Transcripts For CSPAN2 Dava Sobel Discusses The Glass Universe 20170412

I just realized i didnt know if we did a sound check. If so glad to see everyone here. I love doing book events because weve got to keep us alive. Science books are the best. I want to think of the Simon Foundation for supporting all of our initiatives here where we do light events and private events that are science themed or science inspired. Its really with their support they were able to use these events to shout out to the simon. Woo hoo. I want to mention before i introduce our guest about the amateur Astronomers Association of new york will be out in the garden. [applause] its going to be out in the cold garden tonight with telescopes and helping us to view the skies and the claimant is that the clouds will clear write about exactly as we finish the last question. Will also have a book signing for the glass universe. Well have a book signing over here and do a little q a after our conversation. Let me introduce our guest. Im sure a lot of you have heard of our guest. I want to introduce deva sobel. Shes a bestselling author, superb writer and i heard you speak about her book longitude and you said it was your son who said what you are working on. I didnt think anyone was going to read it. He said no one is gonna read this mom. Totally bestselling book. Most recently, galileos daughter, was also very popular book and more so with acknowledged with the Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2000. Thats quite an honor. Most recently we have the glass universe which were here to talk about tonight. This is the story of the women of the Harvard College observatory, as will be talking about and lets welcome deva. We also have leah halloran, my pal, also known as the at the chapman university. He is a wonderful artist and by great synchronicity has worked with the glass plates that they vote worked about. Were lucky to have them in the very different perspective and one as an artist and i dont know if its okay to call you a historian but i think very much though in this book. You mind being called a historian . No, not at all. Pay. Youll answer to historian. Woo hoo. [applause] i did a terrible thing. I didnt bring my clicker. Can you advance the slides when i ask you to . Or can someone go up to my bag and get my clicker. Were little rough around the edges here. Lets go back to the first night for a second. Lets talk about this picture. Tonights conversation, the glass universe, is so named because of the glass plate that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of glass plates. 500,007 glass plates that the women of the women used as a innovated technique to study the universe. Many things are interesting about it scientifically, which will talk about, but of course obviously sociologically and before the women had the right to vote. I used to hear the story about pickering which ive relayed about this gaggle of women allegedly worked for Charles Pickering the director of the Harvard College observatory and the story i heard was that he was disgusted with his mail computers which was his astronomical calculators, my job made to do a better job. He allegedly fired all the men and hired scottish made who did a fine job. Is a popular tail. What is the real story . The real story is he already had some Women Computers and he also had a scottish made who had come to work for him on the resident side of the observatory as a pregnant woman no longer with her husband as he said any delicate condition. Abandoned by her husband. Pickering immediately she was too intelligent to be working as a maid, domestic servant so he moved her to the observatory and gave her copying work, computing work to do. Then she went on to become the first woman at harvard to have a university title. She was the curator of astronomical photographs. What year was she hired . She came to him around 1879, so he had been there two years. Then she had to go home to have the baby and came back. They list 1881 as the year she started. Fleming . This picture was taken in 1925 so she is no longer there, she had died. A lot of famous folks are in this picture including, annie joan kempen started the observatory in 1896. Which one is annie . Reporter she is seated next to the globe and shes looking down. Annie joan cannon was famous for her classification of stars. When you learn the types of stars you learn, zero be a fine girl me. Theres an acronym . There were in alphabetical order to begin with. Then characteristics of the stars required a juggling of the alphabet so theres a mnemonic device to help remember. Also in the picture is cecelia. Shes sitting at the drafting table. The first person person to earn an h phd in harvard. All the early graduate students were women because of this history and its because of pickering. Green had already died when education program. The gathering of women and wealthy women who paid for the research who also paid to establish fellowship for young women to work for the observatory for a year and then they could go out and work someone else. I thought it was amazing that i had to keep rereading it in your book to remember i understand it correctly. The first phd in astronomy and harvard went to Cecelia Payne . Who you just said. I remember rereading it did you mean the first women. I kept struggling with the Astronomy Program didnt exist in the expansion was to include men. Right. She was also the first chair, the first people chair at any department in harvard. She on to teach at harvard in the Astronomy Department and oversee the very first mail phd candidates. Then 40 years later shes awarded astronomy chair. Theres a lot of resistance to hiring giving them titles other than computers or assistance. This was a euphemism even though they were mathematicians or astronomers. Lets do the next light. Who do we have in the fight . Standing in the back overseen is Celia Fleming who are we talking about it first. She supervised other women. She hired other women to. Yes, she started the great expansion of the female staff happen because of, Anna Palmer Draper was planning to do a serious project with her husband but he died at age 45 and she wanted to see his work completed so being an independently wealthy woman she offered to give pickering the money to carry out the Research Program in exchange for having the Program Named for her husband. This was lifelong . She continued for decades. Lets talk about pickering himself . Wheres pickering