1. Women Astronomers Who Made History
While tutoring and studying at Monash University from 2001 to 2013, I came across a Calendar for 2010 which had 12 women astronomers through history, one for each month. For a presentation I made in 2014 and 2015, I selected five of these women and for this article I have added two more recent astronomers, Vera Rubin and Jocelyn Bell.
Of these seven women astronomers four or five of them should have received the Nobel Prize, but didn’t because they were women. Nobel Prizes were only awarded from 1900 so, obviously, Caroline Herschel, who died in 1848, could not have received one and Williamina Fleming most likely couldn’t have either as she died in 1911, aged only 54 years. However the other five women astronomers I will discuss certainly should have received Nobel Prizes for “blazing the trail to modern Astrophysics”, as you will see. These were, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Cecilia Payne and Vera Rubin and Jocelyn Bell.
Also, I will discuss Edward Pickering and his “harem”, that he used at Harvard Observatory, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Four of these women, who I will discuss, were members of Pickering’s team of “computers” or “harem”.
And, I will discuss the “human Computers”, women, who were used at Melbourne Observatory, and other observatories around the world, in the late 1800s and early 1900s and what they did.
Further, although not an astronomer, I will discuss Marie Curie and how she received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and later a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

2. Women Astronomers Who Made History
Caroline Herschel ( – lived to 98)
Edward Pickering and his Harvard “Computers”
Williamina Fleming (1857 – 1911 – lived to 54)
Annie Jump Cannon ( – lived to 78)
Henrietta Swan Leavitt ( – lived to 53)
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ( – lived to 79)
The “Carte du Ciel” project - late 1800s to early 1900s and its human “Computers”
Vera Rubin (1928 – 2016 – lived to 88)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943 – now 74)
Marie Curie (1867 – 1934 – lived to 67) and Nobel Prizes

3. Caroline Herschel
She was born in Hanover, Germany in Caroline and her brother William were musicians before they became astronomers. She became a famous singer at oratory concerts. She moved to the UK in 1772 with William and they both became interested in astronomy. In 1781 when William discovered Uranus, Caroline was 31. Caroline developed methods for exploring the night sky, studied binary systems and published important stellar catalogues. She discovered 8 comets, one named after her. William built a telescope for Caroline with some help from her. See a photo of it opposite. She became an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society and received the gold medal of science from the King of Prussia. King George III, paid her a salary of 50 British pounds, making her the first professional female astronomer in history. She passed away in 1848 aged 98.

4. Edward Pickering & his “Computers”
Edward Pickering was the Director of the Harvard Observatory from 1877 to He died in In those days Harvard was a Man’s world. Pickering became frustrated with his team of male assistants, with the poor quality of work they were doing, and men were paid more than women. He declared that even his maid, Williamina Fleming, could do a better job. So in about 1881 he hired her and she became his first female “computer”. She undertook her tasks very efficiently. When, in 1886, Harvard received a large donation from the widow of Henry Draper, Pickering decided to hire more female staff and put Fleming in charge of the “computers”. Men at the laboratory operated the telescopes and took photos, the women examined the data, did the astronomical calculations and catalogued the photos during the day. This photo was taken in Williamina Fleming is standing This photo was taken in 1890.

5. Edward Pickering & his “Computers” – his “Harem”
This team of women, Pickering’s “computers”, helped him publish in 1890, the first Henry Draper Catalog a catalog with more than 10,000 stars, classified by their spectra. The classification system of stars was redesigned a couple of times. In 1896 Pickering decided to hire Annie Jump Cannon, a graduate of Wellesley College to classify southern stars. Annie redesigned the Pickering’s Harem at Harvard classification system and developed College Observatory in 1913 the Harvard Classification Scheme which is the basis of the system we use today. Now we go onto Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Cecilia Payne, who at one stage were all part of Pickering’s “computers”, or Pickering’s “Harem”..

