Rebecca Elson facts for kids
Rebecca Anne Wood Elson (born January 2, 1960 – died May 19, 1999) was a Canadian-American astronomer and writer. She was known for her important work studying star clusters and for her poetry.
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Early Life and Learning
Rebecca "Becky" Anne Wood Elson was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her father, John Albert Elson, was a geologist and a professor at McGill University. As a teenager, Rebecca often traveled across Canada with her father while he did field research for his geology work.
Rebecca started college in 1976 when she was 16. She first studied Biology, especially Genetics. Later, she changed her focus to Astronomy. She earned her first degree from Smith College. She also spent time studying at St Andrews University in Scotland.
Rebecca then earned a master's degree in Physics from the University of British Columbia. During this time, she visited the University of St Andrews and the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. These visits sparked her interest in globular clusters, which are large groups of stars.
From 1982 to 1986, Rebecca worked on her PhD at the Institute of Astronomy and Christ’s College at Cambridge University. She received special awards to help her with her studies.
For her PhD, she spent time at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra and Siding Spring observatory in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. She worked with a famous astronomer named Ken Freeman. Her PhD research focused on star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud. She helped discover something new about how these star clusters are shaped.
Career in Astronomy
After her PhD, Rebecca Elson became a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study. She continued her work on star clusters. She had planned to use the new Hubble Space Telescope. However, the telescope's launch was delayed after the Challenger space shuttle accident. So, she used ground-based telescopes instead.
In 1987, she was the main author of a big article about star clusters for a science journal. After that, she received a special fellowship at Radcliffe College in 1989. There, she taught creative writing. She also taught a Harvard course about science and ethics.
In 1989, she was the youngest astronomer chosen to be part of a major review of astronomy by the US National Academy of Sciences.
In the early 1990s, Rebecca returned to the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK. She worked there for the rest of her life. Her research focused on globular clusters, how chemicals change in space (called chemical evolution), and how galaxies form.
When the Hubble Space Telescope first sent back images in April 1990, astronomers were disappointed. The images were blurry because of a problem with the telescope's mirror. But once Hubble was fixed, it sent back very clear images. This sped up research a lot. Rebecca's team won a large amount of time to use the Hubble telescope for their observations.
Author and Poet
Rebecca Elson wrote many poems and essays from her teenage years until shortly before she passed away. These writings were published after her death in a book called A Responsibility to Awe. The book came out in 2001 in the UK and 2002 in the US.
Her husband, Angelo di Cintio, and a friend, Anne Berkeley, chose the works for the book. Many of her writings talk about big ideas in physics and astronomy. She often used these ideas in fun or surprising ways to explore human feelings and experiences. Other writings showed her joy for life or her thoughts about her coming death. The Economist magazine chose her collection as one of the best books of the year.
Rebecca Elson was the main author or helped write seventy scientific papers and articles during her short career.
Death and Legacy
Rebecca Elson was diagnosed with a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma when she was 29. After treatment, the cancer went away for a while. In 1996, she married an Italian artist named Angelo di Cintio. However, the cancer returned soon after. Rebecca died from the disease in Cambridge in May 1999, at the age of 39.
Rebecca Elson's life story was added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on August 13, 2020. This was part of a special collection about astronomers and mathematicians.
Selected Works
- A Responsibility to Awe (2001) ISBN: 1-903039-54-1
Images for kids
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Rebecca Elson (1987) in front of a blackboard with science formulas.
See also
In Spanish: Rebecca Elson para niños
