Dr. Vera Rubin | Dark Matter Astronomer

A story of galactic grit and refusing to give up! Dr. Vera Rubin’s love of science and the stars began early. At 14, she and her father built a cardboard telescope so she could track meteors. She dreamt of becoming an astronomer, a career many believed was impossible for a woman at the time. But Vera never let limitations hold her back. From her school days to her work as a scientist, she followed her curiosity, overcame obstacles, and made discoveries that changed astronomy forever. Explore the inspiring life of the astronomer whose groundbreaking work helped reveal one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter.

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If you enjoyed this story about Dr. Vera Rubin, you may also enjoy learning about Dr. Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina female astronaut to go to space: https://jonincharacter.com/ellen-ochoa/   

CREDITS: Hidden Heroes of History is a Jonincharacter production. Today’s story was written by Rebecca Cunningham, directed and produced by Molly Murphy and performed by Jonathan Cormur. Sound recording and production by Jermaine Hamilton at Pacific Grove Soundworks.

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Transcript

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Jonathan 0:21

Hello, Dork Squad. I'm Jonathan Cormur, and you're listening to Dork Tales Storytime, the podcast for kids and their pop culture loving grown-ups. And this is an inspiring story about a hidden hero of history. Special thanks to Vera and her family for introducing us to today's hidden hero, the incredible Dr. Vera Rubin. And yes, Vera was named after Dr. Rubin. Enjoy the story.

Theme Song 0:49

It's a beautiful day for a story, adventure, and glory, new friends and old ones too. It's an excellent day to get swept away in a tale, so let us regale

Redge is angry!

Theme Song 1:02

you!

Jonathan 1:09

Reg Where is that hedgehog? He told me we'd meet at George Washington Carver Park at 3 p.m. sharp. Redge!

Redge 1:21

I'm over here, Jonathan!

Jonathan 1:26

Where?

Redge 1:28

Behind this tree! Now I'm in front of it. Behind it again! Now in front of it. Behind! front! behind! Front!

Jonathan 1:40

Why on earth is Redge running in circles around that tree? Uh excuse me, Redge?

Redge 1:49

What?

Jonathan 1:50

What's going on, buddy?

Redge 1:52

I'm mad. And when I'm mad, I like to run in circles to get all the angries out.

Jonathan 2:02

Oh, I'm really proud of you for finding a productive way to deal with your anger, but how do you feel about just you know, talking with me about it?

Redge 2:11

Fine.

Jonathan 2:13

Could you stop running in circles?

Redge 2:16

Oh, yes, right. I am rather dizzy. Oh go cramp, cramp, cramp, cramp.

Jonathan 2:29

Let's take a breather on this bench over here.

Redge 2:32

Yes, uh, good thinking. Ow ow ow ow

Jonathan 2:40

Okay, now tell me what's going on.

Redge 2:44

Do you know Carver's Community Garden, where people and creatures can plant their own little gardens?

Jonathan 2:51

Oh yes. We helped the hedge witch Zinnia Fig cure a tree from the droop.

Redge 2:58

Well, I applied for a small plot of my own because I have a dream of planting the tallest sunflowers Once Upon a Time land has ever seen.

Jonathan 3:08

Hey, that sounds like a cool dream.

Redge 3:11

It is a cool dream. But it will never come true.

Jonathan 3:16

Why not?

Redge 3:17

They denied me. My rejection letter stated in plain letters that they do not accept hedgehogs because they're a risk and will eat from and destroy other members' gardens.

Jonathan 3:31

Oh, but you never do that.

Redge 3:33

I know. I have plenty of my own food, thank you very much. Why would I take from others? And Zinia even wrote me a letter of the highest, most respectable recommendation.

Jonathan 3:46

And they still didn't let you in?

Redge 3:49

That makes me so angry. I could start running in circles again.

Dr. Vera Rubin's Story

Redge 3:54 Jonathan 3:54

Whoa, hold on, Redge. You know, this reminds me of someone I just learned about.

Redge 4:00

Jonathan, this is no time for introducing me to new people. I'm in no mood to make friends.

Jonathan 4:06

No no, I have a hidden heroes of history story to tell you.

Redge 4:10

Oh well make it a good one.

Jonathan 4:14

I'll do my best. Have you heard of Dr. Vera Rubin?

Redge 4:18

I have not. But of course, I don't know the people from your world until you tell me about them.

Jonathan 4:25

Yeah, that's fair. Well, Vera is a well-known astronomer who changed astronomy as we know it forever by studying how galaxies moved.

Redge 4:35

Ooh, remarkable. But uh what is astronomy?

Jonathan 4:41

Astronomy is the study of outer space.

Redge 4:44

Space? I love space!

Jonathan 4:50

Yeah, I love space too, Redge. And so did Vera Rubin. Ever since she was a kid, she loved to gaze at the stars.

Redge 4:59

Don't we all?

Jonathan 5:00

Well, I certainly do. Vera Rubin was born as Vera Cooper on july twenty third, nineteen twenty eight in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Redge 5:10

That's almost a hundred years ago.

Jonathan 5:13

Yes, it was a very long time ago, and we've come a long way since then when it comes to understanding science and space.

Redge 5:21

Ooh, I bet.

Jonathan 5:22

Vera's parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who always encouraged and supported Vera's love of science and space. When she was fourteen, her father helped her build a telescope out of cardboard.

Redge 5:35

That's possible?

Jonathan 5:37

Yep. She used it to track meteors.

Redge 5:40

I want to build a cardboard telescope. Jonathan, can we build a cardboard telescope?

Jonathan 5:45

Of course. Right after we figure out how to accomplish your sunflower dream?

Redge 5:50

Ooh yes. Must run in circles

Jonathan 5:56

Uh, I shouldn't have mentioned that. Oh hold on. Before you start running again, don't you want to know what Vera does next?

Redge 6:05

Yes. Go on.

Vera at College

Redge 6:07 Jonathan 6:07

When Vera got older, she enrolled at Vassar, an all girls college, where her idol, Maria Mitchell, taught. Maria was the first American to discover a comet.

Redge 6:17

Did Maria discover the comet with a cardboard telescope?

Jonathan 6:22

I don't know, but I have a feeling she used a much more sophisticated tool. Vera graduated from Vassar in nineteen forty eight. She was the only astronomy major in the entire school.

Redge 6:34

No one else had an interest in space?

Jonathan 6:38

It's not that no one had an interest in space, but at the time, there were limited expectations put on young women. They were expected to get married and have children. If they had a career, they could either become a teacher or a secretary. Being an astronomer was out of the picture.

Redge 6:56

So what did she do?

Jonathan 6:58

She didn't let those limitations get in the way. She decided she'd keep going to school so she could pursue her passions. She applied to Princeton University to get her master's in astronomy.

Redge 7:10

Princeton? Is that a very good school?

Jonathan 7:13

Oh, it's an excellent school. One of the best schools in the United States. But they didn't allow her in.

Redge 7:19

What? Why not?

Jonathan 7:22

At the time, Princeton would not enroll women.

Redge 7:25

Oh, that's so unfair. All people and creatures should be given equal opportunity to pursue their passions, like growing the tallest sunflowers once upon a time as ever seen.

Jonathan 7:36

I fully agree with you, Redge.

Redge 7:39

So was that the end of her astronomy career?

Jonathan 7:42

Absolutely not. Like I said, Vera did not let limitations get in her way. Instead, she went to another top school in New York called Cornell. While she was there, she was able to study 109 different galaxies.

Redge 7:57

Amazing!

Jonathan 7:59

But even at Cornell, she dealt with some difficulties.

Redge 8:03

Like what?

Jonathan 8:04

She once presented her work to a male professor who put down her ideas.

Redge 8:09

How rude?

Jonathan 8:11

Very. Even still, he suggested that the work be presented to the American Astronomical Society, one of the largest gatherings of astrophysicists. Astrophysicists are scientists who study the stars, planets, and galaxies and try to understand how the universe works.

Redge 8:30

Oh, so she got to share her ideas with her peers. Wonderful.

Jonathan 8:36

Well, the male professor didn't think she should present it.

Redge 8:40

What do you mean?

Jonathan 8:42

Vera was pregnant with her first child at the time, and the gathering was one month after her child was to be born. He considered a newborn baby to be a limitation for women. The professor suggested he present the work and put it under his name.

Redge 8:58

That's preposterous.

Jonathan 9:01

Indeed. What do you

Nothing Stops Vera!

