EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE: C.H. PAYNE, H.N. RUSSELL AND STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE IN EARLY QUANTITATIVE STELLAR SPECTROSCOPY

摘要

The ionization equilibrium theory of Meghnad Saha was hardly four years old, and still far from general acceptance, when a graduate student at Harvard University, Cecilia H. Payne, applied it to calibrate the Harvard spectral sequence as a temperature sequence. Payne indeed utilized Saha's relation not in its original form, but in ts more acceptable form based upon a statistical mechanical re-derivation by E.A. Milne and R.H. Fowler. Her temperature calibration was, therefore, not at issue for her mentors at Harvard, such as Harlow Shapley, and her external reviewer for her Ph.D., Shapley's former teacher, the influential Princeton astronomer, Henry Norris Russell. Other conclusions she drew from her analysis, moreover, went beyond the evidence, they felt, and so she had to moderate her most provocative finding: that hydrogen dominated the atmospheres of the stars. She did so, however, in a manner that was designed to record for posterity that she was the first to make this observation, right or In so doing, Payne can be credited with profound political acumen, a quality that deserves more attention in ory of twentieth century astronomy.