ASHLEY JEAN YEAGER:
Astronomer Vera Rubin’s Galactic Vision
TOLD TIME AFTER TIME SHE NEEDED MORE DATA
to back up her bold ideas about the universe, pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin got the data that helped establish the reality that we live in a universe with more dark matter than luminous matter. From the August 26, 2021, Humanities Member-Led Forum program “Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond,” part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. ASHLEY JEAN YEAGER, Associate News Editor, Science News; Author, Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond: The Life of Astronomer Vera Rubin In Conversation with GEORGE HAMMOND, Author, Conversations With Socrates GEORGE HAMMOND: I’d like to welcome Ashley Jean Yeager, a science writer and the author of Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond. It’s the story of the life of astronomer Vera Rubin. Let’s talk to Ashley about this very interesting story about a female astronomer from the 20th century who was one of the first scientists who supported the idea of dark matter. Ashley, first, welcome to The Commonwealth Club. Great book. Wonderful job. ASHLEY JEAN YEAGER: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited and honored to be here. HAMMOND: Let’s start with a little bit of background about Vera. We have this woman fighting against the old boys club, basically, to make progress. Very successful at it. Let’s just give an idea about the span of her life. She only passed away a few years ago in her 80s, but really got active early on. Maybe we can set up how she did this. YEAGER: Yeah. Vera Rubin was born in the 1920s. She grew up mostly in Washington, D.C. At the age of about 10, I guess, she was sharing a room with her sister. There was [this] row of windows in their bedroom, and she just became fascinated by the stars. She would spend every night looking out the window, watching the stars, tracing their paths across the night sky. While she was doing this, she was trying to read about scientists, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and she also came across the story of Maria Mitchell, who really put professional astronomy on the map for the United States. Maria Mitchell discovered a comet with a telescope, and because of that was awarded a medal from the king of Denmark, and then went on to found an observatory at Vassar College. Vera learned about all of these different stories, and then eventually ended up at Vassar to study astronomy.
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THE COMMO N WE AL TH | October/November 2021
