Transcripts For CSPAN2 Dava Sobel Discusses The Glass Univer

I want to thank the Simons Foundation for supporting all of our initiatives here where we do private events, events that are science themed or science inspired and its really with the support that we are able to using these events, were excited to shout at simon. I want to mention before i do this, our guest is an amateur astronomer, he will be out in the cold gardens, applaud a lot louder. Hes out in the cold garden tonight and helping us and the claim is that the cloud sphere, is right about exactly as we sent it in the last question and also we will have a book signing for the glass universe so we will have signing over here and we will do a little q a after our conversation so let me introduce our guest. Im sure a lot of you have heard of our guests so i want to introduce david sobel. David sobel is a bestselling author, a superb writer. I remember when i heard you speak about your longitude, you said i think it was her son, asked you what you are working on and he started, i didnt think anybody was going to read it. He was like nobodys going to read that mom. Totally bestselling, wonderful book. And most recently of course galileos daughter was involved so a very popular book and of course i was acknowledged on the prize nomination in 2000, quite an honor. And most recently we have a glass universe which is what were here to talk about tonight. Which is the story of the women of the Harvard College service racial pakistan and so its welcome data. If youve ever been here, welcome to plan works. And we also have miaholleran, my pal. Also known as an assistant professor of art and director of the painting and drawing project at chapman university. We have a wonderful artist and a greatsort of synchronicity , has worked with the place that david wrote about in his historical book where really we are lucky to have them there and their different as an artist and one as, i dont know if its fair there. Its very much so i think if you dont mind being called a historian. I will take it. Hey historian. So lets take this, welcome a set. I did a terrible thing, i didnt bring my clicker. You guys have been so nice and i asked you to for, can we run up into my bag and my clicker. On the second floor, oops. You are a little rough around the edges here. So lets talk, can we actually go back to the first slide for a second . Lets talk about this picture. Tonight, presentation the glass universe, its so named because of the glass plate , the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of glass plates, 500,000. 500,007 plates. That the women of the Harvard College use, its an innovative technique and many things are interesting about it scientifically which we will talk about but of course obviously sociologically this is womens right to vote and i used your the story about this which i relayed, this gaggle of women allegedly that work or Charles Pickering, the director of the College Observatory and the story i had heard, if you take his failed computers which is the name for people who computed astronomical calculations that he said my gosh, my maid could do a better job and file all the men and hired is made who did a fine job. It was apocryphal. But what is the real story . Part of the real story . The real story is he had this in his computer, he also had a maid who had come to work with him at the residence side of the observatory, a pregnant woman, no longer her husband. She was abandoned by her husband. And he immediately realized that she was too talented to be working as a maid and a master servant so he took her to the observatory and gave her computing work to do and she went on to become the first woman at harvard to have a University Title who was the tracer of that job. So pickering. What year was she hired . It depends where you count. She came around 1879 but she had been there only two years and then she had to go home to have a baby. But really, they list1881 as the year. Wilhelmina flemings. We do not have a shout out from the audience. This picture was taken in 1985 so she is no longer there. But a lot of famous folks are in the picture including andrew john cannon who started at the service in 1896. Which one is any . She is, she is seated next to the globe and shes looking down. Annie buchanan became famous for her classification of stars. But when you learn the type of stars, she said oh, youll be a fine girl, kiss me. Thats her classification. So the acronym, its an old star. Exactly. [overlapping conversation] they were in alphabetical order to begin with but alphabetical consideration of the stars, that mnemonic helps people remember but also in the picture is her husband, she is the woman sitting at the table. Shes the first person to earn a phd in economy at harvard. The astronomy teacher at harvard, went 12 years with students who listen to this history. And its become a caring. Pickering had already died when the education band was started. His gathering of a great number of women to work there. His befriending of wealthy women who paid for the research and who also paid to establish fellowships for young women to come and work at the observatory for a year. And then they can work somewhere else. I thought it was amazing, i remember i had to keep reading reading