Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond: The Life of Astronomer Vera Rubin

Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond: The Life of Astronomer Vera Rubin

Yeager, Ashley Jean

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralAstronomy & Space

Publisher Price: $24.95

ISBN10: 0262046121
ISBN13: 9780262046121
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Aug 17 2021
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.85
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.10
Language: English
How Vera Rubin convinced the scientific community that dark matter might exist, persevering despite early dismissals of her work.

We now know that the universe is mostly dark, made up of particles and forces that are undetectable even by our most powerful telescopes. The discovery of the possible existence of dark matter and dark energy signaled a Copernican-like revolution in astronomy: not only are we not the center of the universe, neither is the stuff of which we're made. Astronomer Vera Rubin (1928-2016) played a pivotal role in this discovery. By showing that some astronomical objects seem to defy gravity's grip, Rubin helped convince the scientific community of the possibility of dark matter. In Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond, Ashley Jean Yeager tells the story of Rubin's life and work, recounting her persistence despite early dismissals of her work and widespread sexism in science.

Yeager describes Rubin's childhood fascination with stars, her education at Vassar and Cornell, and her marriage to a fellow scientist. At first, Rubin wasn't taken seriously; she was a rarity, a woman in science, and her findings seemed almost incredible. Some observatories in midcentury America restricted women from using their large telescopes; Rubin was unable to collect her own data until a decade after she had earned her PhD. Still, she continued her groundbreaking work, driving a scientific revolution. She received the National Medal of Science in 1993, but never the Nobel Prize--perhaps overlooked because of her gender. She's since been memorialized with a ridge on Mars, an asteroid, a galaxy, and most recently, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory--the first national observatory named after a woman.

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