“Astronomers are incorrigible optimists, they peer up through a turbulent ocean of atmosphere at the stars and galaxies, forever inaccessible. They speak of million-degree temperatures, of densities smaller than our lowest vacuum; they study light that left its source two hundred million years ago. From a fleeting glimpse, they reconstruct a whole history.”

Cecilia Payne- Gaposchkin most notably known for her work in stellar composition and being the first person to deduce the composition of stars. Her PhD Thesis has been hailed by many to be “The most brilliant thesis ever written in astronomy”. But before all the success and glory, her climb to the top is most awe inspiring and portrays the kind of tenacity required at that time to deal with all the misogyny and hate.
Born as Cecilia H Payne on May 10, 1900 in near a small town north of London. She had a happy childhood, full of bliss and joy. Her younger years were mainly spent in studying the flora and fauna in and around her house. Thus began her life long quest to unravel the secret of nature. Her school years were a mixed bag, some good and some time not so great. Nevertheless, she hadn’t faced anything yet that would steer her away from her pursuit of science.
When she joined the Cambridge university to study Botany, the subject didn’t move her as much as she had thought. Then came the famous observation by Arthur Eddington which confirmed the bending of light around sun (during the 1919 Solar Eclipse) and thus proved Einstein General Theory of Relativity correct! As an undergrad student she attended a special lecture by Eddington on the topic and was forever changed. After the lecture, Cecilia later recalled, “for three nights, I think, I did not sleep. My world had been so shaken that I experienced something like a nervous breakdown”. She decided to choose Physics as her subject 2 (as she was a student of Biology, she wasn’t allowed to move directly to the Maths department (Astronomy)). One of her lecturers in Physics department was Rutherford. The department being mainly composed of men wasn’t very welcoming of her and it seems that Rutherford somewhat encouraged such type of behaviour. These incidents further made her resolve stronger to work in the field of Astronomy.
After completing her Bachelors in England, she travelled across the Atlantic to study astronomy in America. “I must confess that in Massachusetts I have found a ‘stony- hearted stepmother.’” So wrote Cecilia, quoting the English essayist Thomas De Quincey, when she arrived in America in 1923. Alone in a completely new country she remained steadfast in her resolve. She joined the Harvard Observatory. In the catacombs of the observatory, she discovered hidden among the dust and debris hundreds of thousands of photographic plates, filled with spectra of numerous stars, generated by an objective prism. Virtually every star visible to the observatory’s telescope was represented. The plates had been developed, viewed, and classified years earlier by a smart, hard- working handful of women. They were known as the “computers”, in Harvard.
“Abstract study was a thing of the past; now I was moving among the stars.” She would work under Harlow Shapley, Howard Observatories director and together they would chart the course of Astronomy in a direction no one could have foreseen. The prevailing theory of stellar composition at that point of time was mainly “uniformity of nature”, i.e., stars are composed similar things as those found on Earth (silicon, magnesium, aluminium, oxygen, iron). But upon looking through the spectral data and combining the theory of Meghnad Saha, Ralph H. Fowler and E.A Milne she came to the tremendous conclusion that the stars are nothing but huge gas giants composed of Hydrogen and Helium. This flew in the face of the popular notion at that time. Upon compiling her work, her thesis was sent to Henry Norris Russell by Shapley for review. “The uniformity of nature was a powerful principle accepted by Russell and all the leading astrophysicists of the day,” wrote astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich. Henry Norris Russell was a force to reckon with, his word could either make or break careers. But such was the pressure exerted by the men of science at that time, much akin to the forces of the Church on Galileo. It would be futile to expect a 25 year old women to contest her findings with a intuition full of men many of whom would have discredited her findings for being of the other gender alone. Though in Shapley she found a open minded collaborator who encouraged her and pushed her forward, the same cannot be said for all. Thus, she changed the finding of her research in a manner that pleased all except one, “Although Hydrogen and Helium are manifestly very abundant in stellar atmospheres,” she wrote in her thesis, Stellar Atmospheres, “the actual values derived from the estimates of marginal appearance are regarded as spurious.” Her provocative results that hydrogen dominated the composition of stars, she concluded, were “almost certainly not real.” As DeVorkin recounts, “Almost certainly, Payne had to make the changes Russell dictated, but she was crafty about it.” She had chosen her words carefully— “in a manner that was designed to record for posterity that she was the first to make this observation, right or wrong. In so doing, Payne can be credited with profound political acumen.” This although was a brilliant move, Cecilia always regretted it.
Cecilia Payne had determined what stars are made of, one of the most fundamental discoveries in the science of astronomy. She probed deep into the fiery hearts of stars and stood victorious with her findings, this feat is only comparable to the greatest feats of man whether it be battling the sea, air or landing on the moon. Cecilia, typically, saw it more humbly: “All that I have done,” she wrote later, “is respond to the quickening influence of the Universe.”