Vera Cooper Rubin, born on this day in history in Philadelphia, was an American astronomer who showed that the known universe was just the tip of the iceberg; that there were vast clouds of dark matter that hold galaxies and stars in their grip. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem, and was evidence of the existence of dark matter. As “The New York Times” wrote upon her death at age 88 in 2016, “Her work helped usher in a Copernican-scale change in cosmic consciousness . . . “
As a child, Vera loved to look at the stars, and studied maps of the night sky. She built her own telescope and was determined to major in astronomy when she went to college, even though her high school teachers advised her that astronomy was a “man’s world” and she should study something like art instead.
But she persisted, and graduated from Vassar College in 1948, the sole astronomer in the class.
Vera Rubin as an undergraduate at Vassar, 1940s
She got married and had children, but she still continued her research.
She had hoped to get a Ph.D. from Princeton, but the astrophysics graduate program not only did not admit women but would not even send her a course catalog. (Princeton would not accept women as astronomy graduate students for 27 more years.). She went to Cornell for a master’s degree and finished it in 1951.
When her husband got a job at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, she enrolled at Georgetown University, earning her doctorate with the finding that galaxies were clumped together in patterns. She began teaching astronomy, but decided she really wanted to be where the large observatories were. She applied in person for a job at Palomar Observatory in California, impressing the director so much he hired her on the spot. Alas, her first discovery was that there was no women’s room. . . .
She observed galaxies at Palomar as well as at Kitt Peak in Arizona and recorded the spin of galaxies as she watched. To her astonishment, she discovered that the stars on the edges of galaxies were moving as fast as the stars at the center which were nearest to the galaxy’s pull of gravity. What was affecting the stars at the edges? It had to be the theorized “dark matter.”
Astronomers refused to believe her work at first. But Vera was able to replicate her findings with observations made of over two hundred galaxies.
Rubin operates the 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Kent Ford’s spectograph is attached so they can measure the speed of matter at different distances from galaxies’ centers.
NOAO/AURA/NSF
The New York Times obituary of Vera includes a number of anecdotes about how difficult it was for her to be accepted into the world of male astronomy. For example, one time, the article notes, Vera was excited to be summoned to a meeting with the eminent astrophysicist George Gamow, only to learn that they would have to talk in the lobby because women were not allowed upstairs in the offices.
Dr. Rubin never forgot, and endeavored to serve as a “guiding light” for a generation of female astronomers.
Rubin died on the night of December 25, 2016. She was honored throughout her career for her achievements, and received the Bruce Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the National Medal of Science, among others. She is the first woman to have a large observatory named after her: the National Science Foundation Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Rubin Observatory) in Chile. On November 6, 2020, “Vera,” one of a series of Argentinean commercial Earth observation satellites, was launched into space.
Vera Rubin, Credit: Getty Images
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