Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born May 10, 1900, Wendover, England—died December 7, 1979, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.) was a British-born American astronomer who discovered that stars are made mainly of hydrogen and helium and established that stars could be classified according to their temperatures. Payne entered the University of Cambridge in 1919. A lecture by astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington on his expedition to the island of Principe that confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity inspired her to become...