6. Williamina Fleming
Williamina was born in Dundee in Scotland in She moved to Boston in 1877 with her husband, who left her soon after. She then worked as a maid for Edward Pickering, the Director of Harvard College Observatory. Pickering became frustrated with his team of male assistants. He declared that even his maid could do a better job. So in 1881 he hired her to do clerical work and she became his first female “computer”. While there, she devised and helped implement a system of assigning stars a letter according to how much hydrogen could be observed in their spectra. Stars classified as A had the most hydrogen, B the next most, and so on. Later, Annie Jump Cannon would improve upon Williamina’s work to develop a simpler classification system based on temperature. Fleming contributed to the cataloguing of stars that would be published as the Henry Draper Catalogue. In 9 years she catalogued more than 10,000 stars. During her work, she discovered 519 gaseous nebulae, over 310 variable stars and 10 novae. In 1907, she published a list of 222 variable stars she had discovered.

7. Williamina Fleming
In 1888, Fleming discovered the Horsehead Nebula, describing the bright nebula as having a semicircular indentation 5 minutes in diameter 30 minutes south of Zeta Orionis. The brother of Edward Pickering, William Pickering, who had taken the photograph, speculated that the spot was dark obscuring matter. All subsequent articles and books seem to deny Wiliiamina and William Pickering the credit, because the complier of the first Index Catalogue, J.L.E. Dreyer, eliminated Williamina’s name from the list of objects then discovered by Harvard, attributing them all instead merely to “Pickering”, taken to mean Edward Pickering. By the time of the release of the second Index Catalogue by Dreyer in 1908, Williamina and others at Harvard were famous enough to receive proper credit for later object discoveries, but not for the Horsehead Nebula. Williamina was placed in charge of dozens of women hired to do mathematical classifications . These were Pickering’s computers , later known as “Pickering’s Harem”. Williamina was also given the title of Curator of Astronomical Photographs. She was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society , the first American woman to be so elected. She received many awards before she passed away in 1911 in Boston aged 74.

8. Annie Jump Cannon Annie was born in 1863 in Delaware. Her mother
taught her the constellations which got Annie
interested in astronomy. She went to Wellesley College
in Massachusetts and studied physics and astronomy
and leaned about spectroscopy. Later she went to
Radcliffe College, near Harvard. In 1896, Pickering
hired her as his assistant at the observatory and she
became one of Pickering’s computers, whose job was
to complete the Henry Draper Catalogue.
Part of this was to obtain the spectra of as many stars
as possible and to index and classify the stars by their spectra.
Disagreements arose in the team as to how to classify the stars.
Williamina Fleming who was overseeing the project wanted a much simpler
approach. Annie came up with a compromise when she started examining the
bright southern hemisphere stars. She added a system where she divided the
stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M, based on the strength of the
absorption lines. She came up with the mnemonic “Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me.
She also sub-divided each class into 10 sub classes. Annie published her first catalog of
stellar spectra in 1901. ,

9. Annie Jump Cannon
Annie classified about 500,000 stars in her life more than anyone else, male or female. She also found 300 variable stars and 5 nova and one spectroscopic binary, creating a bibliography that included about 200,000 references. She also realised that her spectral classification system from O type stars to M type stars was in the order of decreasing temperatures. Pickering died in February 1919 and left 6 volumes to be overseen by Cannon. She found 50,000 fainter stars in selected regions of the sky in the Henry Draper Extension, published between 1925 & On May 22, 1922 the International Astronomical Union passed the resolution to formally adopt Cannon’s stellar classification system and with minor changes it is still being used for classifying stars today. The American Association of University Women presents the Annie J. Cannon Award annually to female astronomers for distinguished work in astronomy. She continued classifying stars until She died in 1941 at the age of 78.

10. Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Henrietta was born in Lancaster Massachusetts in After graduating from Radcliffe College she started working at Harvard College Observatory as one of Pickering’s “computers” , in 1893 examining photographic plates in order to measure and catalog the brightness of stars. Pickering assigned Leavitt to study variable stars. She noted thousands of variable stars in images of the Magellanic Clouds. In 1908 she published her results in the “Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College”, noting that a few of the variables showed a pattern: brighter ones appeared to have longer periods. After further study she confirmed in 1912 that the Cepheid variables with greater intrinsic luminosity did have longer periods, and that the relationship was quite close and predictable. Leavitt used the assumption that all the Cepheids in each Magellanic Cloud were approximately the same distance from us, so that their intrinsic brightness could be deduced from their apparent brightness and from the distance to each of the clouds. “Since the variables are probably at nearly the same distance from Earth, their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light, as determined by their mass, density and surface brightness”.

11. Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Though she received little recognition in her lifetime, it was her discovery that first allowed astronomers to measure the distance to the nearer galaxies, eg., the Andromeda galaxy. The period-luminosity relationship for Cepheids made them the first “standard candle” in astronomy, allowing astronomers to compute distances to galaxies too remote for stellar parallax observations to be useful. One year after Leavitt reported her results, Hertzsprung determined the distance of several Cepheids in the Milky Way, and with this calibration the distance to any Cepheid could be accurately determined. Leavitt’s groundbreaking research made it possible for Edwin Hubble to establish that the universe is expanding. Hubble often said that Leavitt deserved a Nobel Prize for her work. Gosta Mittag-Leffler tried to nominate her for that prize in 1924, only to learn that she had died 3 years earlier and the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously. Leavitt worked sporadically during her time at Harvard, often sidelined by health problems. An illness contracted after her graduation from Radcliffe College rendered her deaf. In 1921 when Harlow Shapley took over as director of the observatory after Pickering’s death, Leavitt was made head of stellar photometry. By the end of that year she had succumbed to cancer and she died, at the age of only 53.

12. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Cecilia was born in England in In 1919 she won a scholarship to Newman College , Cambridge University. There she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington which sparked her interest in astronomy. She completed her studies, but was not awarded a degree. Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until After meeting Harlow Shapley, the Director of Harvard College Observatory she decided to move to the United States where she was the second student to be accepted into Shapley’s new graduate course in astronomy. Cecilia met and became good friends with Annie Cannon. Annie taught Cecilia everything she needed to know about stellar spectra. Shapley persuaded Cecilia to write a doctoral thesis and in 1925 she became the first person to earn a Ph.D., in astronomy from Radcliffe College. Her thesis was “Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars”. Astronomer, Otto Struve called it the most brilliant PH.D. thesis ever written in astronomy. Cecilia was able to relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures. So Cecilia was able to tell Annie Cannon that her spectral classification, OBAFGKM was a temperature scale from hottest to coldest.

13. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Cecilia used this thesis to try to determine the chemical constitution and physical state of stars . She correctly suggested that silicon, carbon and other elements seen in the Sun’s spectrum were found in about the same relative proportions as on Earth, but that helium and particularly hydrogen were vastly more abundant (hydrogen by a factor of about one million). Her thesis showed that hydrogen was the overwhelming element in the stars and the most abundant element in the Universe. Most astronomers believed that the stars were made of the same elements as the Earth. Henry Russell, Dean of American Astronomers, also disagreed with her as she contradicted the accepted wisdom at the time. However he changed his mind 4 years later after deriving the same result by different means. After Cecilia was proved to be correct, Russell was often given the credit, although, he himself acknowledged her work in his paper. According to a few notable people Cecilia’s career marked a turning point at Harvard. She became the first woman to head a department at Harvard when she was made the Chair of the Department of Astronomy. The trail she blazed into the male-dominated scientific community, was an inspiration to many women. She passed away in 1979 at the age of 79.

14. COSMOS, A SPACETIME ODYSSEY
Considering the very important discoveries and contributions made by Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Cecilia Payne it is interesting to note what Neil deGrasse Tyson said, after discussing what they did. He said at the end of “Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey” - episode number 8, “Sisters of the Sun”:- “We should drink a toast to Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Cecilia Payne for blazing the trail to modern Astrophysics, and to all the sisters of the Sun”.

15. The “Carte du Ciel” project - late 1800s to early 1900s and its human “Computers”
The Carte du Ciel (Map of the Sky) and the Astrographic Catalogue were two parts of an international project to map the heavens in the late 1800s and early 1900s, involving cataloging and mapping the positions of millions of stars as faint 12th magnitude. 20 observatories around the world were involved, including Melbourne, Sydney, Perth Observatories in Australia. While the Carte du Ciel component was never completed, the Astrographic Catalogue part was completed. In the late 1800s a team of “human computers”, young women, were used at most of these observatories to processing photographs, measuring positions of stars, to make maps of their nominated part of the sky. There were about 20 used at Melbourne Observatory. Why women and not men? Men tended to operate the telescopes and other equipment. It was perceived that women tended to be more meticulous and made less mistakes than men. Women were also paid less than men. Compare this situation with Edward Pickering’s computers and the reason why he used women.

