Cecilia Payne-Gapsochkin who worked with spectroscopic slides from the Plate Stacks to study the chemical make-up of giant stars, thus discovering that they are made of mainly Hydrogen/Helium and not, as Henry Norris Russell, then the acknowledged "expert" thought, made of the same materials as Earth. Her submitted thesis became the very first in Astronomy at Harvard and, since the then-director of the Physics Department, Theodore Lyman, would not accept such a work from a woman, the Department of Astronomy at Harvard came into being. Despite Norris's original lack of acceptance of Cecilia's findings, the Director of the Yerkes Observatory, Otto Struve, declared the thesis to be "the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy."

These online resources include biographies, videos, images, research, and articles. These resources can be used as an introduction into the life of Payne-Gaposchkin and her work. You can even find her entire thesis in these collections. 

keywords: Harvard Computers, astronomy, female astronomers, history of science, women in STEM, Project PHaEDRA, John G. Wolbach Library, Center for Astrophysics