Born: 23 July 1928, United States
Died: 24 December 2016
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Vera Cooper
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
1928, July 23 Born Vera Cooper, Philadelphia, Pa.
1938 Moved to Washington, D.C.
1945 Graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School, Washington, D.C.
1948 B.A., Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
1948 Married Robert Rubin (died 2008)
1951 M.A., Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
1954 Ph.D., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., George Gamow, dissertation advisor
1954-1955 Instructor of mathematics and physics, Montgomery Junior College, Takoma Park, Maryland
1955-1962 Research associate and lecturer in astronomy, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
1962-1965 Assistant professor in astronomy, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
1963-1964 Research assistant for E. Margaret and Geoffrey R. Burbidge, University of California, San Diego
1965-2001 Staff member in astronomy, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington. With fellow staff member and spectrometer innovator, W. Kent Ford, Jr., began measuring movements of galaxies. The data Rubin collected and interpreted provided the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter.
1981 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
1993 Awarded the National Medal of Science
1996 Awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal
1997 Published Bright Galaxies Dark Matters. Woodbury, N.Y.: American Institute of Physics
2001-circa 2013 Senior fellow, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington.
2016, Dec. 25 Died, Princeton, N.J.
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