Silent Questions with people. Silent Deals with the universe. How do people without good teachers and big sisters learn this stuff?

“That is the smartest thing I’ve heard all day,” I said. “And that’s saying a lot because we talked about Albert Einstein in school today.”

Nonny laughed.

It’s my favorite thing, making Nonny laugh.

No Payne, No Gain

Here is what I know about Cecilia Payne:

1. She was the first student, girl or boy, to get a PhD from the Harvard College Observatory, and the first female department chair at Harvard.
2. She was the first person to discover the chemicals and elements inside stars.
3. A professor told her that her research was wrong, and then published the same results four years later. He’s the one who got credit for finding out about stars.
4. She is not in my textbook.

That meant she was the perfect person to use for both my second-semester class project and the Smithsonian contest. A small, whiny voice in my head kept trying to remind me that I was competing with high school juniors and seniors for that grand prize. That didn’t scare me for too long, though, because I knew I would work harder than anyone. I’d write the best letter the Smithsonian people had ever read, and not just for a seventh grader. Then Nonny and Thomas and the new baby would be set. Then, after all these years of Mom and Dad and Nonny helping me, I’d actually be able to give something back. Something great.

If I was going to use Cecilia for my letter, though, and do the most amazing awareness project the Smithsonian had ever seen, there was more to learn. I wanted to test out an idea before moving on to this semester’s person.

I flipped open my computer, tapping my toe on the floor out of habit. I put my cup of green grapes next to the computer on my desk. Tippity-tap on the keyboard and pretty soon I was on the Harvard website. Maybe Cecilia wasn’t in my textbook, but after hearing about her on the documentary, I wondered what Harvard had to say. I typed in her name in the Harvard website search bar.

Boom. A whole special astronomy lecture series named after Cecilia. That seemed pretty nice of the Harvard people.

I kept looking. I clicked around and found the list of people who have been Astronomy Department chairs at Harvard. And guess what I found out.

There have been seventeen Astronomy Department chairs at Harvard.

Sixteen of them are men.

I think that makes Cecilia even more special.

The Astronomy Department chairs seem like cool guys. I mean, anybody who studies astronomy for their job has to be pretty cool, right? I wondered, though, if more girls would want to study the stars if they knew about Cecilia.

One thing about me—I’ve had to stay home sick from school a little more often than other girls, but I think it’s worth it if it means watching documentaries about the world and the super-cool people in it. Turner syndrome meant I had a higher number of ear infections than most kids and an immune system whose only defense weapon seemed to be a squirt gun, but that was okay. Knowing Cecilia was worth a little flu, any day.