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Summary
Summary
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, t he "inspiring" ( People ), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday
Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
"A joy to read." -- The Wall Street Journal
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. 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. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.
The "glass universe" of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades--through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography--enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. 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. 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. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard--and Harvard's first female department chair.
Elegantly 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.
Author Notes
Dava Sobel was born in the Bronx, New York on June 15, 1947. She received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1969. She is a former New York Times science reporter and has contributed articles to Audubon, Discover, Life, Harvard Magazine, and The New Yorker.
She has written several science related books including Letters to Father, The Planets, and A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time won the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love won the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology and a 2000 Christopher Award. She has co-authored six books with astronomer Frank Drake including Is Anyone Out There? She also co-authored with William J. H. Andrewes The Illustrated Longitude.
Because her work provides awareness of science and technology to the general public, she has received the Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board in 2001, the Bradford Washburn Award in 2001,the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 2008, and the Eduard Rhein Foundation in Germany in 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (7)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Acclaimed science writer Sobel (A More Perfect Heaven) casts much-needed light on the brilliant and determined women behind two historic revolutions in astronomy: one scientific, one professional. In the mid-18th century, astronomers employed human "computers" to scan glass photographic plates and perform calculations. Only the Harvard College Observatory, directed by professor Edward Pickering, hired both men and women as computers. The women there-including Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Henrietta Leavitt, Annie Jump Cannon, and Cecilia Payne-earned far less than their male counterparts but were eager for the work. As Sobel explains, it was the only way they could do science. Their research led to both the creation of a catalogue of stars still in use today and groundbreaking discoveries in stellar composition, motion, evolution, and a reliable way to calculate interstellar distances. Sobel knows how to tell an engaging story, and this one flows smoothly, with just enough explication of the science. She also reveals the long hours the women worked and their constant search for funding as well as their triumphs of discovery and the eventual acknowledgment of their achievements by their peers and public. With grace, clarity, and a flair for characterization, Sobel places these early women astronomers in the wider historical context of their field for the very first time. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sobel (A More Perfect Heaven, 2011) continues her streak of luminous science writing with this fascinating, witty, and most elegant history of the women who worked in critical positions at the Harvard Observatory. Diving deep into the field of astronomy, Sobel shares the stories of the educated, talented, and determined women who sought careers studying the stars in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. With her trademark research of countless diaries, letters, and more, Sobel has gleaned intriguing personal aspects of her subjects' lives, weaving them into the narrative alongside detailed passages describing the work they did studying glass photographic plates of the stars and cataloging thousands of discoveries. Readers with only the most cursory of interest in the night sky will find themselves beguiled by Sobel's prose and invigorated by this long-overlooked history of those whose resolute ambition paved the way for women scientists who followed. With the inclusion of the equally impressive female benefactors who made much of the observatory's work possible, The Glass Universe is a feast for those eager to absorb forgotten stories of resolute American women who expanded human knowledge. Learn these names and celebrate their greatness: Draper, Bruce, Fleming, Maury, Leavitt, Payne, Cannon. And Sobel, who soars higher than ever before. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling popular-science luminary Sobel is a reader magnet, and her latest will get an extra lift as it rides the wave of Hidden Figures and its movie incarnation.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2016 Booklist
Choice Review
In this work, best-selling science writer Sobel examines the personal and scientific history of the underpaid women of the mid-19th century at the Harvard Observatory who uncovered the nature of stars and their distances. The director of the observatory, Edward Pickering, embarked on the task of photographing the entire sky on glass plates. For this project, Pickering hired women, who were known as "computers." These women not only measured the glass photographic plates, but also interpreted them. They were hired at lower wages but were often more skillful than their male coworkers. Since observatory directors always struggled for funds, Harvard found many talented women eager to work in an era of little opportunity. Several of these women, including Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, eventually received worldwide recognition for their research. Using diaries and letters, Sobel knits together the stories of these remarkable women, while deftly describing the revealed science. The half a million glass plates that remain from Pickering's original project idea are a record of the sky from 1885 to 1992, and are still utilized. Excellent additions to the book include a section of images, a catalog of names, a bibliography, remarks, and an index. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Mary-Kay Hemenway, University of Texas at Austin