himself. He was about 30 years old in this picture when he took over at the observatory. A physicist and that was kind of a scandal, why were they hiring a physicist in the observatory speemac, new how many years with you there . Fortytwo. Its interesting i was because he hired this woman in a compromise position as you say to be a maid. Pickering, as i think about, i picture him as a feminist in some way. He could hypothesize about women breaking boundaries but if he simply saw the talent, he accepted it without any hesitation. Is that a fair . Yes. He hired women and encouraging the alumni of the womens colleges to work on their own and send the results to harvard for publication, to prove that Higher Education was a value. Youve also looks a lot of history. He also encourage women to publish under their own name. If you are a computer working you are part of the bigger discovery that was being made he would encourage and push women to be in the harvard annals. People responded to that thing easily. Interestingly, he had pretty severe limitations. He said things like and im quoting from your book where he says, women with a knack for figure accommodated in the computing room where their credits the profession. This is a strong thing to say but he prefaces that by saying, while it would be unseemly im quoting him not you to subject a lady not to the cold of telescope observing but he goes on to say though women with neck for figures to be computers. He couldnt conceive of them as operating the scopes. Keychains. When ms. Cannon came she was the first woman to use the telescope. I was just trying to say that he saw them as being valuable. He also didnt financially value them equally as mail computers. Thats an important part of the story that on one hand he saying this is a great opportunity for you and for women that are getting out of the rise of women colleges but at the same time the harvard computer, the female computers are paid less than half of the male counterparts for doing the same work to yes, i have the numbers here. Twentyfive cents an hour they were paid. In your book you said you could times that by 285 to get the current amount and i did the math it was they were making 6. 6 an hour. It came to 1500 a year, not scaling up for inflation. While the men were paid the men who had not been fired, unlike the apocryphal story they were garnering 2500. Year. They were completely in support of an gendered pay. Its fascinating. They made complaints about it and shes clearly fond of him but she keeps a diary she names her son after him as well. Edward or charles . He was edward Charles Pickering fleming. C had the baby out of wedlock and she named him after the observatory director, that significant about how much she admired him. I found that most of the women of the observatory really were quite devoted to him in some ways. They were a very collegial group. They worked in close quarters, six days a week and they socialized on saturday night. Thats tough. [laughter] that has to be admitted that the work was toilsome. Yes. Once we get to the slide will have all the numbers. They were working insane hours, incredible there is a good deal of tedium involved in the task and you never got the sense you got the sense that they were fatigued at time. You never get the sense that they are ungrateful or that their resentful of the men. They were well aware that they were involved in groundbreaking research. They felt, including pickering, that science was more important than the other luxuries or other sort of things that we value socially. Pickering, even his attitude toward these women, i felt from reading his history was that science is going to benefit from this work and it made no sense to be concerned about anything else about whether they were women it may no sense at all. Except he paid them much less. I will read this from his diary, he seems to think that no work is too much, or too hard for me. The. No matter what the responsibility or how long the hours. Let me raise the question of salary and im immediately told that i receive an excellent salary as womens sour sand. Does he not know that i have a home to keep an a family to keep as well as the men. Im surprised women have no claims to such comfort. This is considered an enlightened age, she says. This entry was written right before the women had the right to vote. She was living in. It was very interesting that this is an critical. And we will live with this legacy of on equal gender pay. Women have to support their families to and this is deeply rooted in our history, this idea. Starts to feel that her work while shes told over and over that its valuable must not be if shes not paid equally. I thought this was very strong. Did you read her journals, leah . I was so focused on the visuals that i was drawn to the annie joan cannon scrapbook and archives because its amazing lineage and history of scrapbooks that annie is putting out of the current newspapers where theyre getting all this credit and the story that i heard, the themes are you heard is that they were unappreciated in their time, story flips quickly when you see that theres a seemingly unending source material of newspaper clippings from all over the world of recognition of these women but at the same time when Wilhelmina Fleming passes away and her successor annie joan cannon becomes a curator of the astronomical place the president of to give her the title. She. It was a different president. Its not until the new president that she assumes the acknowledged position. So shes known worldwide and had set the classification system of stars that we still used today but at the same time, astronomers are speaking openly that the president himself is not even recognizing this brilliant scientist within the corral at harvard. I was really fascinated i annie joan cannon in the way see visually recorded all of her travel to these incredible observatories and lenses and comments in hunting. She was relentless. There so many pictures of her on horses. I wish i had those pictures. We have the next night . Heres a picture of the actual glass plate. Women worked in pairs and one would be looking at the plate and speaking aloud her observation to regular recorder who would write things down. The glass plates what was so innovative about the technology . We think about it is using emotions and almost photography. It was photography. These were glass negatives and pickerings genius was to create this photographic archive