Only 15% of scientists working in the field of astronomy in the world are women and this number continues to increase day by day.

Let's take a look at the stories of female astronomers who have attracted attention with their work to date, inspiring young women who want to realize themselves in the field of space sciences:

1. Vera Cooper Rubin

Astronomer Vera Cooper Rubin, who started studies to study spiral galaxies in the early 70s, discovered that the movement of galaxies is much faster than previously thought, together with Kent Ford, with whom she works. Until then, it was thought that the gravitational force of the stars in the galaxy held them together, but Rubin was the first to state that an invisible mass acts as a kind of glue and presented the idea of ​​invisible dark matter to the scientific world. He was awarded dozens of awards for his work on how galaxies and the universe were formed. Vera Cooper Rubin passed away in 2016 at the age of 88.

2. Carolyn Porco

Considered one of the stars of the world of astronomy, Carolyn Porco took part in Voyager missions to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 80s and is considered one of the world's leading experts on planetary rings and moons. Porco, which still leads space imaging studies, continues to inspire astronomy lovers with TED talks.

3. Nancy Grace Roman

1925 yılında doğan Nancy Grace Roman, 11 yaşından beri astronomi sevdalısıydı. Chicago 

After graduating from the University, she began serving as NASA's first chief of astronomy, becoming the first woman to hold an executive position there. When he passed away in 2018 at the age of 93, he pioneered the development of telescopes to help detect the electromagnetic radiation of stars. Thanks to the work that has enabled the existence of many telescopes, including Hubble, astronomers can gain in-depth knowledge of how stars form and evolve.

4. Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell made history as the scientist who discovered the first pulsars (neutron stars) with her work with the school's telescope when she was just 24 years old as a doctoral student at Cambridge University. Although he was the first to observe and analyze pulsars with precision, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, not himself, but his advisor Antonius Hewish and astronomer Martin Ryle. In 2014, Burnell became the first woman president of the Royal Academy of Edinburgh and the only woman to win the Herschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society for "research of outstanding value in observational astrophysics".

5. Margaret J. Geller

Margaret J. Geller, who set out with the dream of mapping everything visible and invisible in the universe, is one of the pioneers of astronomy with her work in the field of cartography. In addition to being deemed worthy of many awards for his maps, he paves the way for astronomers after him by developing and applying the methods used to measure galaxies and the distribution of matter in the universe, with his studies that enable us to understand the near universe.