photo #8475555

In 1965, Vera Rubin arrived at Palomar Observatory only to be told she had no place there. “No ladies’ room,” they said. Unbothered, she taped a paper skirt over the stick figure on the men's restroom and declared: “There. Now you do.” Then she walked in—stayed in science for five decades—and changed how we see the cosmos. From building a cardboard telescope with her dad to being denied Princeton for simply being female, she kept her gaze skyward. Dismissed as “a young mother with her own theory of the universe,” she never stopped pushing forward. While the world doubted her, she kept mapping galaxies. Where others saw barriers, she saw blank pages to write her own story. Her discovery? Galaxies weren’t behaving—spinning too fast—unless something unseen held them together. Something massive, yet invisible. Dark matter. Because of Vera, we now know most of the universe is made of something we can’t see. No medals could measure her impact—though a Nobel would’ve fit. She wasn’t chasing glory. She was chasing mystery. “Don’t let anyone keep you down for silly reasons like who you are,” she said. “The real prize is finding something new out there