Post #2790878
2023-05-10 15:14 UTC
Cecilia Payne was born in England, the daughter of a lawyer and a painter who held the radical view that girls should get the same quality education as boys. She excelled in school, and eventually enrolled at Cambridge.
She began visiting the Cambridge Observatory, and asked the staff so many questions that they fetched Eddington to deal with her. He recommended some books for her to read, but she had already read them all. So he just gave her the run of the observatory's research library.
Replies (1)
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@mcnees@mastodon.social 2023-05-10 15:15
(Never doubt the impact that a gesture like that may have on a precocious and motivated student, especially one who may not see themself represented in the field.)