which still exists as leah pointed out. All half a million glass plates are today in the building that it was constructed to hold them all and to keep them safe from fire. People were very worried about fire. Things used to burn down a lot, like in colonial. By introducing photography and observing through the telescope, you could collect a record over a period of hours and stars would show up that couldnt be seen through the telescope by the eye and then photographs could be taken all through the night, over time, and you can study a series of photographs to see how the stars changed over time. All of this kind of work was new and they needed so many women to be looking back we see the next slide . Leah go ahead. Whats amazing about this story that dava is talking about that this is the record about we have 100 years ago about looking at the sky itself. Even though were looking at archival material this is still very relevant imagery because this is the birth of photography itself. Some of the very first images of the sky were taken with the draper and at harvard different objects. Its relevant now. When new objects are discovered it pays to look back at the harvard record and see what was in that part of the sky 100 years ago ago. And variable stars were one of the most important discoveries that came out of this incredible catalog of information. Can you tell me about this . Shadow is a penny and this little tiny strips that you seen are the specter of all the stars that were captured on this plate. The plates about 8 inches by 10 inches and theres a prism over the telescope. Instead of seen the stars as points of light, youre seeing the light spread out into its component colors. If the blackandwhite photograph you dont see the colors. So you just have to know blue is over here and it varies all the way to read. Right. Looking it at a magnifying loop and you see the lines that are in the spectra and from that, the patterns of alliance, creating a classification system , deciphering the chemical composition of the stars. One of the most interesting discoveries, discoverer and i cant remember which one of the women made the discovery but the discoverer that didnt really believe it and that was the abundance of hydrogen. Remind me . You. It shocking if you look at the composition of the earth we dont because hydrogen is being overwhelmingly abundant but where the product of stars having synthesized, and having your elements youd back out into the universe to make second and thirdgeneration material. Most of the universe is prime or early hydrogen. She didnt think about the big bang, the spry at but what we now know is when the universe was created, it was mostly hydrogen. You dont have the means to make carbon and oxygen and nitrogen until you make stars. This is a deep discovery that she made. Her colleagues, professional colleagues, dismissed it. People thought the stars composition of the stars would match that of the earth. That they have a elements would be more trouble and in the idea that most of the universe consisted of the two vital elements seemed ridiculous. Its only four years from her paper. And by setting the spectra and noticing in the spectra that theres evidence of hydrogen observing a particular color and so you look at the spectra and you say hydrogen is responsible for eliminating particular color in the spectrum and isnt that a lot how it was done . Is it fair to say . She knew about atomic physics. These are the early days of quantum physics. They didnt know they would be relevant in the interior of stars in terms of explaining our history. Whats interesting about that is that her advisor had discouraged her from publishing in such a way that thats probably not the case so in your book where she writes us to full phd thesis and shes talking about the abundance of hydrogen and theres this one sentence where she says which is probably not the case which undermines a spurious result. She undermines himself to external pressure. At first he thought this is what i observed. Sheet questioned it to. Is such a new subject that it wasnt so far out there for an astronomer to make a discovery and speculate at the same time because everything was just been discovered at that time. Now we realize she was absolutely right and this predates einsteins prediction that led to the predictions of the big bang im not exactly sure the year. 191619 talks about both close but but its not in the vernacular of everybodys einstein didnt believe in the big bang. Even after people tried to from his own theories so its a long time between that and people understanding the created universe. Its pretty amazing. Can we see the next slide . This is Henrietta Levitt who was looking at and will get to these magnificent images looking at images taken from south america because the whole sky had to be covered there was a second observatory built in peru to photograph the stars of the southern hemisphere. He was looking at images of the clouds and she discovered thousands of variable stars and made a fundamental discovery about the pattern and variation that the stars the longest time to go through their cycles tended to be the brightest stars and she figured all of the stars that she was looking at were roughly the same distance away. The ones that look brighter were really brighter. That observation led to the first usable yardstick for measuring what we would call galactic distances and intergalactic distances in space. Her work enabled the size of the milky way to be determined and i may be getting ahead of the slides here but she figured out the milky way was not the only galaxy in the universe. That the universe in fact consisted of multiple galaxies. So would be fair to say that at that time they werent sure if the universe was maybe just a few hundred thousand lightyears across maybe that was it. In the shape of the universe . This led to us looking at geometry of globular clusters and geometry within the geometry. Leah, tell me about the. This is a plate that Henrietta Swan was looking at its a larger plate, most of the plates were about eight and a half by 11 but this is about ten by 17 14 by 17 test it would fit with different telescopes and shes overlaid it with a grid. This is a small magellanic cloud. In my Tandem Research where we are working without knowing each other, i would would go out to the harvard glass plate archive and look for their little initials on the cover of these glass plates. If you can see, carefully, the curator had made a cheat sheet that had everyones initials and this is the plate that i use as a source material for the next slide. Next slide, please. This is one of your pieces. Right, this is a painting painting done with ink on a translucent piece of film. I wanted to not make imagery that would reflect what these women were looking at but the process and final image itself would reflect their work with the glass plates. So, the the painting is done on a translucent piece of paper and used ill go into the process. How big is the paper . 