‘She was right and they were wrong’: the female astronomers hidden by science’s male elite

As a new play examines the work of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, we celebrate the women whose crucial discoveries were ignored or suppressed

Eighty-five years ago, several dozen eminent astronomers posed for a photograph outside the newly constructed McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis in Texas. All were men – with one exception. Half-concealed by a man in front of her, the face of a solitary woman can just be made out in the grainy black and white image.

This is Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, whose impact on our understanding of the cosmos was profound. She showed stars were primarily made of hydrogen and helium, contradicting the scientific orthodoxy of the 1920s, which held that they were made of an array of elements. Her claims were suppressed and her work obscured, like her image on the McDonald Observatory photograph.

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