How Vera Rubin convinced the scientific community that dark matter might exist persevering
despite early dismissals of her work. We now know that the universe is mostly dark made up of
particles and forces that are undetectable even by our most powerful telescopes. The discovery
of the possible existence of dark matter and dark energy signaled a Copernican-like revolution
in astronomy: not only are we not the center of the universe neither is the stuff of which
we’re made. Astronomer Vera Rubin (1928–2016) played a pivotal role in this discovery. By
showing that some astronomical objects seem to defy gravity’s grip Rubin helped convince the
scientific community of the possibility of dark matter. In Bright Galaxies Dark Matter and
Beyond Ashley Jean Yeager tells the story of Rubin’s life and work recounting her persistence
despite early dismissals of her work and widespread sexism in science. Yeager describes Rubin’s
childhood fascination with stars her education at Vassar and Cornell and her marriage to a
fellow scientist. At first Rubin wasn’t taken seriously she was a rarity a woman in science
and her findings seemed almost incredible. Some observatories in midcentury America restricted
women from using their large telescopes Rubin was unable to collect her own data until a
decade after she had earned her PhD. Still she continued her groundbreaking work driving a
scientific revolution. She received the National Medal of Science in 1993 but never the Nobel
Prize—perhaps overlooked because of her gender. She’s since been memorialized with a ridge on
Mars an asteroid a galaxy and most recently the Vera C. Rubin Observatory—the first
national observatory named after a woman.
