Vera Cooper was born on July 23, 1928, inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the younger of two sisters born to aJewish family with roots in Eastern Europe. As recalled by Vera, her father Pesach Kobchefski was born in "Vilna, Latvia" (currently known asVilnius, Lithuania, then part of theRussian Empire), and at the age of seven immigrated with his mother and three siblings toGloversville, New York, reuniting with his father who had immigrated a year or two earlier. Pesach soonanglicized his name to Pete Cooper, and as an adult studiedelectrical engineering and worked atBell Telephone. He married Rose Applebaum, a second generation American born to a mother who had immigrated fromBessarabia (in present-dayMoldova andUkraine) to Philadelphia. They met at Bell, where Rose worked until they married.[11]
In 1938 the family moved to Washington, D.C.,[1] where ten-year-old Vera developed an interest in astronomy while watching the stars from her window.[1][12][13] "Even then I was more interested in the question than in the answer," she remembered. "I decided at an early age that we inhabit a very curious world."[14] She built a crudetelescope out of cardboard with her father, and began to observe and trackmeteors.[15][16][17] She attended public school at theCoolidge Senior High School, graduating in 1944.[16]
Ignoring advice she had received from a high school science teacher to avoid a scientific career and become an artist,[1][15] the young aspiring astronomer chose instead to pursue her undergraduate education atVassar College. Vassar, then an all-women's school, was famous for its association with the pioneering 19th century astronomerMaria Mitchell, discoverer of Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) and a professor at Vassar from the time of the founding of itsobservatory in 1865.[1]
AtVassar College, Rubin was a member of the honors societyPhi Beta Kappa.[18] She earned her bachelor's degree in astronomy in 1948.[15] Despite Vassar's historic reputation for groundbreaking science in the field, Rubin was the only graduate in astronomy that year.[1][6]
Rubin attempted to enroll in the astronomy program atPrinceton, but was barred due to her gender (Princeton would retain the policy of gender discrimination against women in its astronomy department until 1975[6]).[1][4] She was accepted to Harvard's program, but declined the offer on the basis that she was getting married, and her future husband, a graduate student in physics, was based atCornell University.[19]
Cornell was not known during this period for the excellence of its astronomy department, composed as it was of only four members. It did, however, boast an excellent physics faculty, and much of the coursework for Rubin's degree was taught within this department. Noted physicistPhilip Morrison and futureNobelistsHans Bethe andRichard Feynman worked with Rubin during this period.[17][20]
At Cornell, she worked with astronomer Martha Carpenter on galactic dynamics and studied the motions of galaxies. From this work, Rubin made one of the first observations of deviations fromHubble flow.[4][15][21] Though her conclusions – that there was an orbital motion of galaxies around a particular pole – were later disproven, the idea that galaxies were moving held true and sparked further research.[15] Additionally, Rubin's research provided early evidence of thesupergalactic plane.
This information and the data she compiled were controversial for their day. Against her advisors' hesitations, she gained permission to present at the annual meeting ofAmerican Astronomical Society. Not only was her material in a form that left it open to speculation that it was premature and incompletely supported, she had given birth to her first child three weeks previously and was not a member of the society.[22] These circumstances did not go unnoticed. Her presentation to the AAS in December 1950 received front page headlines ("Young Mother Has Own Theory of Universe," read the lede, disseminated from an article in the Washington Post[23]). The talk received – to Rubin's personal recollection – universally negative feedback and the paper was not published.[17]
She completed her work at Cornell with the award of her 1951 master's degree.[16]
Rubin studied next atGeorgetown University, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1954 (underGeorge Gamow, who was at nearby George Washington University),[24] although much of her classwork was completed with GeorgetownianFrancis Heyden.[25] Her dissertation, completed in 1954, concluded that galaxies clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed through the universe, a controversial idea not pursued by others for two decades.[4][15][26][19]
Rubin in 1974, measuring spectra at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
For the next decade, Rubin held various short-term academic positions in the greater DC area. She served for a year as an instructor of Mathematics and Physics atMontgomery College, Maryland. Then from 1955 to 1965 she worked at Georgetown University as a research associate astronomer, lecturer (1959–1962), and finally, assistant professor of astronomy (1962–1965).[1][26]
In the latter position, from 1963, Rubin began a year-long collaboration withGeoffrey andMargaret Burbidge, during which she made her first observations of the rotation of galaxies while using theMcDonald Observatory's 82-inch telescope.[15]
During her work at the Carnegie Institution, Rubin applied to become the first female astronomer permitted to observe at thePalomar Observatory in 1965.[28][1][4][29]
An initiating faculty member of theVatican Observatory Summer School (1986), Rubin continued this relationship through subsequent decades, providing dedication remarks for the opening of theVATT, the Vatican's telescope on Mount Graham.[30]
Rubin retired from the Carnegie Institute in 2014 as Senior Fellow of Astronomy in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.[31][32]
At the Carnegie Institution, Rubin began work related to her controversial thesis regarding galaxy clusters in tandem with Kent Ford,[26] making hundreds of observations using Ford's image-tubespectrograph.[33] Thisimage intensifier allowed resolving the spectra of astronomical objects that were previously too dim for spectral analysis.[15][33] A decade of observations coalesced in the shared discovery of the Rubin-Ford effect, with publication first appearing in 1976.