School Library Journal Review
Railroad heiress Anna Draper was introduced to a love of the stars by her husband, Dr. Henry Draper, whose stellar photography was recognized throughout the United States. After his death, Anna Draper wished to continue his work photographing stars and reached out to one of his many prominent scientific colleagues, Edward Pickering, a professor at the Harvard College Observatory. Henry Draper's work reflected the changes in the late 1800s in the field of astronomy as advancements in photography improved the quality of stellar images. As technology progressed, more people were needed to analyze and preserve the images. The Harvard College Observatory expanded their staff (previously only men) to include the wives and other family members of the astronomers working at Harvard; eventually graduates of women's colleges such as Vassar, Radcliffe, and Wellesley were employed as well. The women were originally hired as human calculators, but their roles grew to encompass cataloging the images as well as participating in the astronomical studies conducted by the male astronomers. Over time, the women's contributions to the field of astronomy ranged from identifying new stars to developing a stellar classification system that is still in use today. Relying on primary source materials such as letters and memoirs, Sobel crafts a story that illuminates the crucial role women played in the scientific community. VERDICT Teens interested in astronomy and the recent Hidden Figures will be fascinated by the work and discoveries made by these ambitious and talented women.-Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Following a revolution in astronomy, women found themselves at the centre of the drive to find out what stars are made of Astronomy has always had a labour shortage: so many stars, so few people to observe them. And so little time: what is a puny human lifetime compared with that of the universe, or even of a mere planet It takes generations of diligent observers to detect the regularities that unfold over millennia -- for example, the precession of the equinoxes: it takes nearly 26,000 years for the constellations to appear to rotate around the Earth. As with spotting rarely visible phenomena, such as supernovae, it also requires techniques of record keeping and transmission that transcend the longevity of civilisations and the durability of most materials. Nasa's Five Millennium Canon of Lunar Eclipses (2000 BCE-3000 CE) includes observations originally recorded on cuneiform clay tablets by ancient Mesopotamian astronomers. (Compare the average physical lifetime of a CD, about 30 years.) Civilisations rise, civilisations fall, but astronomy endures. The invention of astrophotography in the mid-19th century intensified both the l`our and archival challenges that had always confronted astronomers. Suddenly it became possible, with comparatively little effort, to capture millions more stars: whole swaths of the sky (including in the southern hemisphere, thanks to new observatories in colonial outposts such as South Africa and Australia) could be covered systematically; stars too faint to be seen even with the best optical telescopes could be coaxed into visibility by increasing the exposure time and emulsion sensitivity of photographic plates. Even more miraculously, the photographs could, with the use of diffraction gratings, yield stellar spectra striated by those characteristic dark lines that are the signatures of various elements. In gleeful defiance of naysayers such as the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who only a few decades before had proclaimed the impossibility of astrophysics, astronomers set out to investigate what the stars were made of. Enterprising observatory directors all over the world launched grand astrophotographic initiatives to create new star maps, catalogues and spectroscopic classifications. In Paris, Potsdam, Oxford, Algiers, Helsinki, Melbourne and Cambridge, Massachusetts tons of glass plates dotted with the imprint of millions of stars and their spectra piled up -- and with them an urgent demand for highly skilled, conscientious and cheap labour to analyse them. These archives of glass plates are the "glass universe" of Dava Sobel's title; the solution to the labour problem provides her subtitle. Focusing on the Harvard Observatory, she describes how two open-minded and pragmatic directors, Edward Pickering (from 1877 to 1919) and Harlow Shapley (1921-52), recruited scores of women at cut-rate wages to calculate, measure, classify and make sense of the glass universe produced by astrophotography. These men gave such women as Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, Antonia Maury, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Annie Jump Cannon and Cecilia Payne a chance to support themselves (barely) with work they could dedicate themselves to day and night. They were to leave their mark on astronomy with still widely accepted classifications of stellar spectra, the discovery of the period-luminosity relationship among variable stars, and the earliest estimates of stellar composition that pointed to the predominance of hydrogen and helium. These women spent most of their lives at the Harvard Observatory; a great many others stayed for a shorter