Harvard Computers
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.
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.
[6] In describing the dedication and efficiency with which the Harvard Computers, including Florence, undertook this effort, Edward Pickering said, "a loss of one minute in the reduction of each estimate would delay the publication of the entire work by the equivalent of the time of one assistant for two years.
[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] 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.
Her first assignment was to improve an existing catalog of stellar spectra, which later led to her appointment as head of the ‘’Henry Draper Catalogue’’ project.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
Studying Cepheid variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud, she discovered that their apparent brightness was dependent on their period.
[14] That, in turn, led directly to the modern understanding of the true size of the universe, and Cepheid variables are still an essential rung in the cosmic distance ladder.
Florence Cushman (1860-1940) was an American astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory who worked on the Henry Draper Catalogue.
Over the course of her nearly fifty-year career, she employed the objective prism method to analyze, classify, and catalog the optical spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars.
In the 19th century, the photographic revolution enabled more detailed analysis of the night sky than had been possible with solely eye-based observations.
During the daytime, female assistants like Florence analyzed the resultant spectra by reducing values, computing magnitudes, and cataloging their findings.
