Women and Astronomy

There are some short  biography of  those women who have done much for the field of astronomy . This is for you girls to gear up your ambition and thoughts. Prior to the nineteenth-century, little is written of women’s contributions in astronomy. In most astronomy texts, you will find no mention of Hypatia of Alexandria, considered the first woman astronomer. Most historians consider her brutal death in the early fifth-century to be the beginning of the “Dark Ages.” There is no mention of Hildegard von Bingen (1099-1179) whose ideas on “universal gravitation” predate Isaac Newton’s, nor Sophia Brahe, Tycho’s younger sister. It was not until the director of Harvard Observatory became disgruntled with the sloppy work of his male assistant, saying his housekeeper could do better, that women were readily accepted into the study of astronomy.   Harvard College Observatory was founded in 1839, a time when astronomy was beginning to be taught as a science subject in its own right, instead of as an extension of philosophy. This was also a time when universities were receiving funds for astronomical research, an endeavor previously pursued by learned men of means. Astronomy is a science requiring observations and exact calculations, particularly of positions of celestial objects. This was tedious work completed by “computers.” Originally, young men performed these tasks. This changed when Edward Charles Pickering became director of the observatory in 1877 and opened the doors of astronomy to women. Pickering was sympathetic to the women’s suffrage movement and recognized that there was a new breed of women, women that were educated. He also realized that with the new technologies of the time, telescopes that were readily available and astrophotography, that the data collection was happening faster than could be catalogued so as to be useful. Although women had been volunteers at the observatory in the past, usually relatives of men on Harvard’s payroll, Pickering convinced the Harvard Corporation to hire women for the tedious work of “computers.” This occurred none too soon as Harvard College Observatory would be asked to complete a task of astronomical proportions. Henry Draper (1837-1882) was a man of means, a physician, an amateur astronomer, and a pioneer of astrophotography. He almost certainly acquired his interest in astronomy from his father, John William Draper, who took the first daguerreotype of the Moon in the winter of 1839-1840. Henry Draper also had many firsts in his short life. He took “the first photograph of an astronomical nebula, recording the Great Nebula of Orion on the night of September 30, 1880...the first stellar spectrum photograph, which he took of Vega in August 1872, the first wide-angle photograph of a comet’s tail, and the first spectrum of a comet’s head, both of these with Tebbutt’s Comet in 1881.” Draper "also invented the slit spectrograph and pushed the state of the art in photography, instrumental optics, and telescope clock drives.” It was his intention to photograph the entire night sky, to create a complete spectral catalogue that would be available to others for their research. He did not realize his dream due to his untimely death at age 45, the result of double pleurisy after a hunting trip to the Rocky Mountains. It was his widow, Anna Mary Palmer, who did not let his dream die. She donated money to the Harvard College Observatory to complete this monumental task in honor of her husband. It was indeed fortuitous that Pickering had hired women to perform the tiresome task of cataloguing and computing. The women’s beginning wage was about $.25 per hour, less than half that paid to men doing the same task. Pickering was able to double his staff of computers by hiring women. And as Pickering was to find out, the women also did a better job. The women computers at Harvard College Observatory became known as “Pickering’s Harem,” an unflattering term. It is unknown if they were bothered by this. What is known is that they appreciated the opportunity he gave them, to work in the science they loved and to become some of astronomy’s brightest stars.

Antonia Maury

Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury was born in Cold Spring, New York on March 21, 1866. Her father, Mytton Maury, was a protestant minister and her mother, Virginia Draper Maury, was Henry Draper’s sister. Maury graduated with honors from Vassar College in 1887 and was a student of Maria Mitchell.