this in your book to make sure i was understanding but the first tv in astronomy at harvard went to sicilian pain. I think you just said. I remember rereading it i just went to the first women, i kept struggling to think the Astronomy Program didnt exist in the expansion was to include men. The expansion was to include men and she was also the first chair of, the first female chair of any department harvard so she goes on to teach at harvard in the Astronomy Department and oversees the very first mail phd candidate. And then, what is it, four years later shes awarded astronomy chair. Theres a lot of assistance that goes to hiring, giving a title to other than computer assistance. Computer assistance is a euphemism even though there were mathematicians or astronomers. Men could do computers. So lets see the next slide. Who do we having this slide . This is one of many people in the previous slide. Ending at the back overseeing the work is william lanning, the women we were talking about. So she supervised the other women. She hired a lot of other women to. When she started, were there as many female students . The great expansion of the female staff happened cause of the drapers. So anna palmer draper, she was planning to do a series of projects with her husband. 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 this Research Program in exchange for having the program name for her husband. She continued for decades. Lets talk about, wheres charles. Next slide. Charles pickering, he was about 30 years old in this picture when he took over at the observatory. A physicist and that was fine in a scandal. Why were they hiring a physicist . And how many years has he had , 42 . Its interesting because i was very moved by this in the story that they hire this woman in a compromise position. As you see, to be a maid. And pickering, i think about the idea of him at some kind of feminist in a strange way. I dont think he could hypothesize about women breaking boundaries but he simply saw the talent and he accepted it, it seemed without any hesitation. You think thats unfair . He was also hiring women but he encouraged 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. You also, this was a lot of us history. He encouraged women to publish other in their own names so it was like if you were a computer working at the observatory you are part of the Bigger Picture that was going on but whenever it was paid he would encourage and even pushed different women to be noted as first in the harvard animals and what they were publishing each year. And give them credit. He was first to respond to those things easily, just with no kind of wage of some kind of social burden but interestingly he still had severe limitations. He said things and im quoting from your book where he says women with enough figures to be accommodated in the computing room went into a different profession which is a strong thing to say but he prefaces that by saying while it would be unseemly, im putting you, while it would be unseemly to subject a lady to not to mention the cold and winter of Telephone Services and then he goes on to say women with a nexis of cheaters. He couldnt conceive of them operating the scope. But he came. Because when ms. Cannon came, she was first woman to use the telescope. So that was open to them. I was trying to say that he saw them as being very valuable but he didnt financially value them equally as the mail computers and i think thats an important part of the story that on one hand hes sort of saying this is a great opportunity for you and for women that are getting out of the rise of womens colleges but at the same time, the harvard computer, these female computers are paid less than half of their male counterparts were doing the same work. What is it, . 25 an hour they were paid . In your book, i think you use the, you can times it by 285 to get the current amount and i did the math one point and these women are making like 6. 16 an hour. I think it came to 15 a year, not scaling up for inflation and the men had not been fired. Unlike the apocryphal story, they were garnering 2000 year so she was completely in support of equal gender pay, kind of fascinating. And Wilhelmina Fleming complained about it, she was fond of him but she keeps a diary. Edward or charles, what did she named him . It was Charles Pickering fleming. She goes back to scotland to have his baby out of wedlock and she nurse named the baby after the observatory director. Thats significant how much she admired him. I got the sense that most of the women really were quite devoted to him in a lot of ways. They felt they were a very collegial group. They worked in close quarters, six days a week and they all socialized on saturday night. I mean, it has to be admitted that some of the work was toilsome. Truly toilsome. Once we get to this slide has all the numbers. They were working insane hours, it was a tedium involved from the task and you never get the sense, you get a sense of their fatigue at times. You never get a sense that they are ungrateful or resentful. No, they were well aware that they were involved in groundbreaking research. And they felt including pickering that science was more important than these other luxuries and other things that we value socially and even pickering, even his