8 Ground-Breaking Discoveries You Didn't Know Were Made By Women

4. Cecilia Payne: Discovered What Stars Are Made From

Cecilia Payne began studying botany, physics, and chemistry at Cambridge in 1919, a serious commitment considering that Cambridge didn't even offer degrees to women at the time. After transferring to Radcliffe College, she was able to earn a PhD in astronomy, making her the first woman to do so. By the time she was 25 she had published several papers and earned her doctorate but, despite this, many of the men overseeing her work tried to persuade her to suppress it. Payne's major work was concerned with the field of stellar spectrography, basically, the study of starlight. It had long been known that by analysing the spectral lines given off by stars, you can figure out what they're made of. However, there was a misconception at the time that the stars were made up of the heavy elements such as iron and calcium. Payne soon realised, however, that the readings that her colleagues were mistaking for different elements, actually indicated the temperature of the star instead. She discovered that stars were actually made up of mostly hydrogen and helium - the two lightest elements in the universe, not the heaviest. A man named Henry Norris Russell, the person who reviewed Payne's work, told her that she must be wrong and persuaded her not to publish her findings. Weirdly, however, he published his own paper four years later reporting his "discovery" of the composition of the sun and received full credit. Must have had a change of heart or something, right? Anyway, Cecilia's work was mostly edited out of history, until she was rather ironically awarded the "Henry Norris Russell Lectureship" for her contributions to astronomy. Talk about adding insult to injury.