Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (; July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves. By identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. These results were later confirmed over subsequent decades.
Beginning her academic career as the sole undergraduate in astronomy at Vassar College, Rubin went on to graduate studies at Cornell University and Georgetown University, where she observed deviations from Hubble flow in galaxies and provided evidence for the existence of galactic superclusters. She was honored throughout her career for her work, receiving the Bruce Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the National Medal of Science, among others.
Rubin spent her life advocating for women in science, and she was known for her mentorship of aspiring female astronomers. She pioneered the field for many, and in 2015, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope acronym: LSST) began construction. Her legacy was described by The New York Times as "ushering in a Copernican-scale change" in cosmological theory.
Early life
Vera Cooper was born on July 23, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the younger of two sisters. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe: Pesach Kobchefski (Philip Cooper), born in Vilnius, Lithuania (then part of Poland), who anglicized his name and became an electrical engineer. He worked at Bell Telephone. He married Rose Applebaum, from Bessarabia (in present-day Moldova). They met at Bell, where Rose worked until they married.
The Coopers moved to Washington, D.C., in 1938, where 10-year-old Vera developed an interest in astronomy while watching the stars from her window. "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." She built a crude telescope out of cardboard with her father, and began to observe and track meteors. She attended Coolidge Senior High School, graduating in 1944.
Rubin's older sister, Ruth Cooper Burg, was an attorney who later worked as an administrative law judge in the United States Department of Defense.
Education
Rubin was inspired to pursue an undergraduate education at Vassar College – then an all-women's school –, and she was also inspired by Maria Mitchell, who had been a professor in that same college in 1865. She ignored advice she had received from a high school science teacher to avoid a scientific career and become an artist. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and earned her bachelor's degree in astronomy in 1948, the only graduate in astronomy that year. She attempted to enroll in a graduate program at Princeton, but was barred due to her gender. Princeton would not accept women as astronomy graduate students for 27 more years. Rubin also turned down an offer from Harvard University.
She married in 1948, and her husband, Robert Joshua Rubin, was a graduate student at Cornell University.
Rubin then enrolled at Cornell University, and earned a master's degree in 1951. During her graduate studies, she studied the motions of 109 galaxies and made one of the first observations of deviations from Hubble flow (how the galaxies move apart from one another). She worked with astronomer Martha Carpenter on galactic dynamics, and studied under Philip Morrison, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman. Though the conclusion she came to – that there was an orbital motion of galaxies around a particular pole – was disproven, the idea that galaxies were moving held true and sparked further research. Her research also provided early evidence of the supergalactic plane. This information and the data she discovered was immensely controversial. After she struggled to be allowed to present her work at the American Astronomical Society despite being visibly pregnant, she was summarily rejected and the paper was forgotten.
Rubin studied for her Ph.D. at Georgetown University, the only university in Washington, D.C., that offered a graduate degree in astronomy.