Vera Rubin

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Vera Rubin measuring spectra, c. 1970
Vera Rubin measuring spectra, c. 1970

Vera (Cooper) Rubin (born 23 July 1928) is an astronomer who has done pioneering work on galaxy rotation rates. Her discovery of what is known as "flat rotation curves" is the most direct and robust evidence of dark matter.

After she earned an A.B. from Vassar College (1948) she tried to enroll at Princeton but never received their graduate catalog as women there were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program until 1975. She applied to Cornell University, where she studied physics under Philip Morrison, Richard Feynman, and Hans Bethe. There she earned a M.A. in 1951. Then in 1954 at Georgetown University she earned a Ph.D. under George Gamow.

Vera Rubin also has honorary Doctors of Science degrees from numerous universities, including Harvard and Yale. Rubin is currently a research astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. So far she has co-authored 114 peer reviewed research papers.

All four of her children have earned Ph.D.s in the natural sciences or mathematics: David (1950), Ph.D. geology, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey; Judith Young (1952), Ph.D. cosmic-ray physics, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts; Karl (1956), Ph.D. mathematics, a mathematician at Stanford University; and Allan (1960), Ph.D. geology, a geologist at Princeton University.

She is the author of Bright Galaxies Dark Matters (Masters of Modern Physics), AIP Press, 1996, ISBN 1-56396-231-4

Contents

[edit] Honors

Awards

She was only the second female recipient of this medal, the first being Caroline Herschel in 1828.

Named after her

[edit] Recent documentary interview

Vera Rubin can be seen on the BBC documentary Most of the Universe is Missing.[1]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Most of the Universe is Missing (Text summary). Retrieved on 2008-05-18.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Robert Rubin, "Vera Rubin" in OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics, Nina Byers and Gary Williams, ed., Cambridge University Press 2006.

[edit] External links