Pioneering Cornellians often make change—but for the first time, you’ll find a Cornellian on your change!
Vera Cooper Rubin, MS ’51, a groundbreaking astronomer whose life’s work included procuring the scientific evidence to prove the existence of dark matter, is being featured in the 2025 cohort of the American Women Quarters Program.
According to Big Red history expert Corey Ryan Earle ’07, it’s believed to be the first time a Cornellian has ever been depicted on a circulating U.S. coin.
“Being featured on a U.S. quarter is a big deal,” says Jay Beeton ’70, BS ’71, former director of the American Numismatic Association’s Money Museum in Colorado Springs, CO. “That’s an honor largely reserved for U.S. presidents, or iconic images.”
Rubin, who died in 2016 at age 88, gathered decades of data on the unseen material that binds galaxies and governs their rotation—and which is believed to make up more than 80% of the universe’s mass.
In 1985, the body of work she presented to the International Astronomical Union fundamentally shifted scientific conceptions of the universe and opened new directions for research in both astronomy and physics.
She went on to win both the U.S. National Medal of Science and the Gold Medal from the U.K.’s Royal Astronomical Society.
Read more at https://lnkd.in/gJ5wPp3a.