16. Vera Rubin
Vera Rubin was born in 1928 in Philadelphia. She received her degree from Vasser College in Vera then tried to enrol in Princeton University despite bans on female PhD candidates in astronomy. Eventually she earned a Master’s Degree at Cornell Observatory before completing her studies At Georgetown University. After joining the staff of Carnegie Institution Rubin and Kent Ford watched the rotation of nearby galaxies. Eventually discrepancies between predictions and actual angular momentum seemed to confirm the presence of dark matter. Rubin’s work helped solidify the emerging field of dark matter research in the present day. Rubin confirmed the work of Zwicky, Kapteyn and others by nailing down precise measurements of dark matter to support galactic-scale observations. Rubin’s work ushered in the modern age of dark matter research. While she won numerous awards for her work, including the Bruce Medal in 2003, calls for Rubin to win a Nobel Prize in Physics went unheeded. Still, she helped carve a path for other women in astronomy and other science disciplines. She was a tireless advocate for women in STEM fields. As described in her New York Times obituary, she “transformed modern physics and astronomy with her observations showing that galaxies and stars are immersed in the gravitational grip of vast clouds of dark matter”. Vera passed away in December 2016, aged 88.

17. Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Jocelyn Bell was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in Her father was an architect who helped design the Armagh Planetarium. Young Jocelyn soon discovered his astronomy books. She attended Lurgan College, where girls were not permitted to study science until her parents, and others, protested the school’s policy. Jocelyn graduated from Glasgow University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1965 and obtained a PhD from University of Cambridge in As a post graduate student in 1967 she worked with Antony Hewish and others to construct a radio telescope to study quasars which had recently been discovered. In July 1967 she detected a bit of “scruff” on her chart recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars. Jocelyn found that the signal had a regular pulse. Temporarily dubbed “Little Green Man 1” (LGM-1) the source was identified later as a rapidly rotating neutron star, a pulsar, the first ever discovered. The team including Jocelyn, Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle went on to discover 3 more pulsars and. Hence they discovered the first 4 pulsars.

18. Jocelyn Bell Burnell
The paper announcing the discovery of the pulsars had 5 authors. Hewish’s name was listed first Jocelyn’s was second. Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Martin Ryle, without the inclusion of Jocelyn Bell as a co-recipient. Many prominent astronomers , including Fred Hoyle expressed outrage at this omission. The fact that Jocelyn Bell did not receive recognition in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics has been a point of controversy ever since. She helped build the Composite Optical/X-Ray radio telescope over two years and initially noticed the image of the Crab Nebula anomaly. Jocelyn later said that she had to be persistent in reporting the anomaly in the face of scepticism from Hewish, who was initially insistent that it was due to interference and man made. Dr. Iosif Shklovsky, recipient of the 1972 Bruce Medal, had sought out Jocelyn at the 1970 International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly, to tell her :- “Miss Bell, you have made the greatest astronomical discovery of the twentieth century”. Jocelyn was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to After not receiving the Nobel Prize she said “After all, I’m in good company, am I not” She gave a lecture to the Canterbury Astronomical Society in New Zealand in June Jocelyn in now 74.

19. Marie Curie and Nobel Prizes
Marie Slodowska-Curie was born in Poland in She was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who pioneered research on radioactivity. She discovered 2 elements, Polonium in 1898 and later Radium.
Nobel Prizes were first awarded from 1901.
In 1903 Marie Curie was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics, along with her husband, Pierre and Henri Bequerel for her work in Radioactivity. But the prize was awarded to Pierre and Henri only. However, Pierre refused to accept the prize unless Marie was also awarded the prize. Only then was she given the prize .
So in 1903 Marie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. She also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, and became the first person, male or female, and the only woman, to win Nobel Prizes in 2 different categories.
She died in 1934 caused mainly by the exposure to radiation suffered during World War 1, when she was involved in mobile X-Ray units created by her.