The Rubin–Ford effect, an apparentanisotropy in theexpansion of the Universe on the scale of 100 million light years, was discovered through studies ofspiral galaxies, particularly theAndromeda Galaxy, chosen for its brightness and proximity to Earth.[17][34] The idea ofpeculiar motion on this scale in the universe was a highly controversial proposition. It was dismissed by leading astronomers but ultimately shown to be valid.[4][17] The effect is now known aslarge scale streaming.[29]
Rubin and Kent also briefly studiedquasars, which had been discovered in the early 1960s and were a popular topic of research.[15][17] Wishing to avoid controversial areas of astronomy, including quasars and galactic motion, Rubin began to study the rotation and outer reaches of galaxies, an interest sparked by her collaboration with the Burbidges.[15]
She investigated the rotation curves of spiral galaxies, again beginning with Andromeda, by looking at their outermost material. She observed flat rotation curves: the outermost components of the galaxy were moving as quickly as those close to the center.[35] She further uncovered the discrepancy between the predictedangular motion of galaxies based on the visible light and the observed motion.[36] Her research showed that spiral galaxies rotate quickly enough that they should fly apart, if the gravity of their constituent stars was all that was holding them together; because they stay intact, a large amount of unseen mass must be holding them together, a conundrum that became known as the galaxy rotation problem.[4][35]
Rubin's results came to be cited as evidence that spiral galaxies were surrounded bydark matter haloes.[37][4][15]Rubin's calculations showed that galaxies must contain at least five to ten times more mass than can be observed directly based on the light emitted by ordinary matter.[38][39] Rubin's results were confirmed over subsequent decades,[1] and became the first persuasive results supporting the theory of dark matter, initially proposed byFritz Zwicky in the 1930s.[1][17][40] This data was confirmed by radio astronomers, the discovery of thecosmic microwave background, and images ofgravitational lensing.[15][17] However, Rubin did not rule out[41] alternative models to dark matter also inspired by her measurements.[4] She and her research were discussed in the 1991 PBS series,The Astronomers.[42]
Another area of interest for Rubin was the phenomenon of counter-rotation in galaxies. Her discovery that some gas and stars moved in the opposite direction to the rotation of the rest of the galaxy challenged the prevailing theory that all of the material in a galaxy moved in the same direction, and provided the first evidence forgalaxy mergers and the process by which galaxies initially formed.[29]
During her work at the Carnegie Institution, Rubin applied to observe at thePalomar Observatory in 1965, despite the fact that the building did not have facilities for women. Reluctantly granted access, she was informed "your time on the observatory is limited, because we don't have a women's bathroom,"[43] a common period ruse to avoid allowing women access to these stations (Margaret Burbridge faced similar discrimination at the Carnegie a decade previous, when she gained access to the telescope at theMount Wilson Observatory via the pretense that husband Geoffrey was the telescope operator). According to Carnegie presidentEric Isaacs, Rubin "solved the problem pretty simply by cutting out a little paper skirt and taping it to the stick figure image of a man which was on the men's room door. And she turned around and said, 'now you have a ladies' room' and then she got to work."[43]
Throughout her graduate studies, Rubin encountered discouraging sexism; in one incident she was not allowed to meet with her advisor in his office, because women were not allowed in that area of Georgetown, a Catholic university.[1][15] Motivated by her own battles to gain credibility in a field dominated by male astronomers, Rubin encouraged girls interested in investigating the universe to pursue their dreams. She was described bySandra Faber andNeta Bahcall as one of the astronomers who paved the way for other women in the field, as a "guiding light" for those who wished to have families and careers in astronomy.Rebecca Oppenheimer also recalled Rubin's mentorship as important to her early career.[1][38][44][35][45]
When Rubin was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1981, she became only the second woman astronomer in its ranks (after her colleagueMargaret Burbidge).[15] She, alongside Burbidge, advocated for more women to be elected to the NAS, selected for review panels, and represented in academic searches. She said that despite her own election to the NAS, she continued to be dissatisfied with the low number of women who were elected each year, and she further said it was "the saddest part of [her] life".[15][17][29]
