Vera Rubin Biography

Vera Florence Cooper (Vera Rubin) was born on July 23, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents, Phillip and Rose Cooper were immigrants from Eastern Europe. She was the youngest out of her two sisters.

Her family moved to Washington D.C. when Vera was 10 years old. Around this time is also when her interest in space and astronomy came to be. Vera would watch sit by her window and watch the stars, but she says “Even then I was more interested in the question than in the answer.” She believed we lived in a curious world. Soon, she and her father built a telescope out of cardboard which she used to observe meteors. Later in her life, Rubin graduated from Coolidge Senior High School in 1944.

Vera always knew she wanted to study and work in the field of science, ignoring what others told her that she should stick to an artistic career. She attended Vassar College, an all-girls school, where she received her bachelor’s degree in astrology in 1948. She was also the only person that year to earn an astronomy degree. Rubin aspired to earn her master’s degree at Princeton University but was denied because she was a woman and Princeton would not accept women for the next 27 years. Harvard offered a spot which she denied.

Soon after, Rubin married her husband Robert Rubin, who was a graduate student at Cornell. Due to this, Rubin earned her master’s degree at Cornell University in 1951. Rubin worked with astronomer Martha Carpenter, and professors Philip Morrison, Hans Beth, and Richard Feynman. Through her work and study during her master’s program, she came to the conclusion that galaxies were moving because of orbital motion around a specific pole that needed to be further researched, also providing early evidence of the supergalactic plane. She wanted to present her work to the American Astronomical Society but was rejected from doing so. Rubin then went on to attain her Ph.D. at Georgetown University, which at the time was the only university with a Ph.D. in astronomy. She did all of this while being pregnant and with another young child at home. Throughout her journey in obtaining her Ph.D., she faced great sexism and was not even allowed to meet one of her professors in his office because women were not allowed.

Once she graduated from Georgetown University, Rubin was a professor at many schools. Since she was a mother of two children, she did most of her work at home and also met Kent Ford who was her main collaborator for the years to come. While Rubin was at The Carnegie Institute, she applied to observe at the Palomar Observatory, becoming the first woman to ever observe there. Her collaborations with Ford caused many controversial ideas concerning visible light and observed motion in the galaxy. She pioneered the discovery of dark matter existing in the universe. In 1996, Rubin received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, becoming the second woman to ever receive the honor.

Rubin continued with her research and pushing gender boundaries until she passed away in 2016. However, Rubin never won the Nobel prize which many argue was an error. Rubin’s legacy lives on with the National Science Foundation Vera C. Rubin Observatory in recognition of her efforts and contributions made to dark matter and the strides she made for equality of women in science.