Harvard Computers
The Harvard Computers were a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The team was directed by Edward Charles Pickering (1877 to 1919) and, following his death in 1919, by Annie Jump Cannon.[1]
The women were challenged to make sense of these patterns by devising a scheme for sorting the stars into categories. Annie Jump Cannon's success at this activity made her famous in her own lifetime, and she produced a stellar classification system that is still in use today. Antonia Maury discerned in the spectra a way to assess the relative sizes of stars, and Henrietta Leavitt showed how the cyclic changes of certain variable stars could serve as distance markers in space.[2]
Other computers in the team included Williamina Fleming and Florence Cushman. Although these women started primarily as calculators, they made significant contributions to astronomy, much of which they published in research articles.
History
Although Pickering believed that gathering data at astronomical observatories was not the most appropriate work, it seems that several factors contributed to his decision to hire women instead of men.
The women were often tasked with measuring the brightness, position, and color of stars.[8] The work included such tasks as classifying stars by comparing the photographs to known catalogs and reducing the photographs while accounting for things like atmospheric refraction in order to render the clearest possible image. Fleming herself described the work as "so nearly alike that there will be little to describe outside ordinary routine work of measurement, examination of photographs, and of work involved in the reduction of these observations".[8] At times women offered to work at the observatory for free in order to gain experience in a field that was difficult to get into.[3]
Notable members
Mary Anna Palmer Draper
Mary Anna Draper was the widow of Dr. Henry Draper, an astronomer who died before completing his work on the chemical composition of stars.[3] She was very involved in her husband's work and wanted to finish his classification of stars after he died.[3] Mary Draper quickly realized the task facing her was far too daunting for one person. She had received correspondence from Mr. Pickering, a close friend of hers and her husband's. Pickering offered to help finish her husband's work, and encouraged her to publish his findings up to the time of his death.[3] After some deliberation and much consideration, Draper decided in 1886 to donate money and a telescope of her husband's to the Harvard Observatory in order to photograph the spectra of stars. She had decided this would be the best way to continue her husband's work and erect his legacy in astronomy.[3] She was very insistent on funding the memorial project with her own inheritance, as it would carry on her husband's legacy. She was a dedicated follower of the observatory and a great friend of Pickering's. In 1900 she funded an expedition to see the total solar eclipse occurring that year.[3]
Williamina Fleming
Antonia Maury
Antonia Maury was the niece of Henry Draper, and after recommendation from Mrs. Draper, was hired as a computer.[3] She was a graduate from Vassar College, and was tasked with reclassifying some of the stars after the publication of the Henry Draper Catalog. Maury decided to go further and improved and redesigned the system of classification, but had other obligations and left the observatory in 1892 then again in 1894. Her work was finished with the help of Pickering and the computing staff and was published in 1897.[3] She returned again in 1908 as an associate researcher.[3]
Anna Winlock
Some of the first women who were hired to work as computers had familial connections to the Harvard Observatory’s male staff. For instance, Anna Winlock, one of the first of the Harvard Computers, was the daughter of Joseph Winlock, the third director of the observatory and Pickering’s immediate predecessor.[11] Anna Winlock joined the observatory in 1875 to assist in supporting her family after her father's unexpected passing. She tackled her father's unfinished data analysis, performing the arduous work of mathematically reducing meridian circle observations, which rescued a decade's worth of numbers that had been left in a useless state. Winlock also worked on a stellar cataloging section called the "Cambridge Zone". Working over twenty years on the project, the work done by her team on the Cambridge Zone contributed significantly to the Astronomische Gesellschaft Katalog, which contains information on more than one-hundred thousand stars and is used worldwide by many observatories and their researchers. Within a year of Anna Winlock's hiring, three other women joined the staff: Selina Bond, Rhoda Sauders, and a third, who was likely a relative of an assistant astronomer.[12]
Annie Jump Cannon
Pickering hired Annie Jump Cannon, a graduate of Wellesley College, to classify the southern stars. While at Wellesley, she took astronomy courses from one of Pickering's star students, Sarah Frances Whiting.[3] She became the first female assistant to study variable stars at night.[3] She studied the light curve of variable stars which could help suggest the type and causation of variation.[3]
Cannon, adding to work done by fellow computer Antonia Maury, greatly simplified [Pickering and Fleming's star classification based on temperature] system, and in 1922, the International Astronomical Union adopted [Cannon's] as the official classification system for stars....During Pickering’s 42-year tenure at the Harvard Observatory, which ended only a year before he died, in 1919, he received many awards, including the Bruce Medal, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s highest honor. Craters on the moon and on Mars are named after him. And Annie Jump Cannon’s enduring achievement was dubbed the Harvard—not the Cannon—system of spectral classification.[13]
Cannon's
Annie Jump Cannon was the first female scientist to be recognized for many awards and titles in her field of study. She was the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford and the Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and the first female officer in the American Astronomical Society. Cannon went on to establish her own Annie Jump Cannon Award for women in postdoctoral work.[citation needed]
Henrietta Leavitt
Pickering published her work with his name as co-author. The legacy she left allowed future scientists to make further discoveries in space. Astronomer Edwin Hubble used Leavitt's method to calculate the distance of the nearest galaxy to the earth, the Andromeda Galaxy. This led to the realization that there are even more galaxies than previously thought.
Florence Cushman
Florence was born in
Florence Cushman worked at the Harvard College Observatory from 1918 to 1937. Over the course of her nearly fifty-year career, she employed the
See also
References
- ^ "The Female Astronomers Who Captured the Stars".
- ^ Woodman, Jenny (2016-12-02). "The Women 'Computers' Who Revolutionized Astronomy". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
- ^ ISBN 9780698148697.
- ISBN 978-0801857119.[page needed]
- ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ISBN 978-0393328561. [page needed]
- )
- ^ Smithsonian.com, 18 September 2013. Retrieved on 12 October 2017.
- S2CID 122828978.
- PMID 18769425.
- ISBN 9780698148697.
- ISBN 9781400849369.
- ^ Geiling, Natasha. "The Women Who Mapped the Universe And Still Couldn't Get Any Respect". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-06-19.
- Bibcode:1912HarCi.173....1L.
- .
- ISBN 9780262650380.
- ^ "Computers at Work: Astronomical labor at the HCO at the turn of the century". Archived from the original on 2019-09-29. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
- ^ Cannon, Annie J.; Pickering, Edward C. (1918) "The Henry Draper Catalogue". Annals of Harvard College Observatory.; hours 0 to 3, 91 (1918), Bibcode: 1918AnHar..91....1C; hours 4 to 6, 92 (1918), Bibcode: 1918AnHar..92....1C; hours 7 to 8, 93 (1919), Bibcode: 1919AnHar..93....1C; hours 9 to 11, 94 (1919), Bibcode: 1919AnHar..94....1C; hours 12 to 14, 95 (1920), Bibcode: 1920AnHar..95....1C; hours 15 to 16, 96 (1921), Bibcode: 1921AnHar..96....1C; hours 17 to 18, 97 (1922), Bibcode: 1922AnHar..97....1C; hours 19 to 20, 98 (1923), Bibcode: 1923AnHar..98....1C; hours 21 to 23, 99 (1924), Bibcode: 1924AnHar..99....1C.
Further reading
- Natasha Geiling; Geiling, Natasha (September 18, 2013). "The Women Who Mapped the Universe And Still Couldn't Get Any Respect". Smithsonian Magazine.