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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== Rubin was born in Philadelphia and lived in Washington, D.C. when she was 10 years old. It was in Washington, D.C. that she started to develop an interest in astronomy. 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.〔(Oral History Transcript — Dr. Vera Cooper Rubin )〕 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Vera Rubin and Dark Matter )〕 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.〔(Vera Cooper Rubin )〕 Upon received her Ph.D in 1954 at Georgetown University, Rubin continued to work on the faculty for another eleven years while raising her children. After her time at Georgetown, Rubin joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) where she met her long time friend, Kent Ford. Five years after joining the DTM, Rubin and Ford began examining the rotation of neighboring galaxies, the Andromeda Galaxy in particular. In the mid-1970s, the two astronomers showed that the stars at the far parts of the Andromeda Galaxy moved faster relative to the stars closer to the center of the galaxy. Rubin theorized that there must be some unseen mass that allows the stars that are far away from the center to move faster than the ones near the center, this unseen mass became known as Dark matter. Her discoveries in the field of Astronomy has gathered great acclaim heralding several awards including the Gold Medal of London's Royal Astronomical Society making her the second woman to receive the award along with Caroline Herschel. Aside from her astronomical achievements, Vera Rubin has also been an active and outspoken member in encouraging women to pursue the sciences. During her time at Carnegie, Rubin became the first women to legally observe from the Palomer telescope in San Diego, blazing the path of equality in the tiny observatory. Later in her career, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) elected her as the second woman ever to join the academy. Rubin was active in pointing out the various discrepancies in gender regarding the reviewers of scientific studies. In the past Rubin along with Margaret Burbidge have advocated for the further involvement of women in groups such as the National Academy of Sciences. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vera Rubin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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