Vera Rubin Biography

Vera Rubin Biography

              Born in Philadelphia during July 23, 1928, Vera Rubin was an astronomer from the start. At age 10 she started to look up at the stars and wonder about them, while at age 14 she built her own telescope. Throughout high school Rubin was met with much opposition when she stated that she wanted to pursue a job related with astronomy. She attended Vassar College and earned her Bachelors in Astronomy. She then went to Cornell University in order to get her masters degree. While at Cornell, Vera met her to-be husband. Later in life she had four children. All of which are Ph.Ds in some science field or another. I thought it would be interesting to note that while Vera finished college through night classes, her husband had to drive her here and there because Vera never learned how to drive. But anyways, during her last years in college, Vera wrote a thesis paper about the expansion of the universe. This thesis paper was nothing but controversial. At the time the accepted theory about the universe was The Big Bang, in which the universe was at an extremely dense and hot state before it stared to expand. Rubin's paper added to this theory; the universe is not only expanding, but also rotating around a central point. Although not necessarily for the best, this paper made Rubin a well known astronomer.
               Rubin also decided to share her love of the stars to others. She became a teacher of physics and math at Montgomery Junior College. After that she went to Georgetown University to become a research associate astronomer. Soon after that, she moved and worked at University of California at San Diego. Here, she became a professional observer at Kitt Peak Arizona. She is also the first woman ever allowed to observe using the Palomar Observatory. In1965, Vera decided to work for the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Here she could work freely without the constant anxiety to publish any sort if findings.

               In the 1970's, Rubin really started to investigate the skies, especially spiral galaxies. She concluded that the stars on the outer rims of spiral galaxies are spinning just as fast as the ones toward the center. Rubin thought that there must be some kind of force acting on these stars in order to maintain the gravitation pull on the stars, or else the stars would just spin off into space. Although Rubin's findings were met with much opposition, after a lot of elbow grease and hard work, Rubin had collected enough data to start convincing her colleagues. Rubin's data shows that we might only know of 10% of the mass in the universe right now. There is still the other 90% unaccounted for. This is most likely the dark matter that Rubin discovered. Today, because of Vera Rubin, scientists are researching whether or not dark matter really exists.