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Do It Like a Lady

  • 2018 Calendar
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There are so many incredible ladies with stories of bravery and perseverance. This International Women's Month, we have dug into the deepest parts of the internet to find their stories and retell them to the world.

Cecila_Payne

Cecilia Payne

April 19, 2017

“Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?”

No. No we can not. Partly because in my opinion, that's a dumb song, but mostly because of Cecelia Payne.

This lovely lady made an astronomical (get it?) contribution to space studies when she discovered stars are actually made of hydrogen and helium.

She began her research in this field at Cambridge, only they were jerks who wouldn't give her a degree since she was female.

So girlfriend said peace out to that nonsense and continued her research at Harvard. She later became not only one of the first female professors there, she became the first female head of a department: Interpretive Dance.

Just kidding. Astronomy. She became the head of the Astronomy department.

“The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience... The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape.”
— Cecilia Payne
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