Wera Rubin urodziła się w 1928 roku. Niewiele znajdziecie słów poświęconych w Polskiej Wikipedii tej uczonej. Urodziła się w USA, jednakże jej ojciec był Polakiem z Wilna, więc i ona jest Polką, zapomnianą w Polsce  i zapomnianą przez Polskę z powodu zawieruchy dziejowej, ale dobrze znaną na świecie. W Ameryce jest uważana za mołdawską żydówkę z powodu pochodzenia jej matki, która była Besarabką, czyli Mołdawianką oraz dlatego, że sama wyznaje judaizm. Jednakże Wera Rubin jest także członkiem Akademii Papieskiej, co wskazuje na pewne rozdwojenie wiary, ale potwierdza podwójnie wiarę w boga.

Nie dziwcie się zatem, że więcej dowiecie się o niej z zagranicznych filmów i anglojęzycznej Wikipedii. Niektórzy ludzie w Polsce w ogóle o niej nie słyszeli. Ciekaw jestem czy jest ona żydówką polsko-mołdawską z linii Y-DNA R1a? Pani Wera Rubin ma nie tylko słowiańskie nazwisko Koper z domu, ale także piękne słowiańskie imię Wiera.

Czy Wera Rubin, z domu Koper, przyznaje się do polskości swojego ojca z Wilna, czy też nie, mimo wszystko warto o niej wiedzieć. Chociażby dlatego, że przecież Ciemna Materia, którą ona odkryła w Mgławicy Andromedy i której hipotezy istnienia broniła wbrew środowisku naukowemu całego świata, ma kluczowe znaczenie dla zrozumienia, że płaski ateizm jest przeżytkiem. Większość „Tego” co Rządzi Wszechświatem, co ustala jego prawa działania, co go wypełnia po brzegi, jest dla Ludzi i ich Przyrządów po prostu niewidzialna. Ciemna Materia to drobiazg, wierzchołek góry lodowej  – to tylko 20% niewidzialnego dla nas Wszechświata. Pozostaje jeszcze 75% Niewidzialnej Masy – czyli Ciemna Energia.

 

Vera (Cooper) Rubin (born July 23, 1928) is an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem.

Background and education

Vera Rubin’s father, Philip Cooper, was an electrical engineer, born in Vilnius, Lithuania as Pesach Kobchefski. Her mother, Rose Applebaum, originally came from Bessarabia, and worked for Bell Telephone Company calculating mileage for telephone lines. Rubin has an older sister named Ruth Cooper Burg, who was an administrative judge in the United States Department of Defense.^[1] Rubin earned her BA degree at Vassar College and attempted to enroll at Princeton but never received their graduate catalog, as women there were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program until 1975.^[2]

She instead enrolled for her Master’s degree at Cornell University, where she studied physics under Philip Morrison, Richard Feynman, and Hans Bethe. She completed her study in 1951, during which she made one of the first observations of deviations from the Hubble flow in the motions of galaxies. She argued that galaxies might be rotating around unknown centers, rather than simply moving outwards, as suggested by the Big Bang theory at that time. The presentation of these ideas was not well received. Rubin’s doctoral work at Georgetown University was conducted under advisor George Gamow. Her PhD thesis upon graduation in 1954 concluded that galaxies clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed through the universe. The idea that clusters of galaxies existed was not pursued seriously by others until two decades later.^[3]

Scientific work

After her graduation, Rubin taught at Montgomery County Junior College,^[4] and also worked at Georgetown University as a research assistant, and in 1962 became an assistant professor there.^[5] Also in 1965, she became the first woman allowed to use the instruments at the Palomar Observatory. Prior to this, women had not been authorized to access the facilities.^[6] In 1965 she also secured a position at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington ^[7] and has worked there as an astronomer since that time. Rubin is currently a Senior Fellow at the DTM, and her work area is described as „Galactic and extragalactic dynamics; large-scale structure and dynamics of the universe.”^[8]

Galaxy rotation problem

Rubin began work which was close to the topic of her previously controversial thesis regarding galaxy clusters, with instrument maker Kent Ford, making hundreds of observations. The Rubin-Ford Effect is named after them, and has been the subject of intense discussion ever since it was reported.^[9] It describes the way in which the rotational curves of spiral galaxies do not match theoretical curves.

Wishing to avoid controversy, Rubin moved her area of research to the study of rotation curves of galaxies, commencing with the Andromeda Galaxy. She pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates, and uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galaxy rotation curves. Galaxies are rotating so fast that they would fly apart, if the gravity of their constituent stars was all that was holding them together. But they are not flying apart, and therefore, a huge amount of unseen mass must be holding them together. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem. Her calculations showed that galaxies must contain at least ten times as much dark mass as can be accounted for by the visible stars.^[10] Attempts to explain the galaxy rotation problem led to the theory of dark matter.

