ortance of her contribution to the science; her professional status was the rather humble one of data-tabulating assistant at Harvard Observatory.
The third is Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, and she is in a sense the most interesting, precisely because no one particular accomplishment is associated with her name. A British-born Harvard specialist in the measurement of stellar magnitudes and variable stars, she is no more--and no less--than one of the twenty or thirty names that anyone interested in modern stellar astronomy will frequently encounter, and learn to recognize as that of an important working astronomer, without necessarily recalling specifically what she did. Indeed, the present writer, though recalling her name due to a general interest in astronomy, had to consult an encyclopedia to refresh his memory as to both the spelling of her name and the specific character of her contributions.
Payne-Gaposchkin is, in other words, the only conspicious female example in the field of astronomy, at least before the present generation, of what may be called a c
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