Views from the Reading Room

I didn't think it would take me all year to post these! Unfortunately, recently it's been as much that I've missed weeks as that I've had other things to write about.

She is an astronomer, December:

Paris Pismis

1911-1999

An Armenian born in Istanbul, Pismis was the first woman to attend university in Turkey, obtaining a degree in mathematics in 1937. When she moved to Mexico in 1942 she became the first person, male or female, to become a professional astronomer in Mexico. She worked at the National Astronomical Observatory of Tacubaya, part of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM in Spanish). There she started teaching the first official classes in astronomy in Mexico. Pismis died on 1 August 1999, leaving as a legacy a community of over a hundred of astronomers currently working at UNAM. She discovered 20 open clusters and 3 globular clusters and worked on the first explanations for the spiral structure of galaxies.

Originally from Turkey, she met her husband at Harvard Observatory, with whom she moved to Mexico.

With a profession that lasted more than 50 years, Pismis published over 100 scientific papers.

On the calendar there's also a photo and an artist's impression.

The Wikipedia article is short, but has a bit more about her work, and I notice that she had several names: she was born Mari Sukiasyan, a clearly Armenian name, but the surname Pismis (in which the esses should have cedillas, as seen in the Wikipedia article, which I can't find an HTML entity for) is presumably Turkish. The change of name must be something to do with anti-Armenian racism; she would have been a child during the Armenian genocide.

If your Spanish is better than mine - because the Promt translator isn't up to the job - you can find more info, from her University education onwards, at Venezuelan astronomy site Tayabeixo.

She is an astronomer, October:

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

1868-1921

Member of the group of star trackers at Harvard Observatory, Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relation, a novel method to measure the distance to astronomical objects. Leavitt found this relation after a systematic and detailed analysis of Cepheid stars. During one year (1905), she discovered 843 new variable stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, discovering a total 2400 variables in this galaxy during her career. She also found four novae. The recognition of the importance of her scientific work came only after her death, partly because of the intention to nominate her for the 1925 Nobel prize, which was impossible as the prize can not be awarded post-mortem.

Despite her contributions to astronomy, when she died her professional standing was still at the assistant level.

Her work allowed astronomers to determine the size of our Galaxy and the scale of the Universe.

On the calendar there's also an old portrait photograph and an artist's impression of Henrietta studying photographic images.

More information from A Science Odyssey at PBS Online: she became head of the photographic photometry department at Harvard College Observatory, and developed the standard of photographic measurements known as the Harvard Standard.

She is an astronomer, August:

Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming

1857-1911

Born in Scotland, Fleming worked there as a teacher until she moved with her husband to the United States. With a broken marriage and pregnant, she began working as a maid for Edward Pickering, the Director of Harvard Observatory. Soon she was in charge of carefully reviewing photographic plates of the sky, some of which were of very poor quality, and obtained excellent results such as the discovery of the Horsehead Nebula. She was finally appointed as curator of the plates archive in 1898, the first institutional position in Harvard held by a woman.

She immigrated to United States from Scotland in 1878.

She discovered 10 novas, 59 gaseous nebulae and over 300 variable stars.

On the calendar there's also a photo (a clipped version of the one on Wikipedia) and a painting of Mrs. Fleming with a drawing or measuring implement and some foggy plates. Her Wikipedia article has more about her work, including how she wasn't initially given proper credit for her discoveries.

She is an astronomer, June:

Wang Zhenyi

1768-1797

Chinese astronomer who studied lunar eclipses using models she constructed in the garden of her home. Despite her short life, Wang Zhenyi was extremely productive. She wrote twelve books on astronomy and mathematics; among them she mentions “Some observations of the forms and figures” dedicated to the positions of the stars in the sky. She described the heavens and Earth’s place in it. She also recompiled data about the weather in order to prevent and combat the draughts and floods that devastated the region.

Conscious of being a privileged woman, she believed that knowledge should reach men and women equally.

In 1994, the International Astronomical Union named a crater on Venus after her.

On the calendar there's also an artist's impression of Wang Zhenyi with a diagram of a lunar eclipse, a reference to another of her books, The Interpretation of the Eclipse of the Moon.