attitude towards these women were, i felt from reading your history that science was going to benefit from his work and it made no sense. It made no sense to be concerned about anything else, whether they were women or anything at all and yet he did do them much less. Im going to get from Wilhelmina Flemings diary. She wrote, he seems to think the work is too much or too hard for me. No matter the responsibility or how many hours. I immediately told that i receive an excellent salary. If you would have everything you i have a home to keep as well as a family to keep as well as the men and then the women had no claims to such comfort and this is considered an enlightened age, she says. She was written right before women had the right to vote. She was living in. But it was very interesting is that this is a crucial point. We still live with this legacy of unequal gender pay. Women have to support their families to and its deeply rooted in our history, this idea. She starts to feel her work, over and over again, must not be of value if shes not paid equally. I thought that was very strong. Did you read her journals at all like to mark. When i was looking at the archive, i was focusing on the visual but i was drawn to the Annie Buchanan book, this amazing lineage of scrapbooks coming out of the current newspapers where they getting all this credit and the same story you heard, that they were unappreciated at the time, the story flips quickly when you see that theres this kind of seemingly unending source material of the newspaper clippings from all over the world of recognition of these women but at the same time when Wilhelmina Fleming passes away and Annie Buchanan comes the curator of the place, the president of harvard refuses to give her that title and. Different president. Yes. Until the new president that she assumes that its an acknowledged position. So shes knownworldwide. The classification system of that we use today and at the same time astronomers are writing and speaking openly that the president itself is not even recognizing this brilliant scientist within the corral at harvard so i was really fascinated by any jump cannon in the way that she visually recorded all of her travels through all of these incredible observatories and eclipses and comments, hunting. She was relentless. Theres so many great pictures of her. Im sorry, i dont have any of the pictures. Couldwe see the next slide . Here is an actual glass slide. Women typically work in pairs, one of them would be looking at the plate and speaking aloud, her observations through the recorder who would write things down. The glass plate, what was so innovative about the technology . We think of this as being an astronomical observation, emotions and almost photography. It was photography. These were glass negatives. And pickerings genius was to create this photographic archive which as we pointed out, in the building that was constructed specifically to hold them all. And to keepthem from fire. They were very aware of fire. Things use to burn down a lot. Not to scare you or anything. A lot of wood. So by introducing photography instead of 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 could study a series of photographs to watch how the stars changed over time. So all of this kind of work was new and thats why they needed so many women to be looking at the employees. Could we see the next slide . Whats amazing about the story that dave was talking about is that this is actually the record we have 100 years ago of looking at the sky itself so even though we are looking at archival material, this is relevant imagery because this is the birth of photography itself and some of the very first images of the sky were taken with the drapers and at harvard of different objects but it also is still relevant now. When new objects are discovered, they look back at the harvard record of what was in that part of the sky 100 years ago. And variable stars was one of the important discoveries that came out of this incredible catalog of information. But can you tell me about this . This is to scale so this is the shadow of a penny. This little tiny strip that you are seeing is the spectra of all the stars that were captured on the place, eight inches by 10 inches. And theres a prism over the telescope. So instead of seeing the stars as points of light, they are seeing the stars spread out into its component colors but its a blackandwhite photograph so you dont see your colors. So you just have to know blue is over here and it varies all the way to read. You are looking at it with a magnifying group and you are seeing the lines that are in the spectrum and from that, from the patterns of the lines reading a classification system, deciphering the chemicals, composition of the stars. Just as an aside but one of the most interesting discoveries which the discoverer, i cant remember which one of the women made the discovery but they didnt really believe it and this was the abundance of hydrogen. Its shocking if you look at the composition of the earth you dont think of hydrogen as being overwhelmingly abundant but we are the product of stars having synthesized heavier elements and spewing it back out into the universe to make a second and thirdgeneration material. But most of the universe she realized