Spotlight | Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Welcome to Broadway Stages’ Spotlight, where we feature local shops, restaurants, organizations, individuals, and venues. March is women’s History Month. Throughout the month, Broadway Stages will feature and celebrate exceptional women who have made a mark and those who continue to make a difference in the story of our future. This week Broadway Stages is proud to tell the story of a woman who helped us better understand the night skies.

For centuries, people stared at the starry nights and wondered about the nature of the lights above. Only in the past few centuries did people start to learn real answers to those questions. But we owe one woman, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, for a real understanding of the nature of those magical lights above.

Born and raised in England, Payne entered the University of Cambridge in 1919. Initially a botany major, one night, she decided to attend a lecture by Arthur Eddington, head of the Cambridge Observatory. Eddington lectured about how Einstein’s theory of relativity was proved using data gathered during a recent solar eclipse.

Payne was so deeply affected by the lecture that she transcribed it word-for-word that night. “For three nights, I think, I did not sleep,” she recalled. “My world had been so shaken that I experienced something like a nervous breakdown.” With Eddington’s encouragement, she promptly changed her major to physics. Also, she enrolled in as many astronomy classes as she could.

After graduation, Payne-Gaposchkin struggled to find a job in Astronomy in England. Also, at this time, she had begun corresponding with Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory in the United States. With his support, she obtained a fellowship at Harvard with a $500 stipend.

When she arrived, she began pouring through nine 250-page volumes of data gathered over four decades about the nature of stars. With this data, Payne-Gaposchkin developed the theory that stars comprised chiefly hydrogen and helium. Shapley encouraged her to write her theories in a doctoral dissertation for Radcliffe College. Harvard University, proper, did not grant PhDs to women.

Until this time, most astronomers believed that the Sun, our nearest star, was essentially made of the same things as the Earth. When astronomer Henry Norris Russell read Payne-Gaposchkin’s dissertation, he was critical. With his criticism, she felt compelled to call her own results ‘spurious.’

Russell eventually saw the light and conceded in 1929 that Payne was correct. Later, astronomers Otto Struve and Velta Zebergs would call her thesis “undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Upon receiving her doctorate, Payne-Gaposchkin continued at the Harvard Observatory as a technical assistant to Shapley. She was clearly motivated in her work by her passion, as her work was challenging and paid poorly. In fact, her wages came out of the equipment budget of her mentor, Harlow Shapley.

In addition to her work in the Observatory, she taught several astronomy courses. Still, her name was never noted in the course catalog. In fact, Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell said because she was a woman, “Miss Payne should never have a position in the university” as long as he was in office.

But Ms. Payne-Gaposchkin persisted. Her passion and dedication could not be swayed. Finally, in 1956, she became the first female professor at Harvard and the first woman to become department chair.

Broadway Stages is proud to share the story of women like Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. We feel it is essential to recognize those that have come before us and their accomplishments. But also, we know that hearing about women like Ms. Payne-Gaposchkin will let young women know that not even the stars are the limit. In fact, they may just light your way. 

Like Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, we enourage all to persevere, do not accept no as an answer, remain focused and true to yourself and your wonder. Thank you, Cecilia for helping us to understand the stars, to nurture our curiosity and to never stop feeding the questions inside us.  You are an inspiration to us all.