Day 3597: Struggle.

 

"Struggle": junk mail collage.

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2GN2S ... 

Have you ever heard of Cecilia Payne?

Public acclaim escaped one of the twentieth century’s most illustrious astronomers, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin; a new biography sets her in the firmament. By Fabbiano.  

Harvard Univ. Press (2020): Male astronomers often achieve a popular fame that eluded one of the field’s most distinguished women: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. That should be remedied by Donovan Moore’s engaging and accessible biography. It skilfully opens up Payne’s achievements and adventures by setting them in the global village of astronomy, against the turbulent social and historical backdrop of twentieth-century Europe and the United States.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge. Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

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 ever written in astronomy.” Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, 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). 

 

Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

   In 1925, Payne was the first person to be awarded a PhD in astronomy at Radcliffe College, at the time the women’s branch of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her thesis on stellar atmospheres is her greatest contribution: she related the line patterns in the observed spectra of stars to their physical conditions. 

She also discovered that hydrogen is the main component of stars, followed by helium. Her discoveries and expertise were eventually recognized with prizes and honors, culminating in a life-achievement lectureship from the American Astronomical Society. 

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979)

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”

* More information is available, here and more. 

 

 

Update ...

A while back, friend and artist, Gail Wynn mentioned on Facebook, about some of my recent minimal collages. "Jackie, I'm really liking the latest collages, simple, bold, and colorful, you get some great junk mail!"

 

     I responded, "Thanks! Some of the papers are painted by me and torn up for collage, like the yellow. It's a great way to use up paint, and layers of it. Gail responded, "Thanks for the great tip Jackie".

 

And so, I thought I might show some of the painted papers, and a box of junk mail to illustrate.

Most of these torn pieces are of leftover heavy watercolor paper which take color so well. But, I especially like color on random printed sheets like the one in the front center.

My junk mail consists of magazine, print, security envelopes  patterns,  just about anything.

 

 

 

 

 

A sweet 1-minute video, Don't Worry, here.

 

Just because ...

 

Tufted Flycatcher

 

 

Smiles for Saturday ...

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

   

 

 

                                                               Thanks for coming by today