was still primordial hydrogen, you didnt think about the big bang, this is prior to all that but we know when the universe is created its mostly just hydrogen. We dont have the means to take down nitrogen and hydrogen until you make stars so this is a peak discovery that she made. And her colleagues, professional colleagues dismissed it. People bought the stars composition of the stars was not that of the earth and that the heavy elements would be more prevalent and the idea that the universe was not interested in the lightest two elements, it took only four years from her paper. From studying the spectra and noticing in the spectra theres evidence of hydrogen absorbing in particular color. So you look at the spectra and you say hydrogen is responsible for eliminating a particular color in the spectrum and isnt that how a lot of it was done . He really knew about a topic. She studied quantum physics. From the early days of quantum where people didnt know that the bright stars and quantum physics would be relevant in the interior stars in terms of explaining their histories. Whats also interesting is that her advisor had really discouraged her from publishing them there, in your book where she writes this beautiful phd peace and is talking about the abundance of hydrogen and theres this one sentence that she said this is probably not the case. Is probably a spurious result. She undermines herself what she does so under external pressure. She first thought this is what i observe. Sure. Its so counterintuitive. But whats so interesting as you point out in your book is its 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 being discovered at that time. We should absolutely right and this again predates the predictions that led to the predictions of the big bang, and einstein turned talking about general relativity. Yes, but its close. Not in the vernacular of everybodys, einstein didnt believe in the big bang even. Even after he derived from his own theories so it was a long time between that and the universe was created and its very simple. Its one of the most elementary stuff. This is henry at 11. Who was looking at these magnificent images. Looking at images that had been taken from south america, if the whole sky had to be covered, there was a second observatory built in peru to photograph the stars of the Southern Hemisphere and she was looking at the images of the Simons Foundation<\/a> for supporting all of our initiatives here where we do private events, events that are science themed or science inspired and its really with the support that we are able to using these events, were excited to shout at simon. I want to mention before i do this, our guest is an amateur astronomer, he will be out in the cold gardens, applaud a lot louder. Hes out in the cold garden tonight and helping us and the claim is that the cloud sphere, is right about exactly as we sent it in the last question and also we will have a book signing for the glass universe so we will have signing over here and we will do a little q a after our conversation so let me introduce our guest. Im sure a lot of you have heard of our guests so i want to introduce david sobel. David sobel is a bestselling author, a superb writer. I remember when i heard you speak about your longitude, you said i think it was her son, asked you what you are working on and he started, i didnt think anybody was going to read it. He was like nobodys going to read that mom. Totally bestselling, wonderful book. And most recently of course galileos daughter was involved so a very popular book and of course i was acknowledged on the prize nomination in 2000, quite an honor. And most recently we have a glass universe which is what were here to talk about tonight. Which is the story of the women of the Harvard College<\/a> service racial pakistan and so its welcome data. If youve ever been here, welcome to plan works. And we also have miaholleran, my pal. Also known as an assistant professor of art and director of the painting and drawing project at chapman university. We have a wonderful artist and a greatsort of synchronicity , has worked with the place that david wrote about in his historical book where really we are lucky to have them there and their different as an artist and one as, i dont know if its fair there. Its very much so i think if you dont mind being called a historian. I will take it. Hey historian. So lets take this, welcome a set. I did a terrible thing, i didnt bring my clicker. You guys have been so nice and i asked you to for, can we run up into my bag and my clicker. On the second floor, oops. You are a little rough around the edges here. So lets talk, can we actually go back to the first slide for a second . Lets talk about this picture. Tonight, presentation the glass universe, its so named because of the glass plate , the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of glass plates, 500,000. 500,007 plates. That the women of the Harvard College<\/a> use, its an innovative technique and many things are interesting about it scientifically which we will talk about but of course obviously sociologically this is womens right to vote and i used your the story about this which i relayed, this gaggle of women allegedly that work or Charles Pickering<\/a>, the director of the College Observatory<\/a> and the story i had heard, if you take his failed computers which is the name for people who computed astronomical calculations that he said my gosh, my maid could do a better job and file all the men and hired is made who did a fine job. It was apocryphal. But what is the real story . Part of the real story . The real story is he had this in his computer, he also had a maid who had come to work with him at the residence side of the observatory, a pregnant woman, no longer her husband. She was abandoned by her husband. And he immediately realized that she was too talented to be working as a maid and a master servant so he took her to the observatory and gave her computing work to do and she went on to become the first woman at harvard to have a University Title<\/a> who was the tracer of that job. So pickering. What year was she hired . It depends where you count. She came around 1879 but she had been there only two years and then she had to go home to have a baby. But really, they list1881 as the year. Wilhelmina flemings. We do not have a shout out from the audience. This picture was taken in 1985 so she is no longer there. But a lot of famous folks are in the picture including andrew john cannon who started at the service in 1896. Which one is any . She is, she is seated next to the globe and shes looking down. Annie buchanan became famous for her classification of stars. But when you learn the type of stars, she said oh, youll be a fine girl, kiss me. Thats her classification. So the acronym, its an old star. Exactly. [overlapping conversation] they were in alphabetical order to begin with but alphabetical consideration of the stars, that mnemonic helps people remember but also in the picture is her husband, she is the woman sitting at the table. Shes the first person to earn a phd in economy at harvard. The astronomy teacher at harvard, went 12 years with students who listen to this history. And its become a caring. Pickering had already died when the education band was started. His gathering of a great number of women to work there. His befriending of wealthy women who paid for the research and who also paid to establish fellowships for young women to come and work at the observatory for a year. And then they can work somewhere else. I thought it was amazing, i remember i had to keep reading reading this in your book to make sure i was understanding but the first tv in astronomy at harvard went to sicilian pain. I think you just said. I remember rereading it i just went to the first women, i kept struggling to think the Astronomy Program<\/a> didnt exist in the expansion was to include men. The expansion was to include men and she was also the first chair of, the first female chair of any department harvard so she goes on to teach at harvard in the Astronomy Department<\/a> and oversees the very first mail phd candidate. And then, what is it, four years later shes awarded astronomy chair. Theres a lot of assistance that goes to hiring, giving a title to other than computer assistance. Computer assistance is a euphemism even though there were mathematicians or astronomers. Men could do computers. So lets see the next slide. Who do we having this slide . This is one of many people in the previous slide. Ending at the back overseeing the work is william lanning, the women we were talking about. So she supervised the other women. She hired a lot of other women to. When she started, were there as many female students . The great expansion of the female staff happened cause of the drapers. So anna palmer draper, she was planning to do a series of projects with her husband. 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 this Research Program<\/a> in exchange for having the program name for her husband. She continued for decades. Lets talk about, wheres charles. Next slide. Charles pickering, he was about 30 years old in this picture when he took over at the observatory. A physicist and that was fine in a scandal. Why were they hiring a physicist . And how many years has he had , 42 . Its interesting because i was very moved by this in the story that they hire this woman in a compromise position. As you see, to be a maid. And pickering, i think about the idea of him at some kind of feminist in a strange way. I dont think he could hypothesize about women breaking boundaries but he simply saw the talent and he accepted it, it seemed without any hesitation. You think thats unfair . He was also hiring women but he encouraged the alumni of the womens colleges to work on their own and send the results to harvard for publication to prove that Higher Education<\/a> was a value. You also, this was a lot of us history. He encouraged women to publish other in their own names so it was like if you were a computer working at the observatory you are part of the Bigger Picture<\/a> that was going on but whenever it was paid he would encourage and even pushed different women to be noted as first in the harvard animals and what they were publishing each year. And give them credit. He was first to respond to those things easily, just with no kind of wage of some kind of social burden but interestingly he still had severe limitations. He said things and im quoting from your book where he says women with enough figures to be accommodated in the computing room went into a different profession which is a strong thing to say but he prefaces that by saying while it would be unseemly, im putting you, while it would be unseemly to subject a lady to not to mention the cold and winter of Telephone Services<\/a> and then he goes on to say women with a nexis of cheaters. He couldnt conceive of them operating the scope. But he came. Because when ms. Cannon came, she was first woman to use the telescope. So that was open to them. I was trying to say that he saw them as being very valuable but he didnt financially value them equally as the mail computers and i think thats an important part of the story that on one hand hes sort of saying this is a great opportunity for you and for women that are getting out of the rise of womens colleges but at the same time, the harvard computer, these female computers are paid less than half of their male counterparts were doing the same work. What is it, . 25 an hour they were paid . In your book, i think you use the, you can times it by 285 to get the current amount and i did the math one point and these women are making like 6. 16 an hour. I think it came to 15 a year, not scaling up for inflation and the men had not been fired. Unlike the apocryphal story, they were garnering 2000 year so she was completely in support of equal gender pay, kind of fascinating. And Wilhelmina Fleming<\/a> complained about it, she was fond of him but she keeps a diary. Edward or charles, what did she named him . It was Charles Pickering<\/a> fleming. She goes back to scotland to have his baby out of wedlock and she nurse named the baby after the observatory director. Thats significant how much she admired him. I got the sense that most of the women really were quite devoted to him in a lot of ways. They felt they were a very collegial group. They worked in close quarters, six days a week and they all socialized on saturday night. I mean, it has to be admitted that some of the work was toilsome. Truly toilsome. Once we get to this slide has all the numbers. They were working insane hours, it was a tedium involved from the task and you never get the sense, you get a sense of their fatigue at times. You never get a sense that they are ungrateful or resentful. No, they were well aware that they were involved in groundbreaking research. And they felt including pickering that science was more important than these other luxuries and other things that we value socially and even pickering, even his attitude towards these women were, i felt from reading your history that science was going to benefit from his work and it made no sense. It made no sense to be concerned about anything else, whether they were women or anything at all and yet he did do them much less. Im going to get from Wilhelmina Fleming<\/a>s diary. She wrote, he seems to think the work is too much or too hard for me. No matter the responsibility or how many hours. I immediately told that i receive an excellent salary. If you would have everything you i have a home to keep as well as a family to keep as well as the men and then the women had no claims to such comfort and this is considered an enlightened age, she says. She was written right before women had the right to vote. She was living in. But it was very interesting is that this is a crucial point. We still live with this legacy of unequal gender pay. Women have to support their families to and its deeply rooted in our history, this idea. She starts to feel her work, over and over again, must not be of value if shes not paid equally. I thought that was very strong. Did you read her journals at all like to mark. When i was looking at the archive, i was focusing on the visual but i was drawn to the Annie Buchanan<\/a> book, this amazing lineage of scrapbooks coming out of the current newspapers where they getting all this credit and the same story you heard, that they were unappreciated at the time, the story flips quickly when you see that theres this kind of seemingly unending source material of the newspaper clippings from all over the world of recognition of these women but at the same time when Wilhelmina Fleming<\/a> passes away and Annie Buchanan<\/a> comes the curator of the place, the president of harvard refuses to give her that title and. Different president. Yes. Until the new president that she assumes that its an acknowledged position. So shes knownworldwide. The classification system of that we use today and at the same time astronomers are writing and speaking openly that the president itself is not even recognizing this brilliant scientist within the corral at harvard so i was really fascinated by any jump cannon in the way that she visually recorded all of her travels through all of these incredible observatories and eclipses and comments, hunting. She was relentless. Theres so many great pictures of her. Im sorry, i dont have any of the pictures. Couldwe see the next slide . Here is an actual glass slide. Women typically work in pairs, one of them would be looking at the plate and speaking aloud, her observations through the recorder who would write things down. The glass plate, what was so innovative about the technology . We think of this as being an astronomical observation, emotions and almost photography. It was photography. These were glass negatives. