• Cecilia Payne discovered what the universe is made of.• Cecilia Payne won a scholarship to Cambridge University.• Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but wasn’t awarded a degree because she was a woman,• Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis written in astronomy.”• Cecilia Payne discover what the sun is made of (Henry Russell, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne — after telling her not to publish).• Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.• Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard and the first woman to head a science department at Harvard. She also inspired entire generations of women to take up science.(OP: Matthew Gardner)
more at Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin – Wikipedia.