How Vera Rubin convinced the scientific community that Dark Matter might exist, persevering despite early dismissals of her work.
She has written for Quanta , Science News , Nature , Astronomy , Sky & Telescope , The Scientist , and other publications..
About author(s): Ashley Jean Yeager is Associate News Editor at Science News .
Rubin Observatory--the first national observatory named after a woman.
She\'s since been memorialized with a ridge on Mars, an asteroid, a galaxy, and most recently, the Vera C.
She received the National Medal of Science in 1993, but never the Nobel Prize--perhaps overlooked because of her gender.
Still, she continued her groundbreaking work, driving a scientific revolution.
Some observatories in midcentury America restricted women from using their large telescopes
Rubin was unable to collect her own data until a decade after she had earned her PhD.
At first, Rubin wasn\'t taken seriously; she was a rarity, a woman in science, and her findings seemed almost incredible.
Yeager describes Rubin\'s childhood fascination with stars, her education at Vassar and Cornell, and her marriage to a fellow scientist.
In Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond , Ashley Jean Yeager tells the story of Rubin\'s Life and work, recounting her persistence despite early dismissals of her work and widespread sexism in science.
By showing that some astronomical objects seem to defy gravity\'s grip, Rubin helped convince the scientific community of the possibility of Dark matter.
Astronomer Vera Rubin (1928-2016) played a pivotal role in this discovery.
The discovery of the possible existence of Dark Matter and Dark energy signaled a Copernican-like revolution in astronomy: not only are we not the center of the universe, neither is the stuff of which we\'re made.
We now know that the universe is mostly dark, made up of particles and forces that are undetectable even by our most powerful telescopes.
How Vera Rubin convinced the scientific community that Dark Matter might exist, persevering despite early dismissals of her work