Jonathan 9:02

think she did?

Redge 9:04

Vera would never let a limitation get in her way.

Jonathan 9:07

Exactly. Vera took her one month old baby and drove through a snowstorm to attend the meeting.

Redge 9:15

They did get there safely, right?

Jonathan 9:18

Yes, they did. But when she arrived, she had this overwhelming feeling called imposter syndrome.

Redge 9:25

What's imposter syndrome?

Jonathan 9:27

It's this feeling people get when they think they don't belong in a specific place or doing a certain job because they feel like they're not qualified, important, or good enough.

Redge 9:39

I've certainly felt that before.

Jonathan 9:41

Most people have. But Vera didn't let her own negative feelings stop her. She went ahead and presented her work. And while it created a lot of discussion between the other scientists, she also received a lot of negative feedback.

Redge 9:56

That must have been discouraging.

Jonathan 9:58

It was. But do you think she stopped chasing her dream?

Redge 10:02

I bet she didn't.

Jonathan 10:04

She did not. Like her parents, her husband was very supportive when it came to her dreams. He encouraged Vera to keep going to school and get yet another degree in astronomy. This time, she got a PhD at Georgetown University and became Dr. Vera Rubin.

Redge 10:23

Ooh, how fancy. I always love a good title, and Dr. Rubin deserved it.

Jonathan 10:29

While she was getting her PhD, she studied how galaxies were placed throughout the universe. What she found was that they would clump together instead of being evenly distributed.

Redge 10:40

Because the galaxies want to be close because they're best friends? If we were galaxies, Jonathan, I'd clump together with you.

Jonathan 10:49

That's so sweet. I'd clump with you too, Redge.

Redge 10:52

Yes, I can be sweet when I want to. Even when I'm incredibly mad at the Carver's Community Garden Group.

Jonathan 11:01

Shall I go on?

Redge 11:02

Oh yes, go on.

Jonathan 11:04

So after getting her PhD

Redge 11:06

and becoming Doctor Vera Rubin,

Jonathan 11:09

Right. She became a professor and taught for many years at Georgetown University, teaching students about astronomy. Then, in 1965, she went to work at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC as an astronomer. But being a woman astronomer in the 1960s was tough.

Redge 11:29

More limitations?

Jonathan 11:31

Even more. When you're an astronomer and you need to study the stars, you need to go to an observatory.

Redge 11:38

What's that?

Jonathan 11:40

That's a place with special telescopes and tools that help you see the stars, planets, and everything else in space.

Redge 11:47

A far cry from cardboard.

Jonathan 11:50

Absolutely. Vera was admitted into the Palomar Observatory and was the first woman to ever be admitted, but when she got there she realized something.

Redge 12:00

What's that?

Jonathan 12:01

There were no women's restrooms. Men's only.

Redge 12:05

What? If you can't go to the bathroom in a building, how can you work there?

Jonathan 12:10

It's nearly impossible. Did Vera let that stop her?

Redge 12:14

No!

Jonathan 12:15

Once again, she didn't let it stop her. On the door of a men's restroom where I'm from, they have an image of a man to show people that the restroom is for men only. So Vera got a piece of paper and cut out a triangle and placed it on the male figure so it looked like he was wearing a skirt.

Redge 12:34

Hahaha How clever.

Jonathan 12:36

She turned the restroom into a place she could also use without asking for permission. That way she could work at the Palomar Observatory just like anyone else.

Redge 12:46

Go

Vera's Discovery

Redge 12:47

Vera!

Jonathan 12:48

Vera went on to work with another astronomer named Kent Ford to focus on the movements of spiral galaxies.

Redge 12:55

A spiral galaxy is a galaxy in the shape of a spiral?

Jonathan 12:59

Hey, that's right, Redge.

Redge 13:00

Ooh yes, I got it right.

Jonathan 13:02

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy. Vera wanted to study how galaxies rotate. She and Kent Ford used a special tool called a spectrometer to do that. They expected that objects in a galaxy would follow Newton's law of universal gravitation as they moved.

Redge 13:23

Uh what is uh Newton's law of universal gravitation? Such an official name. I'm impressed already.

Jonathan 13:31

Isaac Newton was a physicist from the 1600s. His law of universal gravitation says that gravity draws objects of mass closer together, and the closer they get, the faster they move. For instance, our solar system has the sun at its center. The planet nearest to the sun is Mercury, and it circles around the sun really fast.

