Great Astronomer Who Discovered Dark Matter RIP
Oh no.. A giant has passed.. Great astronomer Vera Rubin who discovered dark matter.. RIP
Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting.
— Vera Rubin
Vera Rubin is credited with proving the existence of “dark matter,” or nonluminous mass, and forever altering our notions of the universe. By the late 1970s, after Rubin and her colleagues had observed dozens of spiral galaxies, it was clear that something other than the visible mass was responsible for the motions of the stars within them. Her calculations showed that, for the velocities measured, the galaxies must contain about ten times as much “dark” mass as can be accounted for by the visible stars. As a result of Rubin’s groundbreaking work, it has become apparent that more than 90% of the universe is composed of dark matter (as well as dark energy). Defining it is one of astronomy’s most important pursuits.
When Vera Cooper Rubin told her high school physics teacher that she’d been accepted to Vassar, he said, “That’s great. As long as you stay away from science, it should be okay.” Ignoring him, and the countless others like him, was truly a great idea.
Rubin graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1948, the only astronomy major in her class at Vassar, and went on to receive her master’s from Cornell in 1950 (after being turned away by Princeton because they did not allow women in their astronomy program) and her Ph.D. from Georgetown in 1954. Rubin made a name for herself not only as an astronomer but also as a woman pioneer; she fought through severe criticisms of her work to eventually be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (at the time, only three women astronomers were members) and to win the highest American award in science, the National Medal of Science. However, it is not the fame that Rubin values: “My numbers mean more to me than my name. If astronomers are still using my data years from now, that’s my greatest compliment.”
“In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I’m Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history. I try to do my science in a moral way, and, I believe that, ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe.”
(July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016)
Vera Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves.
Great Astronomer Who Discovered Dark Matter RIP
Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting.
— Vera Rubin
Vera Rubin is credited with proving the existence of “dark matter,” or nonluminous mass, and forever altering our notions of the universe. By the late 1970s, after Rubin and her colleagues had observed dozens of spiral galaxies, it was clear that something other than the visible mass was responsible for the motions of the stars within them. Her calculations showed that, for the velocities measured, the galaxies must contain about ten times as much “dark” mass as can be accounted for by the visible stars. As a result of Rubin’s groundbreaking work, it has become apparent that more than 90% of the universe is composed of dark matter (as well as dark energy). Defining it is one of astronomy’s most important pursuits.
When Vera Cooper Rubin told her high school physics teacher that she’d been accepted to Vassar, he said, “That’s great. As long as you stay away from science, it should be okay.” Ignoring him, and the countless others like him, was truly a great idea.
Rubin graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1948, the only astronomy major in her class at Vassar, and went on to receive her master’s from Cornell in 1950 (after being turned away by Princeton because they did not allow women in their astronomy program) and her Ph.D. from Georgetown in 1954. Rubin made a name for herself not only as an astronomer but also as a woman pioneer; she fought through severe criticisms of her work to eventually be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (at the time, only three women astronomers were members) and to win the highest American award in science, the National Medal of Science. However, it is not the fame that Rubin values: “My numbers mean more to me than my name. If astronomers are still using my data years from now, that’s my greatest compliment.”
“In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I’m Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history. I try to do my science in a moral way, and, I believe that, ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe.”
(July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016)
Vera Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves.
Great Astronomer Who Discovered Dark Matter RIP
Comments
Post a Comment