Pickering was unusual in his fervour to engage women, not only as “computers” in his observatory, but as an early form of citizen scientist too.īut it was a woman, Anna Palmer Draper, who set the course for their research. That the women were employed at all was due to the initiative of Edward Pickering, who was director of the Harvard College Observatory from 1877. The result is a biographical orrery – intricate, complex and fascinating. “Even before they won the right to vote, several of them made contributions of such significance that their names gained honoured places in the history of astronomy,” writes Sobel. At a time when men dominated not only astronomy but every branch of science, these industrious star-hunters were women.ĭava Sobel’s latest dive into the past (she is best known for Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter), The Glass Universe, explores these women’s lives and work, revealing their grit, tenacity and brilliance in classifying the stars. But if the ramifications were extraordinary, so too were the researchers.
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