Most of the search results for this name are other people, especially a modern male scientist. The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science has an article on her which I found on Bookrags. Correction to the calendar: She spent years gathering data on the heavenly bodies and the clouds. The data gathered from her attempts to measure atmospheric humidity were used for weather forecasting and, purportedly, could predict floods and droughts.

She is an astronomer, April:

Nicole-Reine Lepaute

1723-1788

Nicole-Reine Lepaute worked with another astronomer Jerome Lalande and mathematician Alexis Clairaut to compute the return date of Comet Halley. This required many calculations to determine the daily position of the comet on its orbit, taking into account the perturbations due to the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. Her calculations made it possible to determine the dates of the next passage of the most famous comet. In 1762 she performed some calculations about the 1764 solar eclipse. She published several astronomical papers and articles, one of which reported all observations made of the Venus transit in 1761.

She was born in the Luxembourg palace in Paris where her father was working for Queen Isabel of Orleans.

An asteroid and a lunar crater have been named after her.

On the calendar there's also an artist's impression of her pointing out a comet, and a black-and-white portrait.

Her wikipedia entry doesn't have much detail; there's more about her life and work at the University of St Andrews site.

She is an astronomer, February:

Fatima of Madrid

X-XI Centuries

Muslim astronomer from the X-XI centuries, she was the daughter of the astronomer and scientist at large Maslama al-Mayriti, whose name means "man from Madrid". She wrote several works, which are known as "Corrections from Fatima". She worked with her father on her astronomical and mathematical investigations. Together, they edited and corrected "The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwarizmi", adjusting them to the meridian passing through Cordoba and using the capital city of the Califato (a territory under the jurisdiction of a caliph) as the "center of the world", i.e., as the reference point for all their calculations. They also worked on calendars, calculations of the true positions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets, tables of sine and tangents, spherical astronomy, astrological tables, parallaxes calculations, eclipses and Moon visibility.

She spent most of her life in Córdoba (Spain), the world-leading center of all knowledge at the time.

On the calendar there's also an artist's impression of Fatima using an astronomical instrument, an astrolabe I think.

I can't find anything about her on the internet in English that's not part of the calendar entry, though there's more about her father under various forms of his name. His wikipedia entry doesn't mention Fatima.

Via Jess McCabe in comments at the F Word, I discovered sheisanastronomer.org, part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, which produced a calendar for 2010, downloadable from here. The year was nearly over at that point, but everything except the dates is still relevant! The "high resolution" files are enormous, the "low resolution" version still perfectly legible - if you can read PDFs. In case people can't, I thought I'd copy the content here, starting with the prologue.

Modern astronomy cannot be understood without the extraordinary work of all those women who, thanks to their dedication and love for science, have left us their legacy. While a well-documented history of the role of women in astronomy is scarce, various observatories and universities around the world show that many women, through their paid or unpaid work, have significantly contributed to shape our current vision of the Universe.

The initiative to produce this calendar was taken by the “Ella es una Astrónoma” (“She is an astronomer”) group in Spain within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). “She is an astronomer” is one of the Cornerstone Projects promoted by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO for IYA2009. This calendar is a contribution of the Spanish team to promote equal opportunity between men and women, which is one of the United Nations Millennium Goals. We wish to promote women’s participation in all environments related to professional and amateur astronomy, and to support the training of young female researchers and technologists. Astronomy continues to attract women and benefits from their contribution, but we are far from the desired 50% participation. There is also a wide geographical diversity, with few countries having more than 25% of female astronomers and many having less than 10%. It is in our hands, men and women, to create a society that defends the principle of equal opportunity for all its members.

With this calendar we aim to help reconstruct the history of women in astronomy, which, as in other fields of knowledge, is poorly known. We have highlighted exceptional women whose contributions to the advancement of science deserve to transcend anonymity and occupy a place in history. We have tried to give visibility and to value the contributions of women astronomers from different epochs and countries. Of course, the selection presented in this calendar is not exhaustive; the list does not end here. Many projects developed by “She is an astronomer” teams in different countries have expanded and will continue to expand this work to produce a more complete view of the contributions of women to the history of Astronomy.

I'll write about the twelve featured astronomers in subsequent posts ... at least, that's the plan, but you know how it is about plans.