Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
In early May of 1925, Cecilia Payne published her PhD thesis in which she showed that stars were mainly made of hydrogen and helium. Her thesis is one of the most important PhD theses ever written, but it was unfortunately preceded by a foreword from her advisor, Harlow Shapley, in which he suggested the methods were “relatively primitive” and that her work “will promptly need revision”. As a consequence, her findings were ridiculed by the scientific community at first—and only accepted with the impact they deserved four years later.
Source: "Sisters of the Sun." Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Season 1, episode 8. Fox. April 27, 2014.
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!