Vera Rubin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Rubin

Vera Rubin (née Cooper; born July 23, 1928) is an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem. Although initially met with skepticism, Rubin's results have been confirmed over the subsequent decades.[1] Attempts to explain the galaxy rotation problem led to the theory of dark matter.

Contents [show] Background and education[edit] Rubin was born in Philadelphia and lived in Washington, D.C. when she was ten years old. It was in Washington, D.C. that she started to develop an interest in astronomy.[2] Vera Rubin's father, Philip Cooper, was an electrical engineer, born in Vilnius, Lithuania as Pesach Kobchefski. Her mother, Rose Applebaum, originally came from Bessarabia, and worked for Bell Telephone Company calculating mileage for telephone lines. Rubin has an older sister named Ruth Cooper Burg, who was an administrative judge in the United States Department of Defense.[3] Rubin earned her BA degree in astronomy at Vassar College and attempted to enroll at Princeton but never received their graduate catalogue, as women there were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program until 1975.[4]

She instead enrolled for her Master's degree in science at Cornell University. It was here she studied physics under Philip Morrison, quantum physics under Richard Feynman, and quantum mechanics under Hans Bethe.[5] She completed her study in 1951, during which she made one of the first observations of deviations from the Hubble flow in the motions of galaxies. She argued that galaxies might be rotating around unknown centers, rather than simply moving outwards, as suggested by the Big Bang theory at that time. The presentation of these ideas was not well received. Rubin’s doctoral work at Georgetown University was conducted under advisor George Gamow. Her Ph.D. thesis upon graduation in 1954 concluded that galaxies clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed through the universe. The idea that clusters of galaxies existed was not pursued seriously by others until two decades later.[6]

Upon receiving her Ph.D. in 1954 from Georgetown University, Rubin continued to work on the faculty for another eleven years while raising her children. After her time at Georgetown, Rubin joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (D.T.M.) where she met her long-time friend, Kent Ford. Five years after joining the D.T.M., Rubin and Ford began examining the rotation of neighboring galaxies, the Andromeda Galaxy in particular. Her discoveries in the field of Astronomy has gathered great acclaim heralding several awards including the Gold Medal of London's Royal Astronomical Society making her the second woman to receive the award along with Caroline Herschel.[7][8][9]

Aside from her astronomical achievements, Vera Rubin has also been an active and outspoken member in encouraging women to pursue the sciences. During her time at Carnegie, Rubin became the first woman to legally observe from the Palomar telescope in San Diego, blazing the path of equality in the tiny observatory. Later in her career, the National Academy of Sciences (N.A.S.) elected her as the second woman ever to join the academy. Rubin was active in pointing out the various discrepancies in gender regarding the reviewers of scientific studies. In the past Rubin along with Margaret Burbidge have advocated for the further involvement of women in groups such as the National Academy of Sciences.[10][11]

Graduate Work[edit] While at Cornell for her Master's degree, Rubin worked on her thesis examining the possibility of a bulk rotation in the universe by searching for “non-Hubble flow”.[12] The paper was poorly received and was rejected by both the Astronomical Journal and the Astrophysical Journal. Rubin later admitted that her data was scant, but her thesis was significant in Gerard de Vaucouleur's claim of evidence for a "Local Supercluster".[13]

Scientific work[edit] After her graduation, Rubin taught at Montgomery County Junior College,[14] and also worked at Georgetown University as a research assistant, and in 1962 became an assistant professor there.[15] Also in 1965, she became the first woman allowed to use the instruments at the Palomar Observatory. Prior to this, women had not been authorized to access the facilities.[16] In 1965 she also secured a position at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington [17] and has worked there as an astronomer since that time. Rubin is currently a Senior Fellow at the DTM, and her work area is described as "Galactic and extragalactic dynamics; large-scale structure and dynamics of the universe."[18] Since 1978, she has researched and analyzed over two hundred galaxies.