Due to the endowment to Harvard College Observatory for the Henry Draper Catalogue project by her aunt Anna Draper, Maury was hired by Pickering as a computer in 1888. She was responsible for cataloguing and computing stellar spectra for stars in the northern hemisphere. Maury, however, was not satisfied to merely perform mundane calculations. She had an interest in theoretical work, an endeavor discouraged by Pickering in his computers. This created a strained relationship between Maury and Pickering, resulting in her intermittent employment during her years at Harvard College Observatory. “[S]he was one of the most original thinkers of all the women Pickering employed; but instead of encouraging her attempts at interpreting observations, he was only irritated by her independence and departure from assigned and expected routine,” according to Dorrit Hoffleit, one of Maury’s colleagues at Harvard College Observatory.
During Maury’s cataloguing work, she rearranged Fleming’s scheme to reflect the temperatures of stars. She further refined the sequence by adding another “dimension” to describe the spectral lines. Maury’s scheme included “‘a’ for wide and well defined; ‘b’ for hazy but relatively wide and of same intensity as ‘a’; and ‘c’ for spectra in which the H lines and ‘Orion lines’ (now known to be due to helium) were narrow and sharply defined, whereas the calcium lines were more intense. She also had a class ‘ac’ for stars having characteristics of both ‘a’ and ‘c.’”
Maury firmly believed in her category scheme of stellar spectra and that the “‘c-characteristic’... represented a fundamental property of the stars.” Other astronomers agreed. In 1905, famed Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung published his work on stellar magnitudes and luminosities. “Hertzsprung discovered that the red stars appeared to be of two types, nearby stars or dwarfs and distant stars or giants. His “red giant” objects were the same stars Maury had catalogued with the “c-characteristic.” According to Hertzsprung, “In my opinion the separation of Antonia C. Maury of the c- and ac- stars is the most important advancement in stellar classification since the trials by Vogel and Secchi.”
Maury did not complete her work at Harvard College Observatory, leaving in 1891 to pursue a position at Gilman School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She returned in 1893 for one year, and again in December 1895 to assist with the final phase in the Draper project. The Henry Draper Catalogue was finally published in 1897.
After the completion of the catalogue, Maury continued her intermittent relationship at Harvard College Observatory. She also lectured on astronomy to professionals of the field, as well as public forums. During this time, she pursued her own interests in spectroscopic binaries. She co-discovered the first example of these objects, Mizar in Ursa Major, in 1899, as well as the second, Beta Aurigae. She was the first to calculate their orbits. Famed astronomer, “Colonel John Herschel called her work on spectroscopic binaries ‘one of the most notable advances in physical astronomy ever made.’”
Maury officially retired from Harvard College Observatory in 1935. For the next three years, she was in charge of the Draper Park Observatory Museum in Hastings-on-Hudson. Until her death on January 8, 1952, Maury continued to visit Harvard College Observatory “to check on observations of her final project, the enigmatic double Beta Lyrae.”
As with Fleming, Maury received recognition from astronomers worldwide. In a dedication in Dr. W. W. Morgan’s atlas of stellar spectra, Maury was described as “the single greatest mind that has ever engaged itself in the field of the morphology of stellar spectra.” Because of her ingenuity, determination, and perseverance, Maury is remembered for her contributions to stellar astrophysics.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Lady of Luminosity

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. As a young child, her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Leavitt attended Oberlin College and in 1892 graduated from the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women, now known as Radcliffe College. She then traveled in America and in Europe during which time she lost her hearing. Three years after graduation, she became a volunteer research assistant at Harvard College Observatory. Seven years later, in 1902, Pickering hired her on the permanent staff at $.30 per hour.

Leavitt’s interest in astronomy began during her senior year in college when she took an astronomy class. She furthered her studies in astronomy with graduate work. As an assistant at Harvard College Observatory, though she had the ability, she was given little theoretical work. Pickering did not like his female staff to pursue such endeavors. Instead, she was given the position of chief of the photographic photometry department and was responsible for the care of telescopes.

Leavitt also was required to perform research from the observatory’s photographic plates collection. Using the plates, she was to determine a star’s magnitude. There was no standard for ascertaining magnitudes at the time. Leavitt devised a system, using “the north polar sequence” as a gage of brightness for stars during her investigations. This was quickly recognized by the scientific community as an important standard and in 1913, was adopted by the International Committee on Photographic Magnitudes.

