- A British-born American astronomer
- She discovered that stars consist mainly of hydrogen and helium and proposed that stars should be classified according to their temperatures. Her 1925 thesis, entitled Stellar Atmospheres, was described as “the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy.” She began a revolution in astrophysics by calculating the abundance of chemical elements from stellar spectra.
- However, Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, convinced Payne that her work was wrong; he believed that stars had the same composition as Earth. In 1929, he admitted that Payne was actually right.
- She moved to the United States to study at Harvard College because she thought that there were more opportunities for women in astronomy here.
- In 1956, Payne became an astronomy professor at Harvard and the chairman of the astronomy department. She achieved two Harvard firsts: she was the first female professor and the first female department chair.