Galaxy rotation problem and Dark matter[edit] Rubin began work which was close to the topic of her previously controversial thesis regarding galaxy clusters, with instrument maker Kent Ford, making hundreds of observations. The Rubin–Ford effect is named after them, and has been the subject of intense discussion ever since it was reported.[19] It describes the motion of the Milky Way relative to a sample of galaxies at distances of about 150 to 300 Mly, and suggests that it is different from the Milky Way's motion relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation.[20]

Wishing to avoid controversy, Rubin moved her area of research to the study of rotation curves of galaxies, commencing with the Andromeda Galaxy. She pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates, and uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galaxy rotation curves. Galaxies are rotating so fast that they would fly apart, if the gravity of their constituent stars was all that was holding them together. But they are not flying apart, and therefore, a huge amount of unseen mass must be holding them together. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem. Her calculations showed that galaxies must contain at least ten times as much dark mass as can be accounted for by the visible stars.[21] These were the first robust results to suggest that either Newtonian gravity does not apply universally or that, conservatively, upwards of 50% of the mass of galaxies was contained in the relatively dark galactic halo. Although initially met with skepticism, Rubin's results have been confirmed over the subsequent decades. Attempts to explain the galaxy rotation problem led to the theory of dark matter.

Dark matter[edit] In the 1970s Rubin obtained the strongest evidence up to that time for the existence of dark matter.[22] The nature of dark matter is as yet unknown, but its presence is crucial to understanding the future of the universe.[23]

The existence of dark matter jointly explains galaxy rotation curves, the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters, patterns of gravitational lensing, and the distribution of mass in systems such as the Bullet Cluster. Alternative MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) models for galaxy rotation curves have been excluded. Rubin has expressed disappointment about this result, stating "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances. That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."[24]

Awards and honors[edit] Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the first woman to be honored after Caroline Herschel in 1828.[25] Weizmann Women & Science Award[26] Gruber International Cosmology Prize[27] Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific[28] James Craig Watson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences[29] Richtmyer Memorial Award[30] Dickson Prize for Science[31] National Medal of Science [32] Adler Planetarium Lifetime Achievement Award [33] Member of the US National Academy of Sciences[34] Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences[35] Member of the American Philosophical Society[36] Henry Norris Russell Lectureship before the American Astronomical Society [37] Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory[38] Invited Discourse at the 19th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Delhi, India.[39] Rubin has been awarded numerous honorary D.Sc. Degrees including doctorates from Creighton University, American University, Princeton University, Harvard and Yale. As of 9 June 2013, Rubin has coauthored 114 peer reviewed research papers. She also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 2002–2008.

Named after her[edit] Asteroid 5726 Rubin Rubin–Ford effect Personal[edit] Rubin has been married since 1948 to Robert Rubin,[40] whom she met while he was a fellow graduate student at Cornell University majoring in physical chemistry. All four of her children have earned Ph.D.s in the natural sciences or mathematics: David (1950), Ph.D. geology, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey; Judith Young (1952), Ph.D. cosmic-ray physics, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts; Karl (1956), Ph.D. mathematics, a mathematician at the University of California at Irvine; and Allan (1960), Ph.D. geology, a geologist at Princeton University.

Motivated by her own battle to gain credibility as a woman astronomer, Rubin continues to encourage young girls to pursue their dreams of investigating the universe. Overcoming discouraging comments on her choice of study was a constant challenge, but she persevered, supported by her father and, later, her husband and family. In addition to astronomy, Rubin has been a force for greater recognition of women in the sciences. She has advocated for more women in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), on review panels, and in academic searches. She says that she has fought with the N.A.S., but she continues to be dissatisfied with the number of women who are elected each year. She states that it is the saddest part of her life and says, "Thirty years ago, I thought everything was possible."[41]

Of her potential legacy, Rubin remarked : “Fame is fleeting, my numbers mean more to me than my name. If astronomers are still using my data years from now, that’s my greatest compliment.”[42]