Another area of research that Leavitt pursued was on variable stars and in 1908 she made her most important discovery. By studying Cepheid variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which are all about the same distance from Earth, Leavitt determined the absolute magnitudes of stars. Her study led to the period-luminosity relationship of these variables, which in turn led to the ability to determine distances of stars from a mere one hundred light years to ten million light years. Ejnar Hertzsprung used her discovery to plot the distance of stars; Harlow Shapley used it to measure the size of the Milky Way; and Edwin Hubble used her work to ascertain the age of the Universe.

Leavitt died on December 21, 1921 from cancer. During her lifetime, she discovered over 1,200 variable stars, half the number of all such objects known at the time of her death. She was also a member of many organizations and a proponent for women in astronomy. She made monumental contributions to the advancement of astronomy and our understanding of our place in the Universe. There is no way of knowing what other contributions she would have made had she not died so young.

Caroline Herschel - Celestial Cinderella

The story of Caroline Lucretia Hershel is a Cinderella fairy tale. But it wasn’t a prince bearing a glass slipper that changed her life. It was the glass of telescopes and a prince of a brother that saved her from a cindery existence.

Caroline, nicknamed Lina, was born in Hanover, Germany on March 16, 1750, the fifth of six children of Isaac Herschel and Anna Ilse Moritzen. Isaac, an oboist and gardener, gave his daughter a rudimentary education, despite his wife's disapproval.

Caroline suffered childhood diseases which scarred her for life. At age three, her cheeks were scar-pocked and her left eye was slightly disfigured by Smallpox. Her diminutive height of 4'3" was caused by Typhus at the age of 10. Her father told her she would never marry and her mother's plans for her were that of maid.

When Caroline was 22, it was her favorite brother, Freidrich Wilhelm (nicknamed Fritz and later known as William), who rescued her from a dreary existence as their mother's scullery maid. He had moved to England seven years earlier where he had made a life for himself as a musician. On a visit to Hanover, he vowed to save his dear "Lina" and brought her with him upon his return to Bath, England.

William taught his petite sister music and helped her develop her voice. Though she would only sing where her brother conducted, she was well regarded in her own right throughout the opera houses in England.

But it is not her music for which Caroline took her place in history. When William turned his eye to astronomy, he trained his sister to be his assistant. Although Caroline never memorized her multiplication tables, it was she who did the complicated calculations from her brother's observations.

In 1781, William discovered the planet Uranus and astronomy became his livelihood, with his sister by his side. It was only while William was away that Caroline was able to make her own observations, discoveries which guaranteed her place in history.

On August 1, 1786, Caroline discovered her first comet and became history's first woman with this distinction. Her comet came to be known as the "first lady's comet" and brought with it the fame that secured her own place in history books.

Caroline was rescued by her prince of a brother and found salvation through the glass of a telescope. She is one of the few historical women astronomers whose life is well documented, so we will end her fairy tale story here. Below are links with additional information, as well as a short biography.