6 feet by 6 feet. Will. Out that theres a popup of leah on the wall this morning. This afternoon it was fans were drawing on it before we tackle leahs workup. The piece on the left is the scale of this piece and will get to how to make the physical peace appear. Left at the next light. Thats on the wall. Explain the philosophy. The thing that fascinated me about the class plate itself was not just that it was the first record of the sky where as before if you are astronomer you had to be a draftsman. You had to make drawings and also say this is a certain luminosity, you might have a different interpretation of it. They were studying the glass plates and rarely would they ever put them into positive. This is a reference to the evolution of photographic process, starts off with a photographic negative printed into a positive in the image was never photographed and these were images of stars but printed by using its multilayered. Will. Will see some of the process later next light, please. There is leah i should also say as an artist making a leverage with science the residence in the Science Department, you can see that those are my equations on the back left mac its been demolished as we speak and theres leah working in the Science Department on a large piece which becomes a large piece on the right. Here you are, building would you call this the negative . Yes. This is us goofing off. [inaudible conversations] heres the next high. Thats mrs. Fleming again standing by one of the cupboards where she keeps her glass plates. She was there for a very long time, wasnt she . Yes. She oversaw some of the women but she also oversee the men were they to separate groups . Mainly the women. So they were operating the top telescopes, the men in the women were doing the analysis . Yes. She identified an enormous number of objects, is that right . Yes, unprecedented. She discovered hundreds of variable stars and the horse nebula, i think we have a picture of that. She has the record of the most variable stars at the time. At the time, worldwide. Completed by ms. Leavitt. Let see the next light please. Leah, tell me about. By identifying different plates, the series that im working on, is your body is each tied to one discovery that one of these women made. This is of course the horsehead nebula and the horse head is upside down and if you look on every image of it it looks a little bit more horse like. This is after Wilhelmina Fleming. Can we see the next light. I think my friend for finding this picture for me. Hi maria. I know you dont like the attention but this is maria cannon in her old age. It looks like shes looking on an ipad. [laughter] it is cracks. They are very fragile. When you work on them theres always a danger that theyll break. Theyre all being digitized now so that client scientist penn avenue access easily. They dont use this process that much anymore. Correct. Its 10000 years of the night sky. Amazing. Next light. What we have here. This is the computing room, people hard at work. It amazed me what these women endured because although this was a wonderful opportunity to contribute to science, it was very difficult commitment. It was not a luxurious commitment. It was on a commitment for easy life or a life of any kind of physical comfort. They were poor, poor and they suffered all kind of illnesses and illnesses were a real threat and they work absurd hours. What did you think about uncovering those details . Grip, argue, its flu. They had some of the same illnesses we had. They nominally work regular hours but of course anybody who is really involved in research knows you dont stop just because its 5 00 oclock or six clock. They were very committed. What they gave up at the beginning was certainly any kind of home life. This mrs. Fleming was unique as a working mother is the sole supporter of her son. Most of the time if a woman wanted to get married, that was the end of her career. That changed later. There is a line where someone says something to that effect that its no longer the end of the career once you get married and this was a big difference. That was amy joan cannon. What youre saying about these long hours is that theyre given the task that in a lot of ways is really mindnumbing of labeling stars and looking at the spectrum spectra but making their own conclusions. For example, henrietta discovered the variables and gives us the yardstick to measure the universe but shes not in a situation where then shes the researcher to make the jump to what will get to implies later on in our talk. To take over as the discoverer, the flight before this annie joan cannon on the other hand when shes hired is so unique shes hired as a computer but shes hired to work the telescope at night and ends up down in peru and physically writing about how heavy the telescope is and push it around and playing with the lenses. Its different than most of the other computers. You can sense the frustration that they dont have the opportunity to extend their work but they kinda get the sense that they know theres a great volume of material. But also their implications and consequences that you get the sense they feel the frustration not been able to pursue it. Im not so sure. Thats our view but im not sure they felt that. Is interesting that i admired that you do not try to impose the length of the modern on the past. You take it as it is and i think thats what gives the certain moments in the book of clarity when these women speak in their own words in the journal in their own impact. You havent colored it at all. You havent diluted the impact of it so when it comes its really powerful. When mr. Cannon goes to that meeting and so about special and shes the only woman at a table of men and she writes in her journal, since i had done most of the world work on the subject, i had to do most of the talking. [laughter] she took it in stride. While were on annie she says, this is a little out of context but shes