At the 1912 meeting of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America, the members had voted to change their name to the American Astronomical Society and to make her their treasurer. This time she would go as a respected astronomer and the only female officer in her professional organization. On her previous trip to Europe, with her friend and Wellesley classmate Sarah Potter in 1892, Miss Cannon had made the grand tour of popular tourist destinations, camera in hand. They planned to attend three major astronomy meetings on the continent, plus all the banquets, garden parties, excursions, and entertainments that such international congresses entailed. Miss Cannon had classified one hundred thousand stars when she set the work aside to spend the summer of 1913 in Europe with her sister, Mrs. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. 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. 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

The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel