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mireillevs (mireillevs@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 17-Sep-2023 19:24:44 JST mireillevs

“Never heard of Cecilia Payne?
Now you have”
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's 1925 thesis that the sun was composed mostly of hydrogen and helium was rejected by a professor who called it "impossible". Years later, the man who rejected it realized she was in fact right, but he was credited with the discovery for decades. A prominent astronomer called her discovery "the most brilliant PhD thesis
ever written in #astronomy".
#WomenInScience
In conversation about a year ago from mastodon.online permalink
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1. A picture of Cecilia Payne with the following text: Never heard of Cecilia Payne? Now you have Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's 1925 thesis that the sun was composed mostly of hydrogen and helium was rejected by a professor who called it "impossible". Years later, the man who rejected it realized she was in fact right, but he was credited with the discovery for decades. A prominent astronomer called her discovery "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy".
  https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/111/069/201/579/561/035/original/8de05f9bd4d04296.jpeg
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  Mikel Forcada EA5IYL (ea5iyl@mastodon.radio)'s status on Monday, 25-Sep-2023 23:17:53 JST Mikel Forcada EA5IYL
  in reply to
  
  @mireillevs
  And currently she is (fortunately) credited for that discovery [1].
  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin
  In conversation about a year ago permalink
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  1. Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: upload.wikimedia.org
    
    Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
    
    Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; (1900-05-10)May 10, 1900 – (1979-12-07)December 7, 1979) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics. Early life Cecilia Helena Payne was one of three children born in Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England, to Emma Leonora Helena (née Pertz) and Edward John Payne, a London barrister, historian and musician who had been an Oxford fellow. Her mother came from a Prussian family and had two distinguished uncles, historian Georg Heinrich Pertz and the Swedenborgian writer James John Garth Wilkinson; her sister Florence was a pianist. Cecilia Payne...
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  Kermode (gemlog@tilde.zone)'s status on Monday, 25-Sep-2023 23:17:59 JST Kermode
  in reply to
  - Maya Alpizar :an3:
  @mireillevs
  The woman herself:
  Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin#Doctoral_thesis
  The jerk who took the credit:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Norris_Russell
  @Maya
  @evilscientistca
  In conversation about a year ago permalink
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  1. Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: upload.wikimedia.org
    
    Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
    
    Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; (1900-05-10)May 10, 1900 – (1979-12-07)December 7, 1979) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics. Early life Cecilia Helena Payne was one of three children born in Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England, to Emma Leonora Helena (née Pertz) and Edward John Payne, a London barrister, historian and musician who had been an Oxford fellow. Her mother came from a Prussian family and had two distinguished uncles, historian Georg Heinrich Pertz and the Swedenborgian writer James John Garth Wilkinson; her sister Florence was a pianist. Cecilia Payne...
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