New Song: "Cecilia Payne" (Patreon)

There's a woman who's watching the sun today

And she thinks it's not made of the stuff they say

All the men think the Earth and Sun are the same

But if that's the case, why aren't we all aflame?

She has stood here before, determined to explain,

Sorting out the fantastic from the mere mundane,

And she never got credit for her giant brain,

So now I get to tell you of Cecilia Payne....

There's a woman who's watching the sun today

She could not go to college, her mom wouldn't pay

earned a scholarship, Cambridge university

But because she's a girl, they gave her no degree.

She moved to the U.S., like it was foreordained

Worked at Harvard then Radcliffe, learning while she trained,

On her wall an astronomy degree is framed

And the name on the sheepskin was Cecilia Payne....

She discovered the most abundant element

In the whole of the universe was hydrogen

Henry Russell said don't you publish, save your work,

Four years later, he took the credit, what a jerk

She has endless Hypotheses to entertain....

All the stuff of the universe, complex and plain

She is bridging the sacred and the most profane

And she's known the world over as Cecilia Payne....

Studied stars of high luminosity,

Named an officer of the university

The Phillips Professor of Astronomy

Named Academy fellow in 1943

She’s the reason we understand variable stars,

She broke through the glass ceiling, now her ceiling's ours

There's a woman who's watching the sky today....

Who knows what she'll discover in the nebulae...

She has stood here before, determined to explain

All the stuff of the universe, complex and plain,

She deserves all the credit for her giant brain

And she'll go down in history as Cecilia Payne.

Music: "King of Pain" by Sting