Redge 13:55

Oh, like this, I'm going to run around the tree like Mercury.

Jonathan 13:59

Yes, great idea, Redge. Be Mercury. Run really, really fast.

Redge 14:14

I am the planet Mercury. Hear me roar!

Jonathan 14:21

Now let's imagine you're Neptune, the planet furthest from the Sun.

Redge 14:26

Okay, I'll go all the way out here. Uh, do I still run fast?

Jonathan 14:32

Neptune, because it's further away, moves almost nine times slower than Mercury. So run but nine times slower than you did before.

Redge 14:44

All right. The planet Neptune

Jonathan 15:04

Excellent job, Redge. You can stop now.

Redge 15:07

Aww, that was fun.

Jonathan 15:09

So Vera thought objects in a galaxy, which is made up of millions of solar systems, would move in the same way. Objects closer to the center would move really fast, like Mercury, and objects on the outer edges would move a lot slower, like Neptune. But that's not what she found.

Redge 15:28

Oh, what did she find?

Jonathan 15:30

Her research showed that objects toward the center of a galaxy and on its outer edges moved at pretty much the same speed.

Redge 15:38

Oh, that's odd.

Jonathan 15:40

It was. And many scientists agreed with you. They did not want to believe her.

Redge 15:45

It seems no matter what Dr. Rubin did, the other scientists doubted her.

Jonathan 15:49

It was totally unfair. Vera spent ten years proving her point. She looked at over sixty spiral galaxies and found that her research remained true. What her research also quite possibly proved is that there is something in the universe called dark matter.

Redge 16:07

Ooh, that sounds spooky.

Jonathan 16:10

It's not quite spooky, but it is mysterious. Scientists theorize that dark matter is this heavy, invisible stuff that holds all of the objects in the universe together.

Redge 16:22

Invisible?

Jonathan 16:23

That's right. We cannot see it, even with a telescope. Dark matter has gravity, but it does not contain light. That's why we can't see it, but it still has an effect on the objects around it.

Redge 16:35

And that's why objects at the edge of a galaxy move at the same speed.

Jonathan 16:41

Yes, exactly. We're not entirely sure if that theory is correct because we've never actually seen dark matter, and we don't truly know what it is. But there are scientists who believe that it exists, and that 84% of the stuff that makes up the universe is dark matter.

Redge 16:58

And doctor Vera Rubin helped prove all of this?

Jonathan 17:02

Yep, by 1980 she had so much data the other scientists couldn't deny it anymore.

Redge 17:09

Vera had to work nine times as hard, like Mercury speeding around the sun, or me racing around the tree, to prove she was just as smart as the other scientists.

Jonathan 17:20

Vera always said that there was no problem a man could solve that a woman couldn't.

Redge 17:25

Here, here! And there's no garden that another creature can plant that a hedgehog can't.

Jonathan 17:31

Absolutely, Redge. So what are you going to do? Will you let them stop you? Or will you be like doctor Vera Rubin?

Redge 17:40

I'm going to be like Vera. I'm going to start a petition and get a bunch of other Once Upon a Timeland residents to sign it and demand that they let all creatures into the community garden.

Jonathan 17:54

I think that's an excellent idea, Redge.

Redge 17:56

We are going to reach for the stars.

Jonathan 17:59

That's right.

Redge 18:00

We're going to make new discoveries.

Jonathan 18:03

Yeah.

Redge 18:04

We're going to grow a galaxy of flowers for all to enjoy.

Jonathan 18:10

Huzzah!

Redge 18:11

I just need a pen and paper.

Jonathan 18:13

Let's go find you some.

Credits, How to Reach Us

Jonathan 18:15

This has been a Jon in Character production. This Hidden Hero of History story was written by Rebecca Cunningham, edited and produced by Molly Murphy, and performed by Jonathan Cormur. Sound recording and production by Jermaine Hamilton at Pacific Grove Soundworks. We love hearing from you. Contact us at Dorktalesstorytime at gmail.com or try our one-way text feature as a safe way to reach out. You can find even more ways to reach us in the show notes. Now, go be the hero of your own story, and we'll see you next once upon a time.

Theme Song 18:51

So happy swap.