Vera Rubin graduated with a degree in astronomy from Vassar College in 1948 and earned her PhD at Georgetown University in 1954. She had attempted to enroll in the astronomy program at Princeton, but was barred due to her gender. After teaching for a few years at Georgetown, she took a research position at the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Working with Kent Ford, Rubin observed that the stars within spiral galaxies weren’t behaving as the laws of physics dictated that they should. The calculations showed that galaxies must contain more mass than can be directly observed, the first results supporting the theory of dark matter. Among her many honors, Rubin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981, becoming only the second woman astronomer there, awarded the National Medal of Science in 1993, and received the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal in 1996.
