Vera Rubin

My childhood bedroom - if childhood could be about ten years old - had a bed which was under windows which faced north. At about age 10, I started watching the stars just move through the night.

— Vera Rubin

Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting.

— Vera Rubin

We have peered into a new world and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined. Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.

— Vera Rubin

There is one alternative to dark matter, and that is the assumption that Newton's laws don't hold over distances as great as galaxies. But we know that Newton's laws hold over a very large domain. And virtually one hundred percent of the physics and astronomy community believes that there is matter in the universe that does not radiate.

— Vera Rubin

Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.

— Vera Rubin

It is well known that I am available twenty-four hours a day to women astronomers.

— Vera Rubin

How stars move tell us that most matter in the universe is dark. When we see stars in the sky, we're only seeing five or 10 percent of the matter that there is in the universe.

— Vera Rubin

I'm not a theologian, and I must say honestly that Vatican astronomers' views [on astronomy] are entirely in accord with ours. I'm not aware of any Church positions that contradict modern science. In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I'm Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history. I try to do my science in a moral way, and, I believe that, ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe.

— Vera Rubin

I live and work with three basic assumptions, 1) There is no problem in science that can be solved by a man that cannot be solved by a woman. 2) Worldwide, half of all brains are in women. 3) We all need permission to do science, but, for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women.

— Vera Rubin

In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.

— Vera Rubin

We all need permission to do science, but for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women.

— Vera Rubin