talking about astro personal trauma, but may i be led into a useful busy life. Im not afraid of work, i long for it. Thats really beautiful. I like to add the recognition versus participation. In the beginning of the observatory green puts out an ad and he gets endless responses from educated women who are just got out of college who are willing to come to the observatory and basically begging to work for free, not even 25 cents an hour, but for free. The veil or the contacts about recognizing the veil of discovery they just wanted to work. They just wanted to contribute. The next light, please. She was not she discovered a comment in 1847 which made her worldfamous. She went on. [inaudible conversations] she looks like shes going to take it off the stand and swing it. When Matthew Vasser started Vassar College he hired her and she taught some of the women who came to work at harvard. Maria mitchell is an unsung genius, a true extraordinary she did computing work. She was very admired, i get the impression. Can we see the next light . These are also students at Wesley Annie Joan cannon is the third from the right, she was working in a physics lab that had been modeled on pickerings physic flag at mit. Annie cannons teacher had been pickering student and thats why her education equipped her to be the first woman at the observatory who could use the telescope as well as the computer. I think its important here and if come up a number of times to acknowledge the impact of womens colleges. This is incredibly impactful. Pickering knew it and he thought highly of the womens colleges and there was a lot of aggression against them and he would say all you have to do is look at what these women are producing to understand the impact, people just knew. They could see the competitions that they were making to science. To add the context of time and what was going on in the world at this. When hes hiring the computers, were still 40 years from women get the right to vote. That is just mind blowing. Forty years before women vote, there is a room of 2020 women in the Harvard Observatory doing physics. Incredible. Its pretty incredible. I would like to see the book that tells us how we went from there to the 70s and 80s. Were getting better. How do we get there . Well talk about that over wine upstairs. This is peru. This is the rudimentary observatory near the town of arequipa. Thats at a later stage in the shadow of a volcano that they felt was extinct. Lets get to the nonextinct volcano. The the reason why this is relevant is because this was built by. This is bill by the Harvard Group with a wonderful endowment that he was able to secure an and enabled the photography of the southern sky. How proud problematic the volcano been . They lost the weather after certain amount of years and through the raisin season got longer and longer and they moved everything to south africa. I also just want to. Out that you said this was because of a donation, it was a donation from a separate female donor. That was another totally bizarre part of the lineage of the Harvard Observatory but that it was run by women and funded by women. Catherine paid for the tele scope which we have a picture of. One more. One more. Dont mind us at the site, having this site pickering wanted a new much larger telescope. He said he needed 50000 and she came forward and wrote him a check. He. He also sent some of his own money. He spent some of his own money into the observatory. Can we go back to the picnic scene. Picnic in peru. They started the place. Our next picture is the globular cluster and he became interested in these globular clusters of stars, the technical term, a got about stars and he noticed that they were full of variable stars which he was interested in. In the closeup picture he and his wife would try to count the number of stars in each cluster and when they got closer to the center it was impossible. Then they were also looking at pictures of the same clusters over time to see the variations. Leah, can you tell us is this one of the plates . This image is of the plate . Yeah. Its interesting because until they could understand distances to things they couldnt understand where these globular clusters are. Now we know they are some in our galaxy and in other galaxies as well but the one working looking at here in our galaxies are stars that orbit in the spiral, live a little bit more freely. Theyre not bound to the plane. How would you know, looking at this or if it was close or far away . You see no extension of space and the stars. You cant tell by that. So how would you tell . This is important on henriettas research that she gave us a way way to gauge the distance of those objects. We see the next image . This is a globular cluster taken by the hubble telescope. You can see tremendous detail but if you think about the timescale between when these women were working, hubble which will come to was in the early 1920s did his impactful work, and satellite is launched a few decades, several decades later. Its extraordinarily short scale to think about from going where they were with glass plates to launching an object into space. Even saying, is this object in our galaxy. When they started doing their study of glass plates, we didnt know what galaxy was. The definition of galaxy is also theres a real idea floated that galaxy is one universe. Now of course we know theres as many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stars in our own galaxy and thats a pretty big leap within the next one more. Leah, tell me me about the. This is the most interesting part of the plate the actual notation that the women would use indian ink on top of the glass plate. Theyre undergoing a process to scan each of the glass plates. What theyre doing is photographing all of this beautiful calligraphy on top of it where there are Different Things him numbering systems, classification of and what theyre doing is scraping the plates and photographing them. Harvard looks at this is in our card archive of astronomy not the archive of women at harvard. How delicate are the plates are . Reporter absolutely. Is someone bringing down your back in the room . Know. You dont touch the plate. You can see the sleeves that are original and you can see extraordinary. Please themselves have beautiful writing desk conversations back and forth. Different writing back and forth. Next slide please. This is based on one of the nebula that i found on the plate painted upstairs on the third