Gustav Holst and Cecilia Payne

I just started reading this book, What’s Gotten Into You by Dan Levitt. This book is about what we as humans are made up of and from where what we are made up of came from. As they say, we are made of star dust.

We are primarily composed of cells and atoms. Now every one knows and accepts this. The different chemical compounds in us makes us what we are all of which are combinations of elements.

This book is a fascinating study of how atoms were discovered. We think of atoms as the smallest known particles, but it is not the case. The books traces the discovery of what makes up atoms, the birth of the universe, the first simplest element that existed, which is hydrogen, and how from hydrogen all the other elements were formed.

Anyway I digress. I have not completed reading this book yet.

This book discusses many of the early pioneers in the field of astronomy, physics and quantum physics such as Rutherford, Einstein, Bohr and Boyle. There is also a section on Cecilia Payne. She was one of the earliest physicist and it was she who discovered that it has to be from the stars where all the other elements were created. She first noted that the earliest stars were only comprised of hydrogen and helium. Somehow from there, these elements combined to create the heavier elements.

But when she was in secondary school and before she got her scholarship to go to Cambridge, her school choirmaster was Gustav Holst, the famed composer of the Planets! Imagine having a world famous composer as your school music teacher. His music from Jupiter has been played at funerals for the royals and Winston Churchill. Can you imagine 2 famous personalities in the same secondary school. One as a music teacher and the other a student. She must have also been a good musician because Holst urged her to become a musician!