Excitement around fusion has only grown this year since the French magnetic confinement fusion tokamak known as WEST maintained a plasma for 1,337 seconds in February, toppling the 1,006-second record set by China’s EAST a few weeks prior. Investment, legislation, and new research are riding this new surge of attention, but fusion development has a long history.

When the U.S. Fusion Energy Outreach Team declared the second week of May as Fusion Energy Week, they were recognizing the May 10 birthday of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin—the British-born American astronomer who applied principles of quantum physics, chemistry, and astronomy to become the first to realize—at the age of 25—that stars and the universe itself are mostly composed of hydrogen and helium, and that the stars could be sorted by their spectra into groups that corresponded to the temperature of the stars.