La historia de las mujeres de Harvard que nos acercaron las estrellas
In the mid-19th century, the Harvard Observatory began employing women as calculators or "human computers" to interpret the observations their male counterparts made per telescope each night. At first this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of resident astronomers, but soon included graduates from the new women's universities Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, ladies moved from computing to studying stars captured on glass photographic plates.
The glass universe of the half-million plates That Harvard amassed over the following decades allowed women to make extraordinary discoveries: they helped identify what the stars were made of, divided them into meaningful categories, and found a way to measure distances in space by the light they emit. Among these women were Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hire...read more
