Cecilia Payne and the art of remix
I am currently reading the biography of the British-born, American astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne by Donovan Moore titled “What stars are made of”. For those unfamiliar with her legacy, Cecilia Payne revolutionized astrophysics by discovering, as a graduate student, that most stars are mainly made of hydrogen and helium, which turned out to be the most abundant elements in the universe. At the time she made this discovery, scientists believed that all matter in the universe was uniform, meaning that it is made out of the same material as Earth (correct), and in the same proportions (wrong).
Cecilia Payne proved them wrong and brought science one step closer to the advent of nuclear astrophysics. Surprisingly, she admitted in her Ph.D. thesis that the results are not realistic (“I am convinced that there is something seriously wrong with the present theory.”), so that she will be granted her degree - the discrimination of women is a very interesting topic that deserves a dedicated article.
The book is very nicely written and provides a great overview of the scientific status quo of the 1920s. As I was going through her story, I couldn’t help myself from thinking that Cecilia Payne was what people say “the right person in the right place at the right time”, and I could also add “with the right tools”.
The discovery she made required some very well defined skills, and of course a deep understanding of (astro)physics. Even though she was intrigued by physics and astronomy, Cecilia studied botany in her freshman year at Cambridge, which gave her an edge in classifying stellar spectra few years later. She was extremely lucky to take courses and do lab work at the Cavendish Laboratory under Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics. She had the opportunity to interact with many Nobel laureates and she learned about the latest advancements in the understanding of atomic spectra from Niels Bohr himself, while he was visiting Cambridge in 1922. Cecilia also worked closely with Arthur Eddington, who was one of the world leaders in astronomy, before moving to Harvard. Finally, in the U.S. she had the opportunity to apply all this knowledge to the vast amount of stellar spectra that the Harvard College Observatory has collected and classified over the years (by its well-celebrated “computers”).
What Cecilia did with all these skills and knowledge was essentially remixing. I am using Kirby Ferguson’s definition of remix to explain how new ideas are produced. Ferguson argues that the elements of remixing can be summarized in the following mantra, and can also be applied in art and wherever new ideas are made:
Copy, Transform, Combine
Let’s remix with Cecilia! She combined her classification skills from botany with her knowledge of atomic physics from the Cavendish (and also her study of the work of Meghnad Saha) to transform the Harvard stellar spectra from just a bunch of photographs to the composition fingerprints of the stars. The copy aspect might be contentious in an academic framework, because it is associated with plagiarism, however referencing previous works is essentially an act of copying. The next quote summarizes perfectly what Cecilia did:
Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable
-Henry Ford
She had all the tools to make this groundbreaking discovery, and despite all the difficulties she faced, she managed to do it. Would someone else do it if not her? Probably. In the history of science there are instances where a breakthrough happens almost at the same time in different places, however the experience and background knowledge of Cecilia Payne definitely gave her an edge.