Today, internet-based retailer Who Made Your Pants? launches a line of women's pants called Cecilia, named after Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the pioneering 20th century astronomer who explained the composition of the stars.

I've been an admirer of Payne's achievements for a long time and couldn't resist using her as a character in my novel The Day Without Yesterday.

She changed the face of astrophysics with her 1925 PhD thesis, in which she demonstrated that the sun was made almost exclusively from hydrogen and helium. Only 2% of its mass came from the other chemical elements, such as iron, oxygen and silicon.

This meant that the sun had a radically different composition from the Earth, which is deficient in hydrogen and helium. At the time, however, scientists had thought that the Earth and the sun were very similar.

When she showed an early draft of her thesis to her supervisor, Harlow Shapely, he was so stunned by the result that he sent it to a colleague for a second opinion. The verdict came back that the result was impossible, although no error could be found in Payne's calculations.

To protect her reputation, she inserted a clause stating that the results were "probably not real". She need not have worried.

Within a matter of years, she was proven correct. Her work laid the entire foundation for our detailed understanding of the chemical composition of the stars. It is the astrophysical equivalent of Darwin's Origin of the Species in that it clearly sets out a theoretical framework for understanding the myriad types of stars and their different observational properties.

Her name was chosen for the undergarment in a popular vote on the Who Made Your Pants? Facebook page. Customers were offered a choice between Cecilia, cell donor Henrietta Lacks and astronaut Sally Ride.

Becky John, who runs the company, and is also an organiser of the Winchester Science Festival says, "We will always name our pants after women who have been forgotten."

Considering the magnitude of Payne's impact on astrophysics, it is strange that not more people know her name. In a recent blog post, Kash Farooq from the Pod Delusion, wondered why there isn't a space telescope yet named after her. It is a fair point to make. At least she now has a pair of pants.

Believe it or not, Payne herself wrote about the importance of appropriate undergarments in her autobiography.

Having moved from stuffy old England, where she was finding it impossible to progress her interest in astronomy, she settled at Harvard in the US.

In the ladies' dormitory, Cecilia was initially shocked at the way her fellow students "ran around in all stages of dishabille" in the dormitory. She goes on to recount: "When they found that I wore layer upon layer of underwear, they used to watch me disrobe with shrieks of incredulous delight. It was not long before their laughter, and the climate, weaned me from my native wardrobe. To dress like the other girls conveyed yet another sense of freedom."

Cecilia Payne added Gaposchkin to her name after she married.

The Cecilia pants are launched today and I find myself wondering whether a similar idea could work for men? After all, what self-respecting alpha male wouldn't want to wear a pair of pants emblazoned with "Extremely Large Telescope"?

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