time, leaving for better career prospects, marriage, or both. It's a familiar story to historians of science (and to most astronomers), but Sobel tells it with brio and sympathy, making excellent use of the rich archival materials preserved mostly at Harvard. Her narrative is driven by personalities, and it is undeniable that Fleming's true grit, Maury's perfectionism, Cannon's preternaturally sharp eye for patterns, as well as Payne's brilliance and enthusiasm were personal qualities essential to their contributions -- just as Pickering's business sense and Shapley's dynamism (rather than either's seminal scientific achievements) helped establish the upstart Harvard Observatory as a world leader in the new field of astrophysics. But other, more structural factors were also at work: where did all those well-educated, scientifically proficient women come from Who supplied the money for the new telescopes, additional salaries, publication series, and later dedicated fellowships for women astronomers Newly founded women's colleges, especially the Seven Sisters (their very name an allusion to the constellation Pleiades), including Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe, quickly instituted strong traditions in astronomy. Holding aloft the example of Maria Mitchell, discoverer of a comet and professor of astronomy at Vassar, these colleges trained students and provided professorial positions in the subject. The women employed by the Harvard Observatory increasingly came from such colleges and sometimes returned to them as faculty members. The alumnae of these institutions were loyal, resolute, well-connected and often rich. A succession of wealthy, strong-willed female donors parades across Sobel's pages, from Anna Palmer Draper, widow of the pioneer stellar spectroscopist and real estate heiress, to New York philanthropist Catherine Wolfe Bruce, to Lydia Hinchman and her fellow members of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association. If Harvard's first doctorate ever in astronomy went to a woman (Payne, a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge), it was for the simple reason that other women had endowed dedicated research fellowships in astronomy for female college graduates. It is in this sense a very American story, in which money and organisation gave at least some women clout in a society that enshrined both advantages in the booming decades around 1900. Yet the involvement of women behind the scenes is also a fragment of a much larger and longer story about labour in the astronomical observatory, one somewhat obscured by Sobel's Harvard focus. Astronomy, like most science before its late 19th-century professionalisation, was a family business. Not only sons (and sons-in-law) but also wives, sisters and daughters were mobilised to help with the tasks of observing, timekeeping, recording, measuring and calculating. Because eyes must remain dark-adapted to observe, but light was required to note exact times and write down sightings, even by the 16th century solitary observation was a romantic myth. Wealthier astronomers such as the Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe could afford to hire assistants (including Johannes Kepler) to monitor the clock and record the values he called out from his perch at the great mural quadrant, but most observatories, including royal ones at Greenwich and Paris, were run as family fiefdoms. Elisabeth Hevelius (wife of the 17th-century Danzig astronomer Johannes Hevelius) and Caroline Herschel (sister of William Herschel and aunt of John Herschel, two of Britain's most eminent male astronomers) are only the best known of the many women helpmates who made systematic observational astronomy possible from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Sobel's book contains many traces (largely unremarked) of the familial blueprint for observatory life, starting with the fact that the director's personal quarters were on the premises, blurring the boundary between public and private, staff and family. Observatories routinely hired the kith and kin of the director, on both paid and unpaid basis: Selina Cranch Bond, impoverished daughter of Harvard Observatory's first director (the second was his son), was employed by Pickering as a part-time calculator; William Pickering continued to be employed by his brother as an observer despite his increasingly erratic reports of life on the moon. Small wonder that the women employed by Harvard Observatory to calculate, measure and classify instinctively reached for family metaphors to describe their community: families, real and ersatz, had long kept astronomy ticking at odd hours, on isolated mountain peaks, and across generations. Did all this sentimental talk of family mask what was essentially an exploitative situation, in which women were paid wages way below what men with only a fraction of their training and accomplishments would have received Sobel is defensive here, pointing out that Pickering and Shapley were by the standards of their time champions of women's achievements in astronomy. These men gave women work, acknowledged their contributions in print, and occasionally advanced their academic careers. But they rarely seem to have granted pay rises, much less a promotion. To be fair, this was not just about sexism: other observatories, such as Oxford and Greenwich, solved their labour problems by hiring schoolboys at similarly low wages, albeit with greater prospect of advancement. The astronomical appetite for cheap labour was insatiable. It still is. Even in the age of mechanised computation and algorithmic analysis, astrophysicists recruit legions of citizen scientists to help classify the avalanche of data now generated by radio and space telescopes. The motivations of these volunteers are diverse, but not a few echo the views of the women at the Harvard Observatory, who wanted to be part of something much bigger than themselves. - Lorraine Daston.
Kirkus Review
Popular science writer Sobel (And the Sun Stood Still, 2016, etc.) continues her project of heralding the many contributions of women to science.If you took an astronomy course in college, you learned a still-current classification system for the stars whose origins stretch back to the 1880s as well as a geography in which a star such as HD 209458which made news when modern detection methods located a planet in orbit around itfinds its place in the star charts. Though the Henry Draper Catalogue bears a mans name, it was the work of the women he hired as computers who did most of the analysis that fueled it. Draper, an astronomer and technologist, funded that work, overseen by a Harvard scientist named Edward Charles Pickering, who thought it ungallant to have women scrambling about in the cold and dark with the telescopes but thought that women with a knack for figures could be accommodated in the computing room, where they did credit for the profession. So they did, and Sobels heroines, at 25 cents per hour, made signal contributions to observational astronomy. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, for instance, took on the Great Nebula in Orion, discovering hundreds of variables, while the indomitable Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming ran an efficient shop while making enough advances on her own that, largely overlooked in her own country, she was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1906. Often, even as they made major discoveries, the computers of Harvard College Observatory left it to the males who ruled science to bask in their glory. More than recounting and celebrating the lives and work of these distinguished and decidedly unsung women, Sobel also provides insight into how basic science research is now supported, thanks to lessons learned in the military and commercial applications of once-arcane technologiesthough, even after World War II and their contributions to it, women found it as difficult as ever to find scientific work. A welcome and engaging work that does honor to Sobels subjects. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
When we think of computers, we usually think of devices that perform processes to store and process data. In the mid-19th century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as computers to calculate distances and interpret spatial data. Award-winning science journalist Sobel (Longitude; Galileo's Daughter) tells their story. Relying on letters, memoirs, and diaries, she describes their significant contributions to the emerging discipline of astronomy at a time when stellar photography had begun to have a tremendous impact on how data was gathered and interpreted. Sobel provides details of the persistent work inequities these women confronted. They earned less pay than their male counterparts and were not properly acknowledged through membership in professional societies or with available awards. Sobel's book records the impact of women such as Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system adopted by astronomers across the globe. Though this title isn't intended as a discipline-specific monograph, at times, it bogs readers down in scientific minutiae. VERDICT Readers who enjoyed Sobel's previous work will welcome this new title. It is a terrific catalog to match the exceptional work these women created in the course of their careers.-Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
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. Marshall. 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. 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. This time she would go as a respected astronomer and the only female officer in her professional organization. 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. Now she would seek out her foreign colleagues, many of whom she knew only by reputation or correspondence, in their native settings. "There are no women assistants," Miss Cannon noted of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Travel broadened her appreciation for the singularity of Harvard's large female staff, although she easily befriended men wherever she went. At Greenwich, "Without the slightest feeling of being out of place, without the smallest tinge of embarrassment, I discussed absorbing work with one and another." That evening the astronomer royal, Frank Dyson, called for Miss Cannon and Mrs. Marshall at their London hotel and escorted them to a soiree at Burlington House, the headquarters of the Royal Astronomical Society and four other scientific fraternities. "Never has it been my good fortune to have such a kindly greeting, such hearty good will, such wonderful feeling of equality in the great world of research as among these great Englishmen." At the society's meeting a few days later, she gave a formal presentation about her recent investigation into the spectra of gaseous nebulae. Mrs. Marshall understandably avoided the scientific sessions, at which Miss Cannon inured herself to being the sole woman in a roomful of as many as ninety men. In Germany, she reported, "Not a single German woman attended these Hamburg meetings" of the Astronomische Gesellschaft. "Once or twice, two or three would come in for a few minutes but I was generally the only woman to sit through a session. This was not so pleasant but at the recesses the men were so kind that nothing seemed to matter, and at the luncheon women appeared in great numbers." In Bonn, where the Solar Union gathered from July 30 to August 5, the astronomers were treated to a flyby visit of a military zeppelin, a side trip to the Gothic cathedral at Cologne, a riverboat ride up the Rhine, and a gala night in the Bonn observatory that prompted the English-speaking delegates to sing "They Are Jolly Good Fellows" to Director Friedrich Küstner and his wife and daughters. "Luncheon and indeed all meals in Germany," observed Canadian astrophysicist John Stanley Plaskett, "are a much more important and solemn function than with us and take at least twice the time." Pickering, an elder statesman in this community, spoke at several banquets during the week. He shared impressions of his previous stays in Bonn, a city he had long regarded as the world capital of photometry. It was here that the legendary Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander assembled the Bonner Durchmusterung star catalogue and perfected the Argelander method of studying variables by comparing them to their steady neighbors. Argelander's own small telescope, still mounted at the Bonn observatory, proved an object of veneration for the visiting astronomers. Only about half the members of Pickering's Committee on Spectral Classification, first convened at Mount Wilson, had come to the Bonn meeting. Those present included Henry Norris Russell, Karl Schwarzschild, Herbert Hall Turner, and of course Küstner, of the local observatory. They met Thursday afternoon, July 31, to polish their report before Friday's discussion and vote. The group had considered incorporating some symbols into the Draper classification that would account for the widths of spectral lines, but ultimately rejected the idea. Rather than retrofit the Draper system, they preferred to look forward and explore the possibility of an entirely new design for stellar taxonomy. On Friday morning Chairman Pickering read the committee's recommendation to the full assembly at the Physical Institute. He proposed postponing "the permanent and universal adoption" of any system until the committee could formulate a suitable revision. In the interim, however, everyone should foster the well-known and widely praised Draper classification. Approval of the resolution was swift and unanimous. Ditto the subresolution regarding a refinement originally suggested by Ejnar Hertzsprung and already practiced by Miss Cannon. It consisted of a zero subscript for lone letters. Going forward, A0 would denote a star of purely A‑category attributes, showing no B tendencies whatever. The new A0 reduced plain A to a "rough" categorization. At the final session on August 5, the Solar Union dissolved its old committees and regrouped into new ones for the work to be done over the next three years, before they would all meet again in Rome. "When the names of committees were read," wrote Miss Cannon, "I was very much surprised to find that I was put on the Committee on Classification of Stellar Spectra--and one of the novel experiences of the summer was to meet with this Committee. They sat at a long table, these men of many nations, and I was the only woman. Since I have done almost all the world's work in this one branch, it was necessary for me to do most of the talking." Excerpted from The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| Part 1 The Colors of Starlight | |
| Chapter 1 Mrs. Draper's Intent | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 What Miss Maury Saw | p. 21 |
| Chapter 3 Miss Bruce's Largesse | p. 40 |
| Chapter 4 Stella Nova | p. 56 |
| Chapter 5 Bailey's Pictures from Peru | p. 71 |
| Part 2 Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me! | |
| Chapter 6 Mrs. Fleming's Title | p. 89 |
| Chapter 7 Pickering's "Harem" | p. 105 |
| Chapter 8 Lingua Franca | p. 123 |
| Chapter 9 Miss Leavitt's Relationship | p. 141 |
| Chapter 10 The Pickering Fellows | p. 159 |
| Part 3 In the Depths Above | |
| Chapter 11 Shapley's "Kilo-Girl" Hours | p. 179 |
| Chapter 12 Miss Payne's Thesis | p. 196 |
| Chapter 13 The Observatory Pinafore | p. 215 |
| Chapter 14 Miss Cannon's Prize | p. 232 |
| Chapter 15 The Lifetimes of Stars | p. 249 |
| Appreciation | p. 267 |
| Sources | p. 269 |
| Some Highlights in the History of the Harvard College Observatory | p. 273 |
| Glossary | p. 281 |
| A Catalogue of Harvard Astronomers, Assistants, and Associates | p. 285 |
| Remarks | p. 293 |
| Bibliography | p. 299 |
| Index | p. 307 |