Rebecca Elson

Rebecca Elson's biography was published by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on 13 August 2020 as part of their collection of biographies of astronomers and mathematicians.

A volume of wide-ranging poetry and essays she wrote from her teens until shortly before her death was published posthumously as A Responsibility to Awe in 2001 in the United Kingdom, and in 2002 in the United States. The works were selected by her husband Angelo di Cintio and a friend and fellow poet, Anne Berkeley, from a much larger body of unpublished efforts. Some of the works refer to vast concepts of physics and astronomy, often in unexpectedly abstract or playful ways, to reflect aspects of human experience. Others reflect profound joy with life or poignant observations of her impending death. The collection was selected as one of the best books of the year by The Economist.

Elson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 29. With treatment, it went into remission, and in 1996, she married the Italian artist Angelo di Cintio. However, the cancer returned soon afterwards. Elson died of the disease in Cambridge in May 1999, at the age of 39.

In the early 1990s she returned to the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, UK to accept the research position she would hold for the remainder of her life. Her work centered on globular clusters, chemical evolution and galaxy formation. In April 1990 as the first images were released from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers were disappointed that the images were spoiled by the spherical aberration in the space telescope mirror. When Hubble was repaired the resulting sharp images led to an acceleration of research, Elson's team successfully bidding for one of the largest allocations of observation orbits at that time.

In 1989 she was the youngest astronomer selected to serve on a US National Academy of Sciences decennial review of the field.

In 1987, she was the first-named author on a major review article on star clusters for the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, after which she took up a Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe College in 1989, where she taught creative writing, followed by a term teaching a Harvard expository writing course on science and ethics.

Elson undertook her PhD (1982 - 1986) at the Institute of Astronomy and Christ’s College Cambridge University where she was awarded an Isaac Newton Studentship, an overseas research student award, and a vice chancellor’s bursary.

Elson matriculated in 1976, at the age of 16. After initially choosing Biology, with a particular interest in Genetics and then transferring to Astronomy she earned a bachelor's degree from Smith College, where she was taught by Waltraut Seitter. Her degree included a placement at St Andrews University in Scotland.

Rebecca Anne Wood Elson (2 January 1960 – 19 May 1999) was a Canadian–American astronomer and writer.

Rebecca "Becky" Anne Wood Elson was born in Montreal, Quebec, to Jeanne Bridgman, née Hickey and John Albert Elson (1923–2010), a geologist and professor at McGill University. Her older sister, Sally was born in 1958. As a teenager Elson often travelled Canada with her geologist father as he performed field research.