Throughout her life, Rubin faced discouraging comments on her choice of study but persevered, as she was supported by family and colleagues.[15][6] In addition to encouraging women in astronomy, she was a force for greater recognition ofwomen in the sciences and forscientific literacy.[6][44][46]
Rubin married in 1948, when her husband,Robert Joshua Rubin, was a graduate student at Cornell University, and she herself had recently graduated from Vassar.[2][15] She was 23 years old and pregnant with her second child when she began her doctoral studies.[1][6]
By 1963, Rubin, working and with four children, was described as the sole member of Vassar's class of 1948 as having "come near to filling the Utopian aim of being a full-time professional in her field without, for the most part, putting her children into someone else's hands."[47] Rubin ascribed this characterization to the "unique part time full time" nature of her then position at Georgetown University.[47] Because she had young children, she did much of her work from home.[16]
All four of their children earned PhDs in thenatural sciences or mathematics: David (born 1950), is a geologist with theU.S. Geological Survey;Judith Young (1952–2014), was an astronomer at theUniversity of Massachusetts;Karl (born 1956), is a mathematician at theUniversity of California at Irvine; and Allan (born 1960), is a geologist at Princeton University.[13][15][45] Rubin's children recalled later in life that their mother made a life of science appear desirable and fun, which inspired them to become scientists themselves.[15]
Rubin wasJewish, and she said she saw no conflict betweenscience and religion. In an interview, she said: "In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I'm Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history. I try to do my science in a moral way, and, I believe that, ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe."[48]
In the early 2000s, Vera Rubin was still actively engaged in scientific work, and in 2013 articles with her participation were still being published.[49] In 2008,Robert Joshua Rubin, Vera Rubin's husband, with whom she had been married for about 60 years, died.[50]
Rubin died "of natural causes" at age 88 on the night of December 25, 2016.[51] She haddementia and was living in an assisted living facility.[52] Rubin was memorialized by her colleagues at the Carnegie Institution, where she performed the bulk of her work and research, as a "national treasure."[6][38]
Rubin is "widely thought to have been snubbed for the Nobel Prize."[53] In the decade following her death, there has been significant ongoing disagreement as to why Rubin's work was not recognized with a Nobel Prize. Some assume it was "because of her gender,"[54] while physicists such asLisa Randall andEmily Levesque have argued that it was an oversight.[17][7] Others have argued that it was a "glaring omission."[10] Popularly written articles likeForbes' "Who Really Discovered Dark Matter:Fritz Zwicky Or Vera Rubin?"[55] both characterize Rubin's failure to be awarded a Nobel Prize as an egregious snub[55] and equivocate regarding the specific science on which this honor would have been conferred.
Discussion of the issue continues, as posthumous honors and recognition (see below) have proliferated, and Rubin's name is regularly mentioned in articles listing the 20th century women who missed out on Nobel Prizes.[56][9][7][57][8]
Telescope Mount Assembly of the 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope atVera C. Rubin Observatory, under construction atop Cerro Pachón in Chile
On December 20, 2019, theLarge Synoptic Survey Telescope was renamed theVera C. Rubin Observatory in recognition of Rubin's contributions to the study of dark matter and her outspoken advocacy for the equal treatment and representation of women in science.[57][58][59][60][61] The observatory is located on a mountain inCerro Pachón,Chile and observations will focus on the study of dark matter anddark energy. As of April 2025, the telescope had begun operation and was producing images and volumes of new data.[62]
In 2024,Nvidia announced that their next generation of data center accelerators would be named after her, with theCPU named Vera andGPU namedRubin.[66]
The Carnegie Institution has created a postdoctoral research fund in Rubin's honor.[38][67]
Following her 1981 election as the second woman ever to the National Academy of Sciences,[72] Rubin and her work received numerous accolades.[improper synthesis?]
