On Christmas day the world lost another hero of science. Vera Rubin smashed the boundaries presented to her by her gender to a pioneer of astronomy. She observed distant galaxies and uncovered a very strange problem – they were spinning much faster than physics said they should be. Her work provided one of the first convincing pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter – stuff that has mass but cannot be seen, which was causing the galaxies to behave so unexpectedly.

In tribute to Rubin, we present one of her most inspiring quotes: “Don’t shoot for the stars, we already know what’s there. Shoot for the space in between because that’s where the real mystery lies.”