{"id":3594,"date":"2021-10-22T11:15:26","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T15:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/?p=3594"},"modified":"2023-05-04T17:01:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T21:01:41","slug":"alumnas-galactic-quest-proved-existence-of-dark-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/alumnas-galactic-quest-proved-existence-of-dark-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumna\u2019s Galactic Quest Proved Existence of Dark Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Astronomer\u2019s years of data and observations won over skeptical colleagues and changed the field <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Joe Wilensky<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera Cooper Rubin, MS \u201951, was a pioneering astronomer whose studies on the Hill helped shape her life\u2019s work\u2014including the decades she spent gathering evidence to convince the scientific community that dark matter exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite early dismissals of her research and pervasive sexism in the field, she persisted\u2014gathering crucial data to support the existence of the unseen material that binds entire galaxies together and is believed to make up more than 80% of the universe\u2019s mass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The data on dark matter from dozens of galaxies that Rubin presented to the International Astronomical Union in 1985 ultimately changed scientific conceptions of the universe and opened new paths in both astronomy and physics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rubin, who died in 2016 at age 88, was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a winner of both the U.S. National Medal of Science and the Gold Medal from the U.K.\u2019s Royal Astronomical Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was always curious about what makes galaxies tick,\u201d says Martha Haynes, Cornell\u2019s Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Astronomy.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Vera
Looking through a telescope at Vassar at age 18. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what has driven me for my career. And apparently it drove her, also.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haynes\u2014also a pioneering scientist<\/a> who has changed our understanding of the universe\u2014knew Rubin for decades and considered her a colleague and a friend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They first met through Haynes\u2019s work as a postdoc at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA. Later, in 1986, Rubin and Haynes\u2014along with Riccardo Giovanelli, now an emeritus professor of astronomy at Cornell\u2014co-authored a paper about a rapidly rotating galaxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

She was always curious about what makes galaxies tick.<\/p>\nAstronomy professor Martha Haynes<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Rubin, who grew up in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., became interested in astronomy as a child\u2014watching the stars, building her own telescope, and joining an amateur astronomy club. She earned a scholarship to Vassar College and graduated in 1948 as the only astronomy major in her class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One summer, she met Bob Rubin \u201948, PhD \u201951, a graduate student in mathematics on the Hill. She matriculated at Cornell in 1948 and earned a master\u2019s degree three years later. She went on to Georgetown University, where she earned her PhD in 1954. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(She and Bob married in 1948; one of their four children would also go on to become an astronomer.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Vera
Receiving the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton and VP Al Gore.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

While Rubin\u2019s choice of Cornell was largely influenced by Bob\u2019s educational path, science journalist Ashley Yeager\u2014author of a recent biography of Rubin, Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond<\/a><\/em>\u2014makes the case that the decision was serendipitous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with Vox<\/em><\/a>, Yeager says she thinks that Rubin\u2019s experience on the Hill\u2014where she studied physics under such 20th-century luminaries as Hans Bethe, Philip Morrison, and Richard Feynman\u2014put her on a trajectory for scientific discovery that she might not have found had she gone to Princeton (which didn\u2019t accept women at the time) or Harvard (where she was admitted, but declined in order to join Bob in Ithaca).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Says Yeager: \u201cThere was intellectual freedom she had at Cornell, to be able to probe into different questions in astronomy that she probably would have been pushed away from had she been in a more structured graduate program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Vera
Measuring spectra recorded on photographic plates at the Carnegie Institution\u2019s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in 1972.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

On the Hill, astronomy was then a very small department, with few graduate-level courses. But as Rubin recalled in a series of oral history interviews<\/a> she gave to the American Institute of Physics in 1995\u201396, \u201cCornell was a very exciting place because of the physics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cornell\u2019s strengths in that field aided Rubin\u2019s later PhD work at Georgetown: she had taken so many courses on the Hill that she had no remaining physics requirements to fill there, speeding completion of her degree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She went on to teach at her doctoral alma mater for a decade before beginning a long career at the Carnegie Institution\u2019s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, D.C., where she studied how stars orbit the centers of their galaxies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Notable at the time, she was the first woman granted access to use the Palomar Observatory.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studying the Andromeda Galaxy\u2014and then others more systematically\u2014using spectrometers to chart orbital speeds of stars across galactic disks, Rubin and a colleague began to find measurable evidence that something other than visible mass was governing their motion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Vera
Using an image tube spectrograph on a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Their data consistently showed that stars further out from the center were moving much faster than would be expected, given what was understood about the mass and gravity distributed within galaxies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u201chalo\u201d of dark matter that Rubin discovered and charted around dozens of galaxies does not emit light and extends beyond the optical boundaries of each\u2014and contains five to 10 times as much mass as the visible galaxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rubin\u2019s work was the first measurable, compelling, and scientifically presented evidence that supported a decades-old theory that unseen \u201cdark matter\u201d governed the structure and movement of galaxies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This
This image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) from the Palomar Sky Survey, overlaid with Rubin\u2019s rotation curve data for different portions of the galaxy, illustrates a sampling of her observational evidence for dark matter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Well into her 80s, Rubin continued to study the rotation of galaxies\u2014including formation, mergers, and counter-rotation (where some stars and galactic material orbit in the opposite direction as the rest of the galaxy)\u2014along with continuing research into dark matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was always out there as one of those people that I admired, respected, enjoyed, and liked very much,\u201d Haynes recalls. \u201cShe was a really nice person, always very encouraging of younger people, and a really good scientist. She was someone I would consider a role model. And there weren\u2019t many who were women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to many awards and accolades, Rubin has been honored and memorialized with a named ridge on Mars, an asteroid, a satellite, a galaxy, and, most recently, the National Science Foundation Vera C. Rubin Observatory\u2014the first national observatory named after a woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All images courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science Archives<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published October 22, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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