floor and brought down from Southern California and printed with my studios assisted natalie who is here. Can we see the next light while you talk . We are doing art here everyone. This is the next thing for mixing the chemistry for types. We take the studio and turn it into a dark room, blacking everything out and mixing photo emotion and putting it on essentially large scale watercolor paper. Next slide, please. This is the emulsion. We turn on the light for the sake of the photo. So this would be a bad thing to do. We turn the studio into a dark room and we go to the negative is then pressed between this painting a photo emotion on the water pressed between glass and then exposed out in the sun and so go to the next one you get these big emulsion. Ive been with you when youre testing chemicals in this way. Its very fun. You go through a lot of recipes pretty much. Its not like you mix it in your done. Its a storebought wine and you compare it. How do you come to decide which is the right one when you get the right recipe . The first print that we did was the piece on the left. We were printing every friday for three months before we got the very first usable print. Also, the sun moves. The prints, the Exposure Time that you use at noon in the summer in los angeles is different than the Exposure Time that you would use in the winter. The window is actually very small and changes throughout the day. So Exposure Time from eight minutes becomes 20 minutes when you move two hours into the afternoon. And you have to experiment with all that. Next site please this is the piece on the wall. This is the final print, each of the final prints themselves are unique. Its a photographic print so i can make another one by using the negative but each one might have especially around the edges , in the dark its hard to figure out if the emulsion is og itself has nebulous activity and so does the painting. Sometimes you cant tell if its the back room emulsion or if its a painting itself. You often exhibit the negative and the positive, sidebyside. Is there what defines that choice . Are you thinking more about process than exhibition is supposed to final product . Yeah, its not not as important in artistic process but it highlights the highlight of the history of this project. It was great to find out that dava was writing this as i was working on these paintings. I have to tell how i was in the archives and meeting an astronomer there, a wellknown astronomer and he said youve got to read dava sobel book. Sharon. Sure enough you got to read me. On was celia paynes student who is at harvard now and was one of her phd students. Its an incredible lenience. Its hidden in plain view. Everyone knew there were women there but not actually understand the full impact of what they were doing. Ive had women at harvard say to me they knew that there had been women working there but they always thought it was some kind of cute, quaint story. They didnt realize they were doing science. This is interesting as a scientist and being educated as a scientist. I didnt know the story to leah brought it to my attention. I had heard of pickering and i had this silly version which is amusing but it wasnt until leos work that i became interested in started to learn about this. I think its interesting about the education and why cant we be educated in parallel a scientist and its historians or as writers and you have the Bigger Picture at all times. Theres something were not doing it right. I also think its interesting that other scientists at harvard have the same kind of reaction you did, they knew it was they are but they didnt know what was. Its astounding the glass plates are the physical thing, is not just a story but its an amazing, physical lineage to the story takes up three stories that if you are a ph student you would walk through the door that was astronomical archive. That takes a lot of time. The center for astrophysics when i was a graduate student at mit and it didnt even register. It didnt register. I was back at harvard for a week in november and i was like oh my god theres a picture and its been up there since i was in grad school and its dusty, its not new but its funny that i didnt really even notice even in the fiber in the fabric of the building that i wanted went there almost every day for years. Next light. We call this the paper doll. There they all are. Henrietta is on the side with the black, annie is all in white also with a similar bow but not as dark, and this was just the staff out for a lark, a post photo. Im sure it will be equally famous someday. Next slide. Were talking about these books in the context of that photo. These are the record books. People wrote down what they were doing, what they were looking at how did you use these . I was looking at the handwriting. In a lot of ways i was directed to some of the specific plates that different women were using but i was interested in any kind of physical imagery like i was mentioning, annies archive in a different library and i never heard her no but in christmas cards but in the records you can also see the endless notetaking with the initials on these things. I think that link to the lineage is really powerful to see the visual replication of all of this writing. In addition to the glass plates, theres also very extensive card catalog that map the entire sky. The project itself physically draper was photographing the entire sky. That was an incredible undertaking, not just that they were taking these glass plates and numbering stars, but they were mapping the entire sky, south pole, north and south hemispheres. To connect the pieces, he died prematurely and its his wife who funded the computers at the conservatory. His dream was realized but without him. Next slide. Although im thinking my friend maria was hiding in the audience but its of a glass plate taken by her iphone of the glass plate. It looks like andromeda but we think it was taken who was it taken by. Maria, who took this plate . Annie joan cannon but its andromeda which is the nearest spiral galaxy to us, much bigger than our galaxy but again were not exactly sure the year of this play. We dont know if that time annie joan cannon knew that this galaxy was an entire galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars and that they were millions of lightyears away in an entire other island of universe as they would been called. Next slide. This is hubble. This is the difference in terms of the security of the women