International Women's Day 2025

They say that aim for the Moon, for if you miss, you see the stars. But Cecilia Payne went a step ahead, she touched the stars! How? Let's find out!

School exams have humbled some of the most intelligent people to have ever walked the planet. When Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin was still a child, she performed an experiment. She divided her upcoming exams into two groups. Before one group of exams, she diligently prayed for her grades. The other exams acted as a control group. The result was that she performed better in the second group of exams. Sometimes, curious children make the best scientists. Later in life, Cecilia became an agnostic.

Cecilia was born on May 10th, 1900, at Wendover, England. She would later move to England, and eventually earn a scholarship for Newnham College, Cambridge University. During this time, Cambridge did not grant degrees to women. Hence, she finished her studies and yet had nothing to show for it. Cecilia once attended a lecture by Sir Arthur Eddington on studying a solar eclipse to observe Einstein’s theories of relativity. This was when her interest in astronomy took root.

In 1923, Payne was the recipient of a fellowship that allowed women to study at the Harvard observatory. Harlow Shapley was the Director of the observatory during this time, and he convinced Cecilia to aim for a PhD. The common belief around this time was that stars had the same elemental composition as planets. Using Meghnad Saha’s ionization theories, Payne found that the variation in stellar absorption lines was due to ionization differences at different temperatures and not because of a change in elemental compositions. She discovered that although silicon and carbon in the Sun’s spectrum matched their amounts on Earth, Helium, and mainly Hydrogen, were far more prevalent than previously thought. She concluded that Hydrogen was the most abundant element in stars and the universe itself.

Henry Norris Russell, a renowned astronomer of the time, opposed her and described her results as “spurious”, as it went against the existing scientific consensus. Thus, although Cecilia included all her calculations and observations in her thesis, she also wrote that her results were “almost certainly not real”. In 1925, Cecilia became the first woman to earn a PhD from Harvard.

Four years later, Russell realised Payne had been correct when he himself discovered the same result in his own experiments. He briefly mentioned Cecilia’s contributions in his publications. Today, experiments and theory agree that stars are mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. But over the years, this integral discovery is mostly credited to Russell’s name.

Cecilia remained at Harvard for most of her career. She had to work hard in a place where women were banned from being professors, working research jobs instead. Men like Harlow Shapley, and after him, Donald Menzel, who became the Director of Harvard observatory, would work hard to improve her position as faculty. In 1956, she became the first female professor at Harvard. She later went on to become the Chair of the Astronomy department, the first female to hold that position at Harvard. Her work mainly focused on variable stars, and was later extended to Magellanic clouds and stellar evolution. That's how she touched the stars, by realising their composition as if you touch something and identify what that entity is!

Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin was an inspiration for many future scientists. All of us know of Richard Feynman. His sister, Joan Feynman, was inspired to become an astrophysicist because of Cecilia. She would go on to become a great physicist in her own right. 

Cecilia helped women enter the forefront of a male-dominated science community. This Women’s day, let us remember her contributions to the world, and the upcoming generations she continues to inspire.

 Author: Shritama Bhattacharya

Illustrator: Pranjal Sengupta

Editor and Reviewer: Aviral Srivastava