Religious views[edit] Rubin is an observant[citation needed] Jew, and sees no conflict between science and religion. In an interview, she stated: "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."[43]

Publications[edit] Articles[edit] Rubin, Vera C.; Ford, W. Kent, Jr. (1970). "Rotation of the Andromeda Nebula from a Spectroscopic Survey of Emission Regions". The Astrophysical Journal. 159: 379. Bibcode:1970ApJ...159..379R. doi:10.1086/150317. Rubin, V. C.; Roberts, M. S.; Graham, J. A.; Ford, W. K., Jr.; Thonnard, N. (1976). "Motion of the Galaxy and the local group determined from the velocity anisotropy of distant SC I galaxies. I – The data". The Astronomical Journal. 81: 687. Bibcode:1976AJ.....81..687R. doi:10.1086/111942. Rubin, V. C.; Thonnard, N.; Ford, W. K., Jr. (1980). "Rotational properties of 21 SC galaxies with a large range of luminosities and radii, from NGC 4605 /R = 4kpc/ to UGC 2885 /R = 122 kpc/". The Astrophysical Journal. 238: 471. Bibcode:1980ApJ...238..471R. doi:10.1086/158003. Rubin, V. C.; Burstein, D.; Ford, W. K., Jr.; Thonnard, N. (1985). "Rotation velocities of 16 SA galaxies and a comparison of Sa, Sb, and SC rotation properties". The Astrophysical Journal. 289: 81. Bibcode:1985ApJ...289...81R. doi:10.1086/162866. Rubin, Vera C.; Graham, J. A.; Kenney, Jeffrey D. P. (1992). "Cospatial counterrotating stellar disks in the Virgo E7/S0 galaxy NGC 4550". The Astrophysical Journal. 394: L9. Bibcode:1992ApJ...394L...9R. doi:10.1086/186460. Rubin, Vera C. (1995). "A Century of Galaxy Spectroscopy". The Astrophysical Journal. 451: 419. Bibcode:1995ApJ...451..419R. doi:10.1086/176230. Books[edit] Rubin, Vera (1997). Bright galaxies, dark matters. Woodbury, NY: AIP Press. ISBN 1-56396-231-4.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rubin-vera-cooper

COOPERRUBIN b. 1928 by Kristine Larsen

Vera Cooper Rubin has forever changed our fundamental view of the cosmos, from a universe dominated by starlight to one dominated by dark matter. Rubin was born on July 23, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the younger of two daughters of electrical engineer Philip Cooper and his wife Rose (Applebaum). Philip Cooper encouraged his daughter’s interest in astronomy, taking her to amateur astronomy meetings after the family moved to Washington, D.C., and assisting in her first homemade telescope when she was fourteen.

Vera discovered early that women science students were not accepted at some universities. Her early experiences shaped her later work for women’s equality in the sciences, especially astronomy. Rubin received her B.A. from Vassar in 1948 and her M.A. from Cornell University in 1951, where she met and married Robert Rubin, a graduate student in physical chemistry. Her controversial master’s thesis examined the possibility of a bulk rotation in the universe by looking for “non-Hubble flow.” At that time, the redshifts (lengthening of light waves due to the motion of an object, such as a star or a galaxy) for only 109 galaxies had been obtained, yet her analysis seemed to show an extra, “sideways” motion of galaxies independent of the normal Hubble recession caused by the expansion of the universe. The paper got a cold reception and was rejected by both Astronomical Journal and Astrophysical Journal. Although Rubin later agreed that perhaps her data were too skimpy, her thesis was a factor in Gerald de Vaucouleur’s claim for evidence of the “Local Supercluster.”

Rubin’s doctoral work was conducted at Georgetown University under the auspices of George Gamow. Her thesis (1954) was one of the earliest works on the clustering of galaxies. She concluded that galaxies were not randomly distributed over the sky, but instead there was a definite clumping. Her results were not followed up by the scientific community, as the subject of large-scale structure was not studied seriously until the late 1970s.