Hypatia of Alexandria: A Woman Before Her Time

Hypatia of Alexandria was a woman of grace and eloquence, of beauty and wisdom. She was born before her time, and she died before her time.
Regarded as the first woman astronomer, Hypatia was also an accomplished mathematician, an inventor, and a philosopher of Plato and Aristotle, She lived during the late 4th, early 5th centuries--a time of great change.
Born in Alexandria, the exact year of Hypatia's birth is disputed. In the book by Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, the strongest argument is made for 355 A.D. as the year of her birth. In Charles Kingsley's 1928 historical novel of the same name, she was born in 390 A.D. Most sources, however, favor 370 A.D.
Hypatia was raised by her father, Theon. There is little mentioned of her mother in any of the surviving records that document Hypatia's life.
Theon was a mathematician, a philosopher, and a noted astronomer and astrologer. According to the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia, The Suda, he was also the last director of the university, the famed Museum of Alexandria. His accomplishments in his career were many, but they paled in the light of his biggest accomplishment, his beautiful daughter.
Theon educated Hypatia, teaching her mathematics, science, literature, philosophy, and the arts. In addition, Theon had her participate in a daily routine of vigorous exercise with him. Legend has it that he was determined that his daughter develop into the "perfect human being."
Hypatia never married, choosing instead to pursue her scholarly endeavors. She was an esteemed citizen of Alexandria, loved by its populace and respected by its officials. All listened intently when Hypatia spoke. Her beauty, grace, and eloquence were as mesmerizing as her wisdom and philosophies.
Though Hypatia was a pagan, her philosophy was Transcendentalism, and she belonged to pure reason. In Elbert Hubbard's book written in 1928, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Hypatia supposedly said of her religion, "Neoplatonism is a progressive philosophy, and does not expect to state final conditions to men whose minds are finite. Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond."
Hypatia was loved and admired by her students. Much of what is known about her is the result of surviving letters written by her most famous student, Synesius of Cyrene, who was to become the wealthy and powerful Bishop of Ptolemais. In a letter to an old schoolmate he wrote of Hypatia, "You and I, we ourselves both saw and heard the true and real teacher of the mysteries of philosophy."
Synesius stayed in contact with Hypatia after leaving Alexandria and often sought her expert counsel. He would ask for her critique on poems he had written, as well as her designs for astronomical instruments, such as the astrolabe and the planesphere.
Hypatia is the earliest woman scientist whose life is well documented. She wrote many books on mathematics, such as the 13 volumes of Commentary on the Arithmetica of Diophantus, the "father of algebra." And she wrote about her favorite science, astronomy. She wrote The Astronomical Canon, as well as edited the third book of her father's, Commentary on the Almagest of Ptolomy.
But Hypatia's love for astronomy was to be her doom.


 Annie jump Canon
Annie Jump Cannon was the eldest child of Wilson Lee Cannon, a successful ship-builder and state senator, and Mary Elizabeth, his second wife. She was born in Dover, Delaware on December 11, 1863 and as a young girl became enthralled with astronomy from excursions with her mother who taught her the constellations. Cannon graduated from Wellesley College in 1884 where she studied physics and astronomy with famed professor Sara Whiting.

For the next eleven years, Cannon studied music and traveled. It was during this time, after a bout of scarlet fever, that she lost her hearing. Upon the death of her mother, she decided to pursue her interests in astronomy and went to Radcliffe College as a “special student” for two years. Edwin Pickering was instrumental in her obtaining this special status. In 1896, she joined the ranks of computers at Harvard College Observatory.

Cannon’s duties included cataloguing variable stars and classifying the spectra of stars in the southern hemisphere for the Henry Draper Catalogue project, the counterpart to Maury with the northern hemisphere. In her free time, Cannon poured over the observatory’s photographic plate collection, studying variable stars.

Possibly due to her deafness, Cannon was “recognized even during her lifetime as the world’s expert in identifying and classifying stars, with incredible accuracy and speed.” By the time of her death, she had classified up to 350,000 stars, at a rate of up to 300 per hour.

Cannon refined the cataloguing schemes of her predecessors, Fleming and Maury. With Fleming’s scheme, she reduced the categories to seven and arranged them by temperature, from high to low, leaving OBAFGKM. With Maury’s system, instead of lower-case letters, Cannon used numbers from 1-10 to reflect gradation within each category. Her category scheme was so “user-friendly,” it was officially adopted as the standard in 1910 by the International Astronomical Union. Today, with minor changes, Cannon’s system is known as the Harvard Spectral Classification.

Cannon worked at Harvard College Observatory for 45 years, until her death at age 77 from heart failure and arteriosclerosis on April 13, 1941. During that time, Cannon took over the duties as Curator of Astronomical Photographs when Fleming died in 1911. Cannon also published several volumes of catalogues, including her “Provisional Catalogue” in 1903, with a revision in 1907 listing 1,957 variable stars and their discoverers, the most complete list of its kind at the time. She also revised the Henry Draper Catalogue down to 8th magnitude, published in sections between 1918 and 1924.