Rubin's perspective on the history of the work on galaxy movements was presented in a review, "One Hundred Years of Rotating Galaxies," for thePublications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2000. This was an adaptation of the lecture she gave in 1996 upon receiving the Gold Medal of theRoyal Astronomical Society, the second woman to be so honored, 168 years afterCaroline Herschel received the Medal in 1828.[4][73]
Rubin, Vera (1997).Bright Galaxies, Dark Matters. Masters of Modern Physics. Woodbury, New York City: Springer Verlag/AIP Press.ISBN978-1563962318.[26]
Rubin published over 150 scientific papers. The following are a selection of articles identified by the scientists and historians of the Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics project (CWP), as being representative of her most important writings.[4][26]
Rubin, Vera; Roberts, M. S.; Graham, J. A.; Ford Jr., W. K.; Thonnard, N. (1976). "Motion of the Galaxy and the Local Group Determined from the Velocity Anisotropy of Distant Sc I Galaxies. II. The Analysis for the Motion".The Astronomical Journal.81: 719ff.Bibcode:1976AJ.....81..719R.doi:10.1086/111943.
Rubin, Vera; Thonnard, N.; Ford, Jr., W. K. (1980). "Rotational Properties of 21 SC Galaxies With a Large Range of Luminosities and Radii, From NGC 4605 (R=4kpc) to UGC 2885 (R=122kpc)".The Astrophysical Journal.238: 471ff.Bibcode:1980ApJ...238..471R.doi:10.1086/158003.
Rubin, Vera; Burstein, D.; Ford, Jr., W. K.; Thonnard, N. (1985). "Rotation Velocities of 16 SA Galaxies and a Comparison of Sa, Sb, and SC Rotation Properties".The Astrophysical Journal.289: 81ff.Bibcode:1985ApJ...289...81R.doi:10.1086/162866.
Rubin, Vera (1995). "A Century of Galaxy Spectroscopy".The Astrophysical Journal.451: 419ff.Bibcode:1995ApJ...451..419R.doi:10.1086/176230. The abstract of this is also generally available.[89]
"Don't let anyone keep you down for silly reasons such as who you are. And don't worry about prizes and fame. The real prize is finding something new out there."[90]
^Ridpath, Ian, ed. (2016) [2012]. "Rubin–Ford Effect".A Dictionary of Astronomy (2nd, revised ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. p. 406.ISBN9780199609055. See also thepublishers online entry.
^Rubin, Vera C. (2004)."A brief history of dark matter". In Livio, M. (ed.).The Dark Universe: Matter, Energy and Gravity. Space Telescope Science Institute Symposium Series. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–13.ISBN978-1-139-44980-9.A few brave, smart cosmologists work to modify Newton's laws to account for the observations.
^"Vera Rubin". National Academy of Sciences (NAS). 2016. Archived fromthe original on December 27, 2016. RetrievedDecember 26, 2016.
^Rubin, Vera. "A Century of Galaxy Spectroscopy".Bulletin of the AAS, Vol. 26. 185th AAS Meeting. Washington, DC: American Astronomical Society (AAS). p. 1360.Bibcode:1994AAS...185.3101R. 31.01.
Oral history interview transcript with Vera Rubin on 21 September 1995, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,https://doi.org/10.1063/nbla.hlat.hhob
Oral history interview transcript with Vera Rubin on 9 May 1996, Session II, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,https://doi.org/10.1063/nbla.odsh.cwjb
Oral history interview transcript with Vera Rubin on 3 April 1989, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,https://doi.org/10.1063/nbla.aora.miju
Oral history interview transcript with Vera Rubin on 20 July 2007, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,https://doi.org/10.1063/nbla.cimp.dfsp
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