Flat rotation curve of the Andromeda Galaxy (1970)
With Kent Ford; outer stars orbited as fast as inner ones, implying large amounts of unseen mass
Science · Maths, astronomy, medicine & more
Vera Rubin
1928–2016 · American
Astronomy — galaxy rotation and dark matter
Vera Rubin was an American astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington whose measurements, made with Kent Ford, showed that stars in the outer parts of spiral galaxies orbit as fast as those near the centre. These "flat rotation curves", beginning with the Andromeda Galaxy in 1970, provided the most persuasive early evidence for dark matter. She was also a tireless campaigner for women in science, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is named after her.
How to spot them
- ▸Flat galaxy rotation curves; evidence for dark matter
- ▸Worked with Kent Ford at Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
- ▸First woman officially permitted to observe at Palomar Observatory (1965)
- ▸Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile (formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope)
- ▸Second woman to win the RAS Gold Medal (1996), after Caroline Herschel
Key discoveries & works
Flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies as evidence for dark matter (1970s–1980)
Data on dozens of galaxies showed the pattern was universal, making the case for dark matter
Georgetown PhD thesis showing galaxies are clumped, not evenly distributed (1954)
Supervised by George Gamow; an early hint of large-scale structure in the universe
Discovery of counter-rotating stellar disks in galaxy NGC 4550 (1992)
Two populations of stars in the same galaxy orbiting in opposite directions
Bright Galaxies, Dark Matters (1997)
Collection of her essays on astronomy and on women in science
Key ideas
- If galaxies contained only visible matter, orbital speeds should fall off with distance from the centre; they do not
- Most of the mass in galaxies is invisible dark matter, several times the mass of ordinary matter
- Science should be open to women; she campaigned for women's election to academies and inclusion on conference programmes
Quick-fire facts
- •Born 23 July 1928 in Philadelphia; died 25 December 2016 in Princeton, New Jersey
- •Graduated from Vassar College, took a master's at Cornell and a PhD at Georgetown in 1954
- •Joined Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC, in 1965
- •Kent Ford built the image-tube spectrograph used in their observations
- •Awarded the US National Medal of Science in 1993
- •Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1996, the first to a woman since Caroline Herschel in 1828
- •Never received a Nobel Prize, a frequently cited omission
- •The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, renamed in her honour in 2020, was the first US national observatory named after a woman
- •Featured on a 2025 US quarter in the American Women Quarters Program, inscribed 'DARK MATTER'
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card
Sources
- Carnegie Science — Who was Vera Rubin?
- United States Mint — United States Mint Begins Shipping 2025 American Women Quarters Honoring Dr. Vera Rubin on June 2