Cannon was recognized by her peers for her contributions to astronomy. She received six honorary degrees, one from Oxford University, the first given to a woman, and was the first woman to receive the Draper Gold Medal. With the money she received from one award, the Ellen Richards Research Prize of the Association to Aid Scientific Research by Women, Cannon established an award to recognize contributions to astronomy by women.

Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming:
From Housekeeper to Astronomer

Williamina Paton Stevens was born in Dundee, Scotland on May 15, 1857, the daughter of Mary Walker Stevens and Robert Stevens, a noted craftsman. Mina, as she was called by her friends and family, attended public schools. At the young age of 14, she began student teaching. Her career as a teacher lasted six years until May 26, 1877 upon her marriage to James Orr Fleming. The young couple sailed to America in December 1878 and took up residence in Boston, Massachusetts. A few months later, James abandoned his wife, and his unborn child.

Williamina Fleming was in a strange country, alone, pregnant, and in need of money to support herself. She found employment as a housekeeper. Though her circumstances would be difficult for a woman of any era, her misfortune was about to present opportunities she would never have dreamed. Her employer was Edward Charles Pickering, the director of Harvard College Observatory.

Not long after Fleming began working in Pickering’s household, he offered her a position at the observatory. There are two accounts of how this came about: “(1) in 1879 Pickering offered her a part-time position as a copyist and computer at the Observatory because he was ‘struck by her obviously superior education and intelligence,’ or, (2) a male assistant proved to be unsatisfactory and ‘in a huff Pickering is reported to have said...that he believed his housekeeper could do a better job.’” He was right on the last count. She did do a better job than his previous assistant.

In the fall of 1879, Fleming went back to Scotland to give birth to her son. She returned to Boston and continued her duties as housekeeper and part-time assistant at the observatory. In 1881, she became a permanent member of the observatory staff.

Five years later, in 1886, the Harvard College Observatory received funding from Anna Draper to compile her husband’s catalogue project. The observatory was to photograph the stellar spectra of the entire night sky. It was a monumental task, one that would have a profound effect on Fleming’s life.

Initially, the responsibility of cataloguing, indexing, examination, and care of the new photographic plates belonged to Nettie Farrar. The “computers” were responsible for identifying the stars on the plates and then calculating their positions. Farrar left within the year, however, and Fleming replaced her.

It was not until twelve years later that Fleming’s position was officially recognized by the Harvard “corporation.” In 1898 she was bestowed the title of Curator of Astronomical Photographs and became the first woman to receive such an appointment of this kind.

Not only was Fleming responsible for interviewing new applicants, she was their supervisor. It was also her responsibility to catalogue the plates so they would be easily accessible and the data readily available. She devised her own system, after discounting the system devised by Father Angelo Secchi as too simplistic to account for the variety found in the stars’ spectra. Fleming’s system of cataloguing divided the stars into classes, from A to Q, with I, J, and P omitted, and was based on “the complexity of the spectrum lines and bands and the strength of the spectral lines due to hydrogen.” Stars that did not fall neatly within a category were grouped into Q.

In 1890, the first Henry Draper Catalogue was published in the Annals of the Harvard College Observatory. It contained most of the stars visible to the unaided eye, a total of 10,351 stars. Though Fleming was not listed as an author, Pickering did acknowledge her contribution to the work. She was also widely recognized by the astronomical community.

During Fleming’s tenure at Harvard, and her catalogue work, she discovered many celestial objects, including 79 stars, 10 novae, 59 gaseous nebulae, 94 Wolf-Rayet stars, and 222 long-period variables. She also received many honors and awards, including memberships in the Royal Astronomical Society and the Astronomical Society of Mexico.

Fleming worked at Harvard College Observatory until her death from pneumonia at age 54 in 1911. Her contributions to the advancement of astronomy were many. Equally important was the trail she blazed for future generations of women. She was indeed a bright star.