While there, he captured spectral data on stars with an unprecedented level of detail by projecting photographic images onto glass plates. In 1877, the physicist Edward Charles Pickering became the director of the Harvard College Observatory. In doing work that "no man would stoop to," these women made vital contributions to the field of astronomy and human knowledge in general at a time when opportunities for females in science were rare. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard-and Harvard’s first female department chair.Įlegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.American author Dava Sobel’s non-fiction book, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took a Measure of the Stars (2016), chronicles the efforts of various woman in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to catalog and classify data about stars from photographs captured on thousands of glass plates. Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use and Dr. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography-enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades-through the generous support of Mrs. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges-Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night.
"A joy to read.” - The Wall Street Journal Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, t he "inspiring" ( People), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomyĪ New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017
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