Dark matter

In the 1970s Rubin obtained the strongest evidence up to that time for the existence of dark matter.^[11] The nature of dark matter is as yet unknown, but its presence is crucial to understanding the ultimate fate of the universe.^[12]

Currently, the theory of dark matter is the most popular candidate for explaining the galaxy rotation problem. The alternative theory of MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) has little support in the community. Rubin, however, prefers the MOND approach, stating „If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton’s laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances. That’s more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle.”^[13]

Awards and Honors

• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the first woman to be honored after Caroline Herschel in 1828.^[14]
• Weizmann Women & Science Award^[15]
• Gruber International Cosmology Prize^[16]
• Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific^[17]
• James Craig Watson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences^[18]
• Richtmyer Memorial Award^[19]
• Dickson Prize for Science^[20]
• National Medal of Science ^[21]
• Adler Planetarium Lifetime Achievement Award ^[22]
• Member of the US National Academy of Sciences^[23]
• Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences^[24]
• Member of the American Philosophical Society^[25]
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship before the American Astronomical Society ^[26]
• Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory^[27]
• Invited Discourse at the 19th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Delhi, India.^[28]
• Rubin has been awarded numerous honorary D.Sc. Degrees including doctorates from Creighton University, American University, Princeton University, Harvard and Yale.

As of 9 June 2013,^[when?] Rubin has co-authored 114 peer reviewed research papers. She also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 2002-2008.

Named after her

• Asteroid 5726 Rubin
• Rubin-Ford effect

Personal

Rubin has been married since 1948 to Robert Rubin,^[29] whom she met while he was a fellow graduate student at Cornell University majoring in physical chemistry. All four of her children have earned PhDs in the natural sciences or mathematics: David (1950), PhD geology, a geologist with the US Geological Survey; Judith Young (1952), PhD cosmic-ray physics, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts; Karl (1956), PhD mathematics, a mathematician at the University of California at Irvine; and Allan (1960), PhD geology, a geologist at Princeton University.

Motivated by her own battle to gain credibility as a woman astronomer, Rubin continues to encourage young girls to pursue their dreams of investigating the universe. Overcoming discouraging comments on her choice of study was a constant challenge, but she persevered, supported by her father and, later, her husband and family. In addition to astronomy, Rubin has been a force for greater recognition of women in the sciences. She has advocated for more women in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), on review panels, and in academic searches. She says that she has fought with the NAS, but she continues to be dissatisfied with the number of women who are elected each year. She states that it is the saddest part of her life and says, „Thirty years ago, I thought everything was possible.”^[30]

Of her potential legacy, Rubin remarked : “Fame is fleeting, my numbers mean more to me than my name. If astronomers are still using my data years from now, that’s my greatest compliment.”^[31]

Religious views

Rubin is an observant Jew, and sees no conflict between science and religion. In an interview, she stated: „In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I’m Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history. I try to do my science in a moral way, and, I believe that, ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe.”^[32]

Publications

Articles

• Rubin, Vera C.; Ford, W. Kent, Jr. (1970). „Rotation of the Andromeda Nebula from a Spectroscopic Survey of Emission Regions”. The Astrophysical Journal 159: 379. Bibcode:1970ApJ…159..379R. doi:10.1086/150317.
• Rubin, V. C.; Roberts, M. S.; Graham, J. A.; Ford, W. K., Jr.; Thonnard, N. (1976). „Motion of the Galaxy and the local group determined from the velocity anisotropy of distant SC I galaxies. I – The data”. The Astronomical Journal 81: 687. Bibcode:1976AJ…..81..687R. doi:10.1086/111942.
• Rubin, V. C.; Thonnard, N.; Ford, W. K., Jr. (1980). „Rotational properties of 21 SC galaxies with a large range of luminosities and radii, from NGC 4605 /R = 4kpc/ to UGC 2885 /R = 122 kpc/”. The Astrophysical Journal 238: 471. Bibcode:1980ApJ…238..471R. doi:10.1086/158003.
• Rubin, V. C.; Burstein, D.; Ford, W. K., Jr.; Thonnard, N. (1985). „Rotation velocities of 16 SA galaxies and a comparison of Sa, Sb, and SC rotation properties”. The Astrophysical Journal 289: 81. Bibcode:1985ApJ…289…81R. doi:10.1086/162866.
• Rubin, Vera C.; Graham, J. A.; Kenney, Jeffrey D. P. (1992). „Cospatial counterrotating stellar disks in the Virgo E7/S0 galaxy NGC 4550″. The Astrophysical Journal 394: L9. Bibcode:1992ApJ…394L…9R. doi:10.1086/186460.
• Rubin, Vera C. (1995). „A Century of Galaxy Spectroscopy”. The Astrophysical Journal 451: 419. Bibcode:1995ApJ…451..419R. doi:10.1086/176230.

