling.” Staying on at Harvard, Payne became Shapley’s employee badly underpaid compared to men doing the same jobs and required to devote more and more of her attention not to further analysis and interpretation of stellar spectra (where her heart lay) but to the establishment of brightness standards for stars recorded as images on photographic plates and to studying the variable brightness of Cepheids and other pulsating variables, novae and all.

Eddington, whom she had adored from afar beginning in 1919, when she returned to England post-PhD said, “not in the stars; on the stars,” and indeed some chemical separation was part of the story, but the main plot line was and is that the stars, galaxies, interstellar and intergalactic stuff are made mostly of hydrogen and helium (left from the hot, dense early phase of the universe that we call the Big Bang).


Decades later, Otto Struve (Russian–American, 1897–1963) and last of a long familial line of astronomers, over the years President of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, and editor of the Astrophysical Journal while director of Yerkes Observatory declared that Payne had written the most important astronomical thesis of the century.

Payne married Russian refugee astronomer Sergei Illarionov Gaposchkin in 1934, and much of the variable star work was done with him (she is generally thought to have done most of the real work). Recognition came slow and late. She was finally appointed to a Harvard professorship in 1956 (but retired with a salary still considerably less than those of men with less seniority).

The highest honor of the American Astronomical Society is the Russell lecture. He gave the first one in 1946, Shapley the 4th in 1950, Struve the 10th in 1957, and Payne-Gaposchkin the 29th in 1976, the first woman to do so, and with the first-ever female president of the American Astronomical Society, E. Margaret Burbidge to introduce her. Burbidge herself became the 37th Russell lecturer and second woman in 1984. Born in Wendover, England, in 1900, Cecilia Helena Payne- Gaposchkin, a life-long heavy smoker, died of lung cancer in Massachusetts on 7 December 1979. 


Learn more!

Friday, May 2, 2025

AASWomen Newsletter for May 2, 2025

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of May 2, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. The AAS Advocating on Capitol Hill
2. AAS collecting information about canceled and suspended grants that are impacting our community
3. Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy
4. AAS Signs Letter in Support of Higher Education
5. Adapted from National Academy of Sciences: AAS Members Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
6. Announcement from the Solar Physics Division (SPD): Announcing recipients of 2024 Popular Media Awards
7. Celebrating Dr. Vera Rubin at the Rubin Town Hall at the 246 AAS Meeting
8. Applications open for the 2025 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship.
9. Galaxy Zoo JWST
10. Engagement Opportunities in NASA STEM 2025 (EONS 2025) – New Notice of Funding Opportunity
11. The Spacecraft That Found Galactic Collisions & Black Holes Is Now Silent Forever
12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
14. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Thursday, May 1, 2025

Celebrate Dr. Vera Rubin at the Rubin Town Hall at the 246 AAS Meeting

Call For Panelists

The 246th AAS Meeting will be held June 8-12 in Anchorage, Alaska. The Rubin Town Hall will be held on June 12 to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Vera Rubin. 

Are you attending the 246th AAS Meeting? The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is looking for members who would like to be panelists for this event. Selected panelists will participate in a 1-hour panel. 

Let's take the opportunity to celebrate the legacy that Dr. Vera Rubin left to astronomy and cosmology.

If you're interested in being a panel member or simply sharing a story or a remembrance of Dr. Rubin, please contact us or Kim Arcand. We would love to have your participation.

As part of this celebration, the U.S. Mint will showcase the newly released Vera Rubin quarter, part of the American Women Quarters Set 2025. 

More information about the Rubin Town Hall:


Rubin Town Hall at the 246th AAS
Anchorage, Alaska
Day/time TBD (likely Thursday, June 12, afternoon)
SESSION ID #:  46  (1 hour)
Come join us in celebrating the groundbreaking scientific achievements and enduring legacy of Dr. Vera Rubin, whose work provided the first compelling evidence for dark matter, fundamentally altering our understanding of the universe.  Vera Rubin was a leading figure in observational cosmology whose critical observations of galaxy rotation curves led to one of the most profound discoveries in modern astrophysics, reshaped our understanding of galactic dynamics and laid the foundation for research that continues today, including the first direct evidence of dark matter from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and now, new studies at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Rubin was a lifelong advocate as well, mentoring generations of astronomers and advocating for greater participation in the field.  In this one-hour panel discussion, we will honor Vera Rubin’s scientific contributions and advocacy, highlight ongoing research with missions and scientists that build on her discoveries, and foster dialogue on science, history, and public engagement.  The U.S. Mint will showcase newly released Vera Rubin coins.
This event is hosted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory/Chandra X-ray Observatory and AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy.
You can register for the 246th AAS Meeting at aas.org and find the full schedule of events on the website. We look forward to celebrating Dr. Vera Rubin with you at the Rubin Town Hall.

Illustration Credit: NASA/XC/SAO/K.Divona