In January, the American Astronomical Society hosted a panel to discuss how the Vera C. Rubin Observatory would transform scientific studies of dark matter, dark energy and the faintest corners of the cosmos.
All six panelists, each holding a leadership role related to the observatory, were women.
The message, intentional or not, was clear: The legacy of the astronomer Vera C. Rubin, for whom the observatory was named, was not just the way her work revolutionized scientists’ understanding of the universe. It was also the way Dr. Rubin charted a path for women and other historically underrepresented groups in science to do the same.
“The universe is universal,” Sandrine Thomas, the deputy director of construction at the observatory, said at the panel.
The telescope is now poised to begin the widest, deepest scan of the southern sky in an altered political climate, one in which American science is facing sharp cuts to funding, research project cancellations and rollbacks of programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I.
Astronomers worry about what that means for the future of the observatory, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation and was renamed in 2019 near the end of the first Trump administration for Dr. Rubin.
“She was the ultimate role model for women in astronomy in the generation after her,” said Jacqueline Mitton, an astronomer based in England and an author of a biography of Dr. Rubin.
That the observatory bears her name seems to have “inspired its leadership to embrace what she stood for,” Dr. Mitton added, which gives “ongoing reality to her legacy.”
In the 1970s, Vera Rubin, with her colleague Kent Ford, deduced from the swirling motion of distant galaxies that there was more to the universe than what met the telescopic eye, an invisible substance known as dark matter.
“It is one of the major achievements of modern cosmology,” said Sandra Faber, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who spent a summer as Dr. Rubin’s assistant. “Gravitationally, it’s the dog that wags the tail of everything else in the universe.”
But Dr. Rubin faced barriers as one of the few women in her field. She was discouraged from pursuing a career in astronomy and was denied access to state-of-the-art telescopes. Astronomers initially dismissed her evidence of dark matter. And though her work pioneered a new understanding of the universe, she never won a Nobel Prize, to the chagrin of many.
Many astronomers described Dr. Rubin as a staunch supporter of other women in the field.
“She will be director of the observatory one day,” Dr. Rubin wrote in a recommendation letter for Dr. Faber, who would go on to become the first female astronomer at the Lick Observatory in California. Decades later, Dr. Faber would fulfill that prophecy, in a sense, when she served as interim director of the University of California Observatories.
Astronomy and astrophysics aim to be more gender inclusive today. Part of that effort has been recognizing those whose contributions were overlooked. At federal science agencies, it has included the choice to name the observatory after Dr. Rubin, and a NASA space telescope after Nancy Grace Roman, the agency’s first chief of astronomy.
“Everyone’s heard of Einstein and Feynman and all these other male physicists,” said Leanne Guy, the data management scientist at the Rubin Observatory, who did not learn about Dr. Rubin until well into her scientific career. That’s telling, she said, “on how the contributions of women scientists just haven’t really been at the forefront of anything.”
The new observatory was formerly named the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. But in 2019, two members of Congress, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and Jenniffer González-Colón of Puerto Rico, led the charge to change the observatory’s name in honor of Dr. Rubin. Their bill became law in December 2019, and the National Science Foundation announced the renaming the following January.
Astronomers celebrated the decision as a fitting commemoration of Dr. Rubin, who died in 2016.
“I thought, it’s about time,” said Hiranya Peiris, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Peiris noted that though the number of women in science had increased during her career, the statistics are still not where she would like to see them. Astronomy’s demographics are better than in physics, she said, but “you still see a lack of senior women in very high-profile roles.”
Some viewers of the Rubin panel in January interpreted six women representing the observatory as a sea change.
Dr. Guy, one of the panelists, emphasized that she and her colleagues hadn’t been chosen to speak because they were women but because they had earned their positions.
“When I started as a university student, you never would have found a panel like this,” she said. “This is a really visible and concrete reflection of the times.”
The team running the Rubin has a history of prioritizing the values encapsulated in D.E.I. It has provided resources for child care at scientific meetings, recruited researchers from minority-serving institutions and worked to develop tools for visually impaired astronomers. Rubin’s education and public outreach program, designed to engage a diverse audience in cosmic discovery, is among the first to be fully funded in the construction phase of an observatory.
But as the Rubin Observatory ushers in a new era of science, so too has the Trump administration.
Four days after the panel in January, President Trump issued an executive order that called for an end to D.E.I. across the federal government, citing “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
Sweeping changes ensued across scientific agencies as they worked to comply with the order. Institutions took down webpages that had once expressed a commitment to D.E.I. Many research grants including D.E.I. activities were canceled by federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation.
Rubin was not exempt from the changes. Private messaging channels set up for L.G.B.T.Q. members involved in the observatory were temporarily retired. Language disappeared from the observatory’s website that described science as male-dominated and noted the observatory’s work to increase participation from historically excluded groups.
In May, the Trump administration proposed a budget that, if passed by Congress, would cut funding to the National Science Foundation by 56 percent. A significant reason for that reduction, per the budget request, was the elimination of D.E.I. efforts.
Later that month, staff members at the Rubin Observatory expressed concern about the future of scientific funding but were hesitant to speculate about what that might mean for the telescope.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Alan Strauss, the head of Rubin’s education and public outreach team. But so far, he said, his team has not received any pushback about their work, even as other federally funded STEM education programs have been cut.
“I’m not picking it up,” Dr. Strauss said. “What I’m getting is a lot of enthusiasm for this stuff.”
Dr. Guy said she did not plan to change her approach as a member of the observatory. “Our uniting principle is science,” she said.
Astronomers remain cautiously optimistic about Rubin’s future — both in continuing to promote the values of the woman it is named for and that the observatory will be able to reach its goals, even in the fraught funding landscape.
Dr. Rubin’s legacy, they said, will live on.
Katrina Miller is a science reporter for The Times based in Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago.
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