and the acclaim. Hubble is an incredibly famous astronomer and this is the early 1920s, hes an interesting character. We wont go into hubble but hes charming even with fake british accent because he was an anglophile. He was working at mount over caltech with some of the most powerful telescopes at the time. He was in pursuit of the nebula that may or may not have been in our galaxy. Next light. This is a negative image in that hubble took at mount wilson and it stated sixth of october 1923 and its a dramatic moment. Dava, will you talk about this . He was identifying stars that were part of the nebula and percy found he thought he found a nova found it was a variable star and it was one of mr. Levitz type of variable stars. With that he was able to tell the distance of the andromeda nebula and put it far out the milky way. That was the proof that the milky way was not the sum total of the universe. So by using levitz work, he expands the universe from a few hundred thousand lightyears, suddenly, to millions and 90 billion lightyears as far as the eye can see and possibly beyond. And that its full of so this is andromeda and this is the relevance of the previous glass plate that they are capturing images of andromeda. This is really the moment of the huge discovery. The universe is huge, there are other galaxies and not only that but the galaxies are expanding and it relies on levitz work. It circles back to this idea that these women are able to create the data or information and theyre not given time to do the research or make it on their own conclusions. But levitt, the observatory gets a letter that someone wants to nominate her for the nobel prize but he doesnt realize that she has to wait five years before. At that time it was shapely who was the director, i believe, and given the time she wouldve come to our own conclusions. A but this is the Hubble Space Telescope. One day we will merge into one big galaxies. Hes the first one to come to the observatory and have a fellowship named a. Whats interesting is she was mrs. Drapers needs and came in and out of working for the observatory but they let al ledf these women work there. Wasnt he uncomfortable paying her such a low salary he did have that reaction to because he knew he would be paying 25 cents an hour. Hour. But 25 cents was fine. I wanted to read this quote from a riot who is incredibly influential. The best thing that can be said so far is that its been industrious. The best of me is that ive not pretended to what i was not. I was a lovely summary. I wonder if a lot of the sentiments definitely industrious and unpretentious. They found a way to be who they really were. Except despite certain limitations or maybe even because of them. Maybe because they didnt have other opportunities, they found a way to do something that was of their choice. It was the sharing of experience and the account of them not only just getting together socially but doing poetry readings about the night sky. Lets thank our guest and open up for questions. We have microphones floating around. So if you have a question, wave to somebody that has a microphone. Over here. She is the only one on record that had to get eyeglasses in the midst of her work but you can see just from looking at some of the plates with a stream that would be. Did you figure out where you were going to go to see the total eclipse. There is a question up in front and then in the second row. Listening to this, im beginning to wonder what happened to the men because what i hear is they had everything to and they tried to get them the recognition. They did make more money. Did they get recognition and Career Advancement through their work in the observatory . Were their famous name box not so much as computers but being able to make the photographs was exacting. So he published widely. Did he have a crazy theory that he wouldnt give up on viewing the moon and observing there was a little exuberance. You mentioned that you havent learned about the training and i wondered if there is any sort of a defining women in stem now but is there any sort of a systematic change in the curriculum in science, high school i dont know about high school. I dont know either from firsthand experience or professional experience, but i dont think there is a change in curriculum. Whats important is books like this are being published and they have been widely received because the education cant just be limited to technical. We have to have a greater appreciation of the science and culture and i think this is our mission here in building the Science Department in this context it is very intangible. So i think that we are changing in the more important wave and a specific curriculum. We are thinking about who we are and using the scientific land is to understand a lot of the. I notice there are some professors from colombia do you feel like speaking to that . Whether the curriculum has been changing over the years. The professor in astronomy and also a famous astronomer. They are quite a bit more historically conscious. They are credited in all of the textbooks and i havent seen the actual sort of raise, but there is always the relationship that hahas shown and its considered the discovery of essentially the distance scale of the universe out to the local group and a little bit beyond. So a group of galaxies. Several hundred galaxies around the universe together, yes. Let me ask you another question. I believe that the curating of the harvard placed remained virtually all female enterprise throughout the 20th century and even to the very day. And i believe all until now have been women. So how has that endured because many directors cause the money to run this operation and i know from experience they wouldve harvard professors when it comes time to shave off the budget, what are they doing here. She not only paid for the work during her lifetime that provided for the continuation and preservation of the plates in her will support of the money is still coming from her. There havent been very many curators. It starts with fleming and then to others and now on to number five so in this entire lineage that you are looking at i is a small number of women. Do we have one more question i think we have time for me to more questions. One in the back. How long does it take. You be in for one of the astronomers when they first collected the plates . They were never fully red because the density of information is so great i dont think anyone felt that they had been completely. Lets look at one of the ones that was marked up in great detail. How long would that have taken . I dont know that i can answer that. Maybe someone marked it up and then ten years later said there is a variable star can you check this part. The questions were asked in different times and so the same place might yield ten answers or research projects. I dont know that that question is answerable. Many people came from spain to spend time at harvard. The fact that she could have a future in astronomy in the country. We have one question here and then we will come around to the front. Yes please. This question is for the artist and a great. If you look at most of the contemporary art, the great museums of the world, most of the subject matter that artists conjoin trade on has to do with the physical world we can see on the project of a matter both bowls of fruit, landscapes, people. What gave rise to this viewpoint towards the extraterrestrial and the second part of the question would be is there a connection between the notion of the feminine and the conflict . Great question. [laughter] well, i think when i think about the absolute fundamental connection is the fascination of nature and the desire to replicate it or understand it in some way so 500 years ago, that might have been make a painting of something and now we have the advanced technology of the Hubble Space Telescope is also been a fascination with the fascination and horror. If you see a comment or an eclipse that could produce notions of ticker in a lot of ways, so i think that the gnome sharing of representing this guy that hasnt been in the lineage of our history is any lot of ways because of the lack of technology and as we get closer to the stars with the newest telescopes or the machine measuring the gravitational waves, we will have different entry points of how to represent and get in touch with the objects in the sky. We spent the afternoon today talking about this really incredible painting i think you would be interested in that is dated 1492, but there is a uso and dave xrated and its not only a ufo because i think for a long time they thought definitely someone had come back 100 years ago and added this u. S. Open and the painting there is a figure looking and pointing at the sky so its this idea of being visited. But i think it creates a lot of mystery for humankind. Sorry, was there a followup to that . [inaudible] i think for me the relationship to the idea of experience and back to m that ta universal experience in a lot of ways. I think theres one last question up in the front. It was a question about the digitizing of the glass plates and when is that projects slated to be finished and will that be accessible to the archives . It will be accessible to the public and it will all be online. Some of the images already are. The project had a little hiccup about a year ago where the stacks were flooded and all the digitizing equipment was drowned out, but they had been rebuilt and carrying forward. Its been going on about ten years and i think that they probably need another five to ten or maybe less. Im not sure how quickly they are going now. It kind of makes me wonder this is just wide speculation to the point when someone in the Astronomy Department needs space and they point to three stories of metal cabinets and glass plates with is going to happen when it is completely some of the plates have beautiful writing on them or a beautiful rotation and those have been satisfied but there is a small amount set aside and essentially they are photographing the covers and the notation and then raise during the glass plates and scanning them so someone can go online and use them as a reference of what it was like 100 years ago. So is it going to be necessary to have these plates in the future . They are ruining them for the sake of digitizing them . But then they are destroying the original. Not the image, but the writing on them so whether they would put numbers or marks on the plate that has to be washed off. The reason for that is use all the vast notation on some of these slides if you were looking for a star and wanted to see was there a nova you cant see number one through 2,000 whatever so they are scraping the side, the opposite side which is where the women would write the notation. Presumably there is a way of looking at an image and separating out the notation from the original. Why dont they photograph them with the notation . And then they scanned them. I know we have to wrap up but its interesting the physicality of the place is inspiring to y you. The digitization and all that wonderful. But you wouldnt have worked with your process had it not been for the physicality of their process which defined. Your work isnt just the final thing on the wall, it is the actual act of going through. I want to say how it is the light of the stars that makes these images. They are exposed by a star to create them. In my work i think the process highlights the history which is essential, but i dont know. Theres something in the physical link of imagining them its not just a romantic notion but again, the way that we contextualize what these objects are, it was looked at as an astronomical archive. If you go to a different part of the library, then they look at the scrapbooks as the lineage, but the Astronomy Department at harvard doesnt see that and i am hoping that the book will make everyone so excited about this history that they will never think of scraping another place. This is interesting to me because you said its also important in drawing you to the topic as a writer, the technicality of it. Theyve retained their value after all this time. How did they even discovered the project . A famous astronomer. I was interviewing her and she mentioned the importance in her work. When i went to learn more about henrietta it was very surprisi surprising. That is a beautiful place to close. Before we take a minute, a little plug i want to thank the guests remind you we have a book signing. I believe that they are still at the desk so please stay and enjoy yourselves and lets thank our guests. [applause] amateur Astronomers Association is right outside so if you want to look through a telescope and see what we have to see tonight, please feel free to do so. Youv last panel and that was women in science. That is with and natalia holtz. She will be joining us in just a minute to take your calls. Rise of the rocket girls is the name of her book