From 1955 to 1965, Rubin rose from research associate to assistant professor at Georgetown, and from 1963 to 1964 she engaged in work on the rotation of galaxies with the famed husband-wife team of Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge. In 1965, Rubin joined the staff of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where she remains today. It was during this year that Rubin became the first woman to observe “legally” at Mount Palomar Observatory under her own name as a guest investigator.

In the early 1970s, Rubin renewed her interest in non-Hubble flow, and, with W. Kent Ford, she found evidence again for extra motion. The “Rubin-Ford effect” has been called spurious by some and well-established by others. Rubin is perhaps best-known for her work with Ford and others on the rotation curves of spiral galaxies, using newer technology to update the groundbreaking work of the Burbidges. Rubin found that spiral galaxies have “flat rotation curves.” Unlike our solar system, in which the majority of the matter is contained in the sun, and thus the planets follow Keplerian motion with Mercury having a much faster orbital velocity than Pluto, the luminous matter in spiral galaxies has a high orbital velocity out to the visible edge. This is usually explained as due to the fact that the bulk of the galaxy’s mass is not clustered at the center, where the visible bulge of the galaxy is, but there exists a halo of dark matter extending at least to the visible edge, if not farther. Thus, Rubin and her collaborators provided some of the first direct evidence for the existence of dark matter, verifying the earlier theoretical work of Jeremy Ostriker and James Peebles. Since 1978, Rubin has analyzed the spectra of over two hundred galaxies and found that nearly all contain copious amounts of dark matter.

Rubin holds four honorary doctorates, a 1993 Presidential National Medal of Science, the 1994 Dickson Prize in Science from Carnegie-Mellon University, and the 1994 Russell Lectureship Prize of the American Astronomical Society. In 1981, she became the second woman astronomer to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She served as associate editor of Astronomical Journal from 1972 to 1977 and of Astrophysical Journal Letters from 1977 to 1982. In addition to numerous scientific papers, she published Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, a collection of less technical articles designed for the general public, in 1997.

The Rubins have four children: David M., Judith S., Karl C., and Allan M.—all of whom have Ph.D.s in the sciences, including daughter Judith S. Young, a noted astronomer in her own right.

On January 16, 2004, the National Academy of Sciences awarded Rubin its James Craig Watson Medal for “her seminal observations of dark matter in galaxies… and for generous mentoring of young astronomers, men and women.”

Remembering what it was like to be a lone woman staring at galaxies, Vera Rubin considers it a responsibility and a privilege to be a mentor. “It is well known,” she says, “that I am available twenty-four hours a day to women astronomers.”

SELECTED WORKS BY VERA RUBIN

Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter in Masters of Modern Physics Series (1997); “Extended Rotation Curves of High-Luminosity Spiral Galaxies. Vol. 4, Systematic Dynamical Properties, Sa to Sc,” with W. Kent Ford, Jr., and N. Thonnard. Astrophysical Journal Letters 225 (1978): L101–111; “Fluctuations in the Space Distribution of the Galaxies.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 40 (1954): 541–549; “Rotational Properties of 21 Sc Galaxies with a Large Range of Luminosities and Radii, from NGC 4605 (R = 4 kpc) to NGC 2885 (R = 122 kpc),” with W. Kent Ford, Jr., and N. Thonnard. Astrophysical Journal 238 (1980): 471–487; “Weighing the Universe: Dark Matter and Missing Mass.” In Bubbles, Voids and Bumps in Time: The New Cosmology, edited by James R. Cornell (1989); “Women’s Work.” Science 86 (July/August 1986): 58–65.

Bibliography Bartusiak, Marcia. Through a Universe Darkly (1993), and “The Woman Who Spins the Stars.” Discover (October 1990): 88–94; Lightman, Alan, and Roberta Brawer. Origins (1990); Stille, Darlene R. Extraordinary Women Scientists (1995); Who’s Who in America 1996. Vol. 2 (1996); Yount, Lisa. Contemporary Women Scientists (1994).