HENRIETTA 'SWAN' LEAVITT
HELPFUL LINKS:
-NPR interview with George Johnson, author of Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe.
- NYT review of Johnson's book.
- Timeline of Cosmology from Carnegie Science. Very helpful and easy to read descriptions of the impact and use of Henrietta's discoveries.
- Brief but helpful biography of Leavitt from PBS 'People and Discoveries' series.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. A graduate of Radcliffe College, Leavitt went to work in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory in a menial capacity as a "computer", assigned to count images on photographic plates. Study of the plates led Leavitt to propound a groundbreaking theory, worked out while she labored as a $10.50-a-week assistant, that was the basis for the pivotal work of astronomer Edwin Hubble. Leavitt's discovery of the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables radically changed the theory of modern astronomy, an accomplishment for which she received almost no recognition during her lifetime.
During her career, she discovered over 2,400 variable stars, roughly half the known total in that era.
Even though Leavitt worked sporadically at Harvard due to health problems and family obligations, she was made head of stellar photometry in 1921 by new director Harlow Shapley. However, by the end of the year Leavitt passed away, suffering from cancer. However, unaware of her death, the Swedish mathematician Gosta mittag Leffler considered nominating her for the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics and wrote to Shapley requesting more information, but the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.
Lunar Crater Leavitt is named for her.
- Excellent article about Leavitt and her work.
TIMELINE
1893 - Henrietta begins work at Harvard College Observatory
1907- Pickering announces his intention of creating a standard Polar sequence of stellar brightness (magnitude). Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who is partially deaf like Cannon, is hired as the leading computer on the project. Leavitt searches for variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. Her most common method was through superposition, placing one negative atop another that was taken at a later date. By the time of her death in 1921, she discovers around 2,400 variable stars. She also develops a method for measuring celestial distances through periodic-luminosity relations.
1908 - Henrietta first published her data - noting a pattern in variable stars
1912 - Henrietta publishes a full paper documenting her Period -Luminosity relationship
1913 - Ejnar Hertzsprung uses Henriett'a fining to measure distance to cepheids within the Milky Way.
1920 - Henrietta made head of Stella Photometry
1920s- Henrietta Leavitt begins studying the “nebula” on the glass plates. It’s soon discovered that they’re actually individual galaxies.
Dec 12th, 1921 - Henrietta dies of ovarian cancer
1926 - Unaware of her death four years prior, the Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler considered nominating her for the 1926 Nobel prize in physics.
1977- Women students are admitted to Harvard University.
HELPFUL LINKS:
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