Personal Life
Payne's younger brother, Humfry Payne (1902–1936), who married Dilys Powell, the author and film critic, became director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens.
While in school, Cecilia created an experiment on the efficacy of prayer by creating two groups, one of which was a control group. Later on, she became an agnostic.
In 1931, Payne became an American citizen. On a tour through Europe in 1933, she met Russian-born astrophysicist Sergei I. Gaposchkin in Germany. She helped him get a visa to the United States and they married in March 1934, settling in the historic village of Lexington, Massachusetts, a short commute from Harvard. They had three children, Edward, Katherine, and Peter. Her daughter remembers her as "an inspired seamstress, an inventive knitter, and a voracious reader." She and her family were members of the First Unitarian Church there, where she taught Sunday school.
Read more about this topic: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
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