Bruce Walter Shore | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory llnl.gov - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from llnl.gov Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Payne entered the University of Cambridge in 1919. A lecture by astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington on his expedition to the island of Principe that confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity inspired her to become an astronomer. Eddington encouraged her ambition, but she felt there were more opportunities for a woman to work in astronomy in the United States than in Britain. In 1923 she received a fellowship to study at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., after a correspondence with its director, Harlow Shapley.
Beginning in the 1880s, astronomers at Harvard College such as Edward Pickering, Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming, and Antonia Maury had succeeded in classifying stars according to their spectra into seven types: O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. It was believed that this sequence corresponded to the surface temperature of the stars, with O being the hottest and M the coolest. In her Ph.D. thesis (published as
Madam starmaker
When it comes to prestige in US education, few names carry more weight than Harvard University.
Founded in 1636 in Cambridge, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as New College, Harvard is the US’s oldest institution of higher education.
People today might think of Harvard for its legal and business studies but from its early days it was known as a centre of scientific research.
Less known is the role that women played at Harvard in developing astronomy as a science. Prominent among these starry women was Henrietta Swan Leavitt, born on 4 July 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts.
In 1888 Leavitt entered the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, which later became Radcliffe College, an offshoot of male-only Harvard. Her studies ranged from classical Greek, fine arts and philosophy, to analytical geometry and differential calculus.
Jupiter and Saturn be closest after 800 years jagran special jagran.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jagran.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Shakuntala Devi counts her blessings
The ‘human computer’ had a variety of interests.
Shakuntala Devi turned a remarkable talent into a remarkable career. Credit: Hetvee S Patel, via Wikimedia Commons
Think of the boxy grey desktop computer that sat on your desk, or the massive grey tower computer under your desk, or the lightweight shiny tablet computer in your handbag, or even the smartphone computer in the palm of your hand.
Now, consider Scottish-born Williamina Paton Fleming, who in the late 1800s was credited, according to
Harvard Magazine, with discovering “10 novae, 59 gaseous nebulae, more than 300 variable stars, and the Horsehead Nebula in Orion”, along with recognising “the existence of hot, Earth-sized stars later dubbed white dwarfs”.