he completely stole the work from a woman you never heard of: his student, Cecilia Payne,
He didn't "steal" it, and she wasn't his student.
Cecilia Payne's dissertation originally concluded that stars (particularly our Sun) were composed primarily of ionized hydrogen and helium, with smaller amounts of other elements, mostly metals. Russel reviewed her dissertation, and dissuaded her from presenting that conclusion, because the common wisdom at the time was that the Sun was made of the same stuff as the Earth, but heated to incandescence.
Later, Russel realized that Payne was right, and gave her brief credit in one of his papers for the idea. Unfortunately the idea was still attributed to Russel for a long time. Payne did get the recognition she deserved, albeit belatedly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...