Just a
little over a century ago, astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt made a remarkable
discovery. Her discovery became a keystone in shaping modern astronomy.
However, she was acclaimed only posthumously; she had no reward nor recognition
from her peers for her amazing discovery.
Henrietta
Swan Leavitt was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1869. She was the daughter
of a Congregational minister which led to her strong role in her church and community.
She followed a rigorous course of education from a young age. At age 20 she
entered Radcliffe College and studied a broad variety of subjects: classical
Greek, fine arts, philosophy, analytical geometry and differential calculus.
Her advanced course work and exceptional achievements at school were enough to
build a solid foundation for a successful career at school. Several years after
graduation, she fell ill and her serious illness left her almost completely
deaf. As she recovered from her illness she volunteered at the Harvard College
Observatory and seven years later (1893) she was granted employment. However, at
the time Henrietta entered the workforce, women were subjected to the prejudice
that men were superior. She was labeled as a lowly book-keeping 'computer' in charge of cataloguing the
brightness of stars. She earned a mere 25 cents an hour- the pay of a servant. She
surpassed the qualifications to be hired as an astronomer or even a junior
astronomical researcher, yet she was held back from her full potential because
of her gender. She worked in a tight quarters with other female astronomers in a
similar position under the leadership of Edward Pickering who "chose his
staff to work, not to think" (Payne, AAVSO).
Early
in her career, Leavitt focused on Cepheid variables, a type of star that varies
between larger, brighter states and smaller, dimmer ones. Even having
personally discovered 2,400 (about half of the known total in her day) new
variable stars, she received little recognition. Leavitt is also credited with
the development of the Harvard Standard, a standard of photographic
measurements that was officially accepted by the International Committe on
Photographic Magnitudes in 1913. Her most remarkable recognition (1912) occurred
while she was recording the various data on her Cepheid variables. She found an
accurate and consistent relationship between the period of a given star's
brightness and its absolute magnitude. This simple relationship made it
possible, for the first time, to accurately measure stars' distances from
Earth. Leavitt's discovery was published under Edward Pickering's name, making
only one reference to Leavitt as the person who had simply 'prepared' the data.
Leavitt's discovery catalyzed many more discoveries in the astronomical
community. Many famous astronomers such as Edwin Hubble and Ejnar Hertzsprung
would not have been able to make their contributions to astronomy without
Leavitt's discovery.
Little
is known about Leavitt's personal life as she left behind no diaries or
memoires and she kept mostly to herself. Her peers remembered her as having a
shy disposition so no one could tell how she dealt the frustrations of her debasement
because of her gender. However, one of her peers described her as
"possessing the best mind at the Observatory" (PBS). She lived so quietly that her death in 1921 went almost
completely unnoticed. In 1925 the Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittlag-Leffler
wrote her a letter nominating her for the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1926. He
was completely unaware that she had passed away four years ago and Harlow
Shapley, Pickering's successor attempted to steal her Nobel Prize by replying to
Mittlag-Leffler taking credit for Leavitt's discovery.
Even
today, Henrietta Leavitt's name is not as recognized as it should be
considering her discovery radically changed modern astronomy. Her only lasting
recognition is a minor lunar crater and a virtual space theatre that bear
Henrietta Swan Leavitt's name. One can only hope that the day will come when
Henrietta Leavitt receives the recognition she deserves.
