Cecilia Payne

By Matthew Gardner
September 28, 2018

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […]

Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”
 —
Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.
Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.
Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

Eva Peron

Although Eva Peron died quite young she was a major influence in Argentine politics and improving the lives of the working class and the poor.

Eva Perón was born on May 7, 1919, in Los Toldos, Argentina. After moving to Buenos Aires in the 1930s, she had some success as an actress. in 1945, she married Juan Perón, who became president of Argentina the following year. Eva Perón used her position as first lady to fight for women's suffrage and improving the lives of the poor, and became a legendary figure in Argentine politics. She died in 1952.

Husband Juan Domingo Perón  (8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine lieutenant general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President, he was thrice elected President of Argentina, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown in a coup d'état, and then from October 1973 until his death in July 1974.

 During his first presidential term (1946–52), Perón was supported by his second wife, Eva Duarte ("Evita"), and the two were immensely popular among many Argentines. Eva died in 1952, and Perón was elected to a second term, serving from 1952 until 1955. During the following period of two military dictatorships, interrupted by two civilian governments, the Peronist party was outlawed and Perón was exiled. When the left-wing Peronist Hector Cámpora was elected President in 1973, Perón returned to Argentina and was soon after elected President for a third time. His third wife, María Estela Martínez, known as Isabel Perón, was elected as Vice President on his ticket and succeeded him as President upon his death in 1974.

 Although they are still controversial figures, Juan and Evita Perón are nonetheless considered icons by the Peronists. The Peróns' followers praised their efforts to eliminate poverty and to dignify labour, while their detractors considered them demagogues and dictators. The Peróns gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, which in present-day Argentina is represented mainly by the Justicialist Party.

Matthew Shepard



On the night of Tuesday, October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young, twenty-one-year-old homosexual male, went into a bar alone for a drink at the Fireside Bar after attending a meeting at the University of Wyoming’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Association. Inside, he met two men in their twenties who posed as homosexual men and lured Shepard outside. There, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson kidnapped Shepard at gunpoint and drove to a remote area outside Laramie, a small town of 26,000 people in rural Wyoming. They tortured Shepard and left him to die tied to a buck-rail fence in the cold more than 7,000 feet above sea level.

He was found the following morning by a mountain biker. Transferred to a hospital in critical condition, Shepard, a native of Casper, Wyoming, died on October 12 from fatal injuries incurred during the attack. The town of Laramie later passed a bias crime ordinance in response to Shepard’s death. His killers, McKinney and Henderson, each received two consecutive life sentences in prison.

Shepard was one of thirty-four gay men and women killed in 1998 for their sexual orientation, and his death in particular became a catalyst for calls for hate crime legislation as a violation of basic human rights. Activists defined a hate crime as any crime perpetuated on an individual because of the appearance of particular characteristics or because of one’s apparent membership in a particular group. In other words, such crimes overtly functioned to deny a person’s access to human rights. As of 2000, twenty-one states had passed hate crime legislation that covered sexual orientation in their definition. Of the hate crimes reported to the FBI that same year, those crimes based on one’s sexual orientation accounted for the third highest reason for the crimes, at 11 percent, falling behind race with the highest percentage and religion as second.

We could leave Mathew at this point as his death was a catalyst for change, but there is  more.

In the aftermath of Matt’s death, Judy and Dennis Shepard started the Matthew Shepard Foundation to honor his life and aspirations. Because of the tragedy endured by the Shepards, the beginning principle of the Foundation was to teach parents with children who may be questioning their sexuality to love and accept them for who they are, and to not throw them away.

The Laramie Project, Moisés Kaufman's internationally successful play, began one month after a horrific crime occurred in the city of Laramie, Wyoming. Members of Kaufman's theatrical group, Tectonic Theater Project, volunteered to travel with their director from New York City to the wide-open ranges of the West in order to gather in-person interviews from Laramie's populace. The idea was to capture the emotions, reflections, and reactions of the people who were most closely related to the crime—a brutal beating and subsequent death of a young college student. Was this a hate crime? Or was it a random, senseless assault and robbery?

No matter which, Kaufman's objective was to learn through the town folks' raw responses how the issues of homosexuality, religion, class, economics, education, and non-traditional lifestyles were reflected through this crime. How did this crime define the culture, not just of this Western town, but of the entire United States?

The play is based on over 400 interviews with about 100 Laramie residents, as well as journal entries from the members of Tectonic Theater Project and Kaufman, as they reflect on their own reactions to the crime and to the interviews they carried out. It is structured as if it were a documentary as it attempts to re-enact the events that occurred on that fateful night.

The play opened at the Denver Theater Center in March 2000 and two months later moved to Union Square Theater in New York, where it ran for five months. Later, HBO, working with the Sundance Theater Lab, turned the play into a film, which Kaufman also directed. It was presented as the opening-night film at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, with Robert Redford, the founder of Sundance, making a special appearance to introduce the movie. For his work, Kaufman received two Emmy Award nominations for director and writer of the film.

The play was also acted out in many drama classes in many educational institutions across North America, at least, the ones who were allowed to do so. It was not uncommon for administrators to shut down rehearsals and productions up to and including the opening night when the theatres were filled and waiting for the show to go in.

This powerful, raw play was the target of middle American religious groups, educators and people in general. Despite all of the efforts of so many groups to shut down the Laramie Project, the project and Mathew Shepard continue to educate us and cause us to question ourselves, what would we have done?

Roméo Dallaire

 

Roméo Dallaire is a retired lieutenant-general, Senator, and celebrated humanitarian. In 1993, LGen Dallaire was appointed Force Commander for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), where he witnessed the country descend into chaos and genocide, leading to the deaths of more than 800,000 Rwandans.

Since his retirement, he has become an outspoken advocate for human rights, genocide prevention, mental health and war-affected children. He founded The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, an organization committed to ending the use of child soldiers worldwide, and is the author of two best-selling books.

LGen Dallaire provided the United Nations with information about the planned massacre, which ultimately took more than 800,000 lives in less than 100 days yet permission to intervene was denied and the UN withdrew its peacekeeping forces.  LGen Dallaire, along with a small contingent of Ghanaian soldiers and military observers, disobeyed the command to withdraw and remained in Rwanda to fulfill their ethical obligation to protect those who sought refuge with the UN forces.

His courage and leadership during this mission earned him the Meritorious Service Cross, the United States Legion of Merit, the Aegis Award on Genocide Prevention, and the affection and admiration of people around the globe.  His defiant dedication to humanity during that mission is well-documented (e.g. The Last Just Man, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, The Lion, The Fox, and The Eagle), as are the personal consequences he continues to suffer and his subsequent commitment to fellow victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Upon being medically released from the Canadian Army in 2000, LGen Dallaire has served on the UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention, as Special Advisor to the Minister of Veterans Affairs Canada, as Advisor to the Minister of National Defense, and as Special Advisor to the Minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency on matters relating to War Affected Children.

He is author of two best-selling books.  His harrowing experiences in Rwanda are detailed in Shake Hands with the Devil – the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2004 and the “Shaughnessy Cohen Prize” for political writing awarded by the Writers’ Trust of Canada.  It provided the basis for an Emmy Award-winning documentary as well as a major motion picture of the same name; it has also been entered into evidence in war crimes tribunals trying the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

LGen Dallaire’s most recent book, They Fight Like Soldiers; They Die Like Children – the Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers, introduces the Child Soldier phenomenon and solutions to eradicate it: a mission to which LGen Dallaire has committed the rest of his life.

Sergei Anatolievich Preminin

 

To Russian Seaman Sergei Preminin, who has saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe.

Sergei Anatolievich Preminin
18 October 1965 – 3 October 1986

Sergei was a Russian sailor who sacrificed his life on the nuclear submarine K-219 when he manually prevented an impending nuclear meltdown by means of a reactor SCRAM. (an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor.)

Military Awards:
Order of the Red Star (posthumously) by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (23 July 1987).
Hero of Russia (posthumously), Medal #409, President's decree number 844 of 7 August 1997.
Medal of the Order of service to the Fatherland I degree (31 October 2003, posthumously)

Monuments:
In the city of Gadzhiyevo, a monument was erected, and a road and two schools were named after him.
In the city of Krasawino, a monument was erected in his honor.
In Preminin's native Skornyakovo, a marble plaque commemorates his heroism with an inscription that reads: "To Russian Seaman Sergei Preminin, who has saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe."
Street:
In Vologda in 2004 named a street in south part of city in memory of Sergey.
In Vologda oblast 2 school named in memory of Sergey (one school in hometown Krasavino)

Sergei was a Russian sailor who sacrificed his life on the nuclear submarine K-219 when he manually prevented an impending nuclear meltdown by means of a reactor SCRAM. (an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor.)

On 3 October 1986, while on patrol 680 miles (1,090 km) northeast of Bermuda, the K-219 suffered an explosion and fire in missile compartment VI.[2] Three sailors were killed outright in the explosion. The vessel surfaced to permit its twin nuclear reactors to be shut down.

The remaining crew was assigned to the bow or the stern, as far away from the explosion site as possible, and had been issued gas masks. Soon after, the temperature indicator showed a very high temperature at the nuclear reactors, the flow of coolant in the reactor gradually decreased further. This meant that a meltdown was imminent. However, the reactor shutdown could not proceed as planned from the control station; the trigger of the control rods had been damaged, by either the expanding gases or the intense heat.

For this reason, the reactor SCRAM had to be carried out manually, directly into the reactor chamber. This also meant that the men doing this would be exposed to strong radiation, since the on-board contamination coveralls were not designed to protect the sailors from the strong gamma and neutron radiation directly in the vicinity of the reactor core.

The officer of the reactor department, Nikolay Belikov, and his subordinate - sailor Sergei Preminin - went into the reactor chamber to complete the reactor SCRAM. They dropped three of four rods, but because of the high temperature (about 70°C or 158°F) Belikov lost consciousness. Preminin had to put the fourth rod in place. This was a job that required great physical strength, as the holders of the rods were now severely deformed by the heat.

When he tried to leave the reactor chamber, he could not open the hatch, as a pressure difference had been established between the reactor chamber and the reactor control station. After further attempts from other colleagues to force open the hatch from outside, Preminin died in the hot reactor chamber, as the rest of the crew had to move further towards the rear to escape the poisonous gases that spread out in the boat.

Meena Keshwar Kkamal

MEENA (1956-1987) was born on February 27, 1956 in Kabul. During her school days, students in Kabul and other Afghan cities were deeply engaged in social activism and rising mass movements. She left the university to devote herself as a social activist to organizing and educating women. In pursuit of her cause for gaining the right of freedom of expression and conducting political activities, Meena laid the foundation of RAWA in 1977.

This organization was meant to give voice to the deprived and silenced women of Afghanistan. She started a campaign against the Russian forces and their puppet regime in 1979 and organized numerous processions and meetings in schools, colleges and Kabul University to mobilize public opinion.

Another great service rendered by her for the Afghan women is the launching of a bilingual magazine,  Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message) in 1981. Through this magazine RAWA has been projecting the cause of Afghan women boldly and effectively. Payam-e-Zan has constantly exposed the criminal nature of fundamentalist groups. Meena also established  Watan Schools for refugee children, a hospital and handicraft centers for refugee women in Pakistan to support Afghan women financially.

At the end of 1981, by invitation of the French Government Meena represented the Afghan resistance movement at the French Socialist Party Congress. The Soviet delegation at the Congress, headed by Boris Ponamaryev, shamefacedly left the hall as participants cheered when Meena started waving a victory sign. Besides France, she also visited several other European countries and met their prominent personalities.

Her active social work and effective advocacy against the views of the fundamentalists and the puppet regime provoked the wrath of the Russians and the fundamentalist forces alike and she was assassinated by agents of KHAD (Afghanistan branch of KGB) and their fundamentalist accomplices in Quetta, Pakistan, on February 4,1987.

Meena gave 12 years of her short but brilliant life to struggle for her homeland and her people. She had a strong belief that despite the darkness of illiteracy, ignorance of fundamentalism, and corruption and decadence of sell outs imposed on women under the name of freedom and equality, finally that half of population will be awaken and cross the path towards freedom, democracy and women's rights. The enemy was rightly shivering with fear by the love and respect that Meena was creating within the hearts of our people.

Malalai Kakar

The woman in the burqua is an Afghani martyr who put her life on the line for democracy and women’s rights. Her name was Malalai Kakar, and she was Kandahar’s first female police officer .

The mother of six was considered an iconic figure around the world for her efforts in protecting Afghani women from the terror of the Taliban. After following in the footsteps of her police officer father and brothers in 1982, Kakar eventually rose to the rank of captain and became the head of the department of crimes against women. She was a protector, and her burqa was what allowed her to do her job.

Photographer, Lana Šlezić met Kakar while she was living in Afghanistan and working on a photography book about the country’s women from 2004 to 2006. She remembers Kakar as “an incredible person” and “a light at the end of the tunnel.”

“She was my hope for Afghani woman in the future,” Šlezić says, “Malalai was the only woman they could turn to.”

Šlezić met with Kakar multiple times, both in her home and at the police station. “I remember one woman knocking on her door with her white burqa covered in blood because she had been beaten,” Šlezić says, recalling how local women were constantly in need of Kakar’s help. One day Šlezić even joined her on the job to confront a group of kidnappers who had taken a young girl. She remembers Kakar throwing a burqa over her uniform, jumping in a truck, and entering the kidnappers hideout with her pistol drawn, eventually rescuing the girl. “She was a hero,” Šlezić says.

In the Afghanistan of the Taliban, the woman named Malalai Kakar appeared like a guardian angel and for a brief  moment, shone bright until the Taliban fatally shot her in September of 2008.