Crosspost: ‘Follow your dreams,’ writes astronomer Martha Haynes

Written by Linda B. Glaser for the Cornell Chronicle

The Sky is for Everyone is an international collaboration of essays featuring prominent women in astronomy, including Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Credit: Princeton University Press

When Martha Haynes was thirteen years old, her brother convinced her to give him a big chunk of her babysitting money so he could buy a telescope. He never used it much, but Haynes found the night sky fascinating.

“I remember showing the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter to a couple of passing police officers one night,” she wrote. The thrill she got from explaining to them what they were seeing has never left her.

“To me, interacting with students inside and outside of the classroom is the greatest reward of my academic profession,” wrote Haynes, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her chapter, “Hands on Adventures with Telescopes: From the Backyard to Cerro Chajnantor,” appears in “The Sky Is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words,” edited by Virginia Trimble and David A. Weintraub.

Read more about Dr. Haynes' groundbreaking career in astronomy at the link below: 

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/06/follow-your-dreams-writes-astronomer-martha-haynes