Something wasn’t adding up.
The more Dr. Vera Rubin peered through her telescope, fixated on the spiral galaxies she was observing, the more she became aware of an unsettling discrepancy in her data. Galaxies were spinning at speeds that defied the conventional wisdom of the time.
You should be able to work out exactly how much mass is in a galaxy based on how fast the galaxy spins around its core, and vice versa. Gradually, Rubin’s methodical approach led her to a conclusion that shattered the world of cosmology: there was a bunch of mass missing that we couldn’t see.
This was 1963, and over the next few years, Rubin’s observations and conclusions became widely accepted. This “mystery of the missing mass” began to be described more succinctly as “dark matter.” That’s what we call it today.
Gaining Footing
Remembering her childhood, Rubin later said, “Even then I was more interested in the question than in the answer. I decided at an early age that we inhabit a very curious world.”
Born in 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Vera Rubin was an inquisitive child from the start. She stared out of her windows when her family moved near Washington, DC when she was 10, and she kept this sense of wonder and curiosity flowing all through school.
She did impressive work during her undergrad at Vassar College, where she was the only astronomy major to graduate that year. After being rejected from Princeton's graduate astronomy program because of her gender, she finished her masters at Cornell, where her husband attended grad school. Finally, it was her PhD work at Georgetown University that set the stage for her world-changing observations.
Revelation
Back in the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky had observed that galaxies in the Coma cluster were moving far too rapidly to be accounted for by the visible matter alone. Zwicky hypothesized the presence of unseen “dunkle Materie” or dark matter. Yet, his ideas largely remained on the fringes of mainstream astrophysics until Rubin's work.
You can read a bit more about Zwicky here:
While Zwicky’s work had focused on galaxy clusters, Rubin's was concentrated on individual spiral galaxies. As she studied the rotation curves of these galaxies, she noticed inconsistencies that could not be explained by the standard model. With painstaking attention to detail and an unyielding commitment to accuracy, Rubin gathered enough data to make a compelling case for the existence of dark matter—mass that we can't see but that must be there to account for the observed galactic rotations.
Legacy
Everything you can see out there—all of the “ordinary matter” that we understand, like atoms and subatomic particles—all that stuff is completely dwarfed by dark matter. In other words, there’s way more stuff out there that we don’t understand than stuff we do understand.
Our understanding of the universe, its origins, and its future all hinge on understanding the nature of dark matter, and it while Fritz Zwicky had cracked the door open to take a peek, it was Vera Rubin’s work that kicked the door wide open.
Rubin's discoveries reshaped the way we look at the universe, but her influence didn't stop there. As a tireless advocate for women in science, she broke down barriers and cleared the way for future generations of female researchers. Rubin was often vocal about the gender discrimination she faced, using her platform to raise awareness and enact change.
Today, observatories and scholarships bear her name, but perhaps her most enduring legacy is the insatiable curiosity she instilled in scientists and everyday people alike. Whether it's looking through a telescope or questioning the world around us, Vera Rubin's spirit of inquiry lives on.
Continuing Explorations
Vera Rubin's life and work challenge us to keep questioning the world around us, to never settle for the easy answers, and to break down the barriers that hinder human progress—whether in the lab or in society.
As a woman, she broke barriers and shattered the academic glass ceiling. As a scientist, she called upon humanity to reconsider how literally everything works—the fundamental makeup of the universe itself.
Nowadays, when we look up at the night sky, we remember that the stars we see are just a fraction of what’s out there. We owe this to Vera Rubin and people like her.
Really enjoy these types of stories about the person behind the ground-breaking work that changed our understanding of things, in this case, the universe!
You had me at Vera. I read through a good amount of her work years ago in high school when I was considering a career in adtronomy.
Until now, I had all but forgotten. Thank you for a gentle reminder of this amazing woman. I urge anyone that sees this and is interested by her to actually seek out her work. It is beyond mind-blowing to read about. She really poured her soul into her work, even with the challenges she faced.