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They were called “Pickering’s Harem.” Edward Pickering was the director of the Harvard College Observatory from 1877 to 1919. The “harem” was the group of women who worked at the observatory. They were first employed as “computers,” or women who performed complex mathematical calculations. Many ultimately became observers who photographed the night sky.
In her new book, “The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars,” (Viking, 324pp., $30) Dava Sobel tells their story.
Ms. Sobel is the award-winning science writer who wrote “Longitude” and “Galileo’s Daughter.” “The Glass Universe” does not have the dramatic power of those two books, but it tells a story that needed to be told, a story that is still relevant in an age when women do not receive their due in the workplace.
The early women employees at the observatory were volunteers, often the daughters or wives of scientists. The observatory was strapped for cash and was kept afloat only by volunteer efforts and by the generosity of Mrs. Anna Palmer Payne, one of the “grande dames” of 19th century New York, whose deceased husband was an amateur astronomer, and whose original work was the foundation on which Pickering established the observatory. Mrs. Payne was determined that his work should be continued. The work consisted of tracking and classifying the stars in the night sky using photographs.
Over time, the nature of Pickering’s staff changed, consisting in the beginning of mostly men with a few women, to mostly women with a few men. Pickering discovered that women were better at doing the exacting work of a “computer” than men were. They were more meticulous and more patient. They also were highly talented at taking the pictures of the stars and classifying them by position, motion, brightness, spectrum and color. The work, as Ms. Sobel says, “demanded both scrupulous attention to detail and large capacity for tedium.” To give an idea to the scale of what Pickering and his computers were doing, and the intensity with which they worked, Annie Jump Cannon, one of Pickering’s assistants, classified 5,000 stars a month.
Another woman, a single mother from Scotland, Williamina Fleming, was originally hired as a maid. But it was soon discovered that she had an acute mathematical ability. In time, says Ms. Sobel, “she built a stellar classification scheme and also discovered 10 novae and more than 300 variable stars, all from her study of spectra on glass plates.” She was Ms. Cannon’s predecessor and was also the first woman to hold an official title at Harvard University. (By the way, for anyone who is as astronomically illiterate as I am, according to the online Oxford dictionary, “a nova is a star showing a sudden increase in brightness and then slowly returning to its original state over a few months.”) Adelaide Ames was the first woman with a graduate degree to work at the observatory. She worked with Pickering’s successor, Harlow Shapley, cataloging galaxies.
Ms. Cannon classified hundreds of thousands of stars and the photographic plates could be retrieved almost instantly.
These are truly admirable women. It must be remembered that women could not even vote until roughly 70 years after the project began.
Interestingly, when Ms. Cannon went to Europe for a convention of astronomers, all the Europeans were male.
The cast of characters is large and the reader occasionally has to consult the catalog of Harvard astronomers, assistants and associates that Ms. Sobel has thoughtfully provided. It is a remarkable book about a remarkable group of women. However, one occasionally loses one’s way in a story that doesn’t have a protagonist to carry the narrative along.
Scientific research takes place by inches, there are very few eureka moments, so there are moments of tedium in the narration. Nevertheless, “The Glass Universe” tells a celebratory story that is well worth the telling and the reading.
on Oct 16, 2017