Background
Hewitt was born in Washington, District of Columbia
Hewitt was born in Washington, District of Columbia
She attended Bryn Mawr College where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics in 1980. She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school.
She was the first person to discover Einstein rings. on September 4, 1958 to parents Warren East. Hewitt, a retired international lawyer from the State Department, and Gertrud (Graedel) Hewitt. Hewitt took an astronomy class her sophomore year, which sparked her interest in science. During her graduate studies, she began studying gravitational lensing using the Very Large Array radio telescope.
She preferred using a radio telescope, as gravitational lenses emit a large amounts of radio waves, making them easier to discern with a radio telescope than with an optical telescope.
Hewitt obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1986. Some sources erroneously state that she received her Ph.
Doctorate. in 1988. Hewitt was appointed with a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of the Very-long-baseline interferometry unit from 1986-1988.
While analyzing the data from her graduate studies, she found a ring on her computer screen. This ring, located in the Leo, ended up being the very first Einstein ring discovered.
Since Hewitt"s groundbreaking discovery, many other Einstein rings have been discovered, and were found to be far more common than astronomers thought. Einstein rings are important because they can help answer questions about the size and the fate of our universe.
Hewitt worked as a researcher at Princeton University"s Department of Astrophysical Sciences in 1988.
After one year of researching at Princeton, she returned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant physics professor, working as a full-time professor since 1989. Hewitt is also the principal investigator for the Radio Astronomy Group of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.