When astronomer Vera C. Rubin was growing up, she built her own telescope to watch the night sky from her bedroom in Washington, D.C. After being rejected from Princeton for graduate school (where women were prohibited until 1973), she was accepted at Cornell and later began studying how galaxies in the night sky change over time. Her research throughout the 1970s uncovered a mystery about the universe that scientists are still trying to fully understand today.
In collaboration with Kent Ford, Rubin’s calculations are generally seen as the first substantial evidence supporting the idea that dark matter actually comprises the majority of the universe’s mass. Today, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy are honoring Rubin for her work by naming a new observatory in Chile after her.