Books

• Rubin, Vera (1997). Bright galaxies, dark matters. Woodbury, NY: AIP Press. ISBN 1-56396-231-4.

In popular culture

• Rubin is featured in an animated segment of the 13th and final episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
• Vera Rubin can be seen on the BBC documentary Most of Our Universe is Missing.^[33]
• In the first episode of the 22nd Season of The Simpsons, Milhouse lists „Vers Rubin” (sic) as his pick for the 2010 Physics Nobel prize.

References

1. Oral History Transcript — Dr. Vera Cooper Rubin
2. „Vera Rubin and Dark Matter”. Retrieved 2011-03-21.
3. Vera Cooper Rubin
4. Montgomery College
5. „Rubin, Vera Cooper” CWP
6. Mount Wilson and Palomar
7. Vera C. Rubin
8. Faculty Members
9. 2.4.1. The Rubin-Ford Effect
10. First observational evidence of dark matter
11. Women in Aviation and Space History
12. Astronomers try to unravel a force greater than gravity that will determine the fate of the cosmos
13. „13 things that do not make sense”. New Scientist. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
14. EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE: Dark Universe : Vera Rubin
15. Weizmann Women & Science Award
16. Vera Rubin, Noted Astronomer, Wins International Cosmology Prize
17. Vera Rubin Wins 2003 ASP Bruce Medal
18. James Craig Watson Medal
19. Carnegie’s Vera Rubin to Receive Richtmyer Award
20. Dickson Prize HONOR
21. Vera Rubin (1928– )
22. Lifetime Achievement Award
23. Vera C. Rubin Carnegie Institution of Washington
24. Women’s History Month | Vera Rubin
25. American Philosophical Society Member History
26. Henry Norris Russell Lectureship
27. Jansky Prize – The Karl G. Jansky Lectureship
28. General Assemblies & Administrative Meetings
29. 2002 Cosmology Prize
30. Laureate Profile
31. Women in Science Hall of Fame
32. „Pontifical Science Academy Banks on Stellar Cast”. December 1–7, 1996. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
33. „Most of Our Universe is Missing”. BBC Science & Nature: TV & Radio Follow-Up. BBC. Retrieved 2010-10-19.

Further reading

• Irion, R. (2002). „VERA RUBIN PROFILE: The Bright Face Behind the Dark Sides of Galaxies”. Science 295 (5557): 960–961. doi:10.1126/science.295.5557.960.
• Lightman, Alan; Brawer, Roberta (1990). Origins : the lives and worlds of modern cosmologists. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674644700.
• Overbye, Dennis (1991). Lonely hearts of the cosmos : the scientific quest for the secret of the universe (1st ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780060159641.
• Panek, Richard (2011). The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780618982448.
• Peebles, P.J.E. (1993). Principles of physical cosmology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 9780691019338.
• Rubin, Robert (2006). „Vera Cooper Rubin (1928–)”. In Byers, Nina; Williams, Gary. Out of the shadows : contributions of twentieth-century women to physics (Reprinted ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr. pp. 343–354. ISBN 978-0521821971.
• Rubin, Vera (1998). „Dark matter in the Universe”. Scientific American Presents (special quarterly issue: Magnificent Cosmos) 9 (1): 106&ngash;110.
• Smith, Julian A. (1995). „Rubin, Vera”. In McMurray, Emily J.; Kosek, Jane Kelly; Valade III, Roger M. Notable twentieth-century scientists. Detroit, MI: Gale Research. ISBN 9780810391819.

External links

• Vera Rubin at Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington
• Vera Rubin in CWP at UCLA
• Vera Rubin’s Dark Universe
• Vera Rubin and Dark Matter, American Museum of Natural History
• Vera Rubin at Peter Gruber Foundation
• Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Women in Astronomy
• Lake Afton Public Observatory: Women in Astronomy
• Princeton University 2005 honorary degrees press release
• Oral History interview transcript with Vera Rubin 21 September 1995, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• Adler Planetarium Women in Space Science Award

 

Na tropach Czarnej Materii – dużo o Werze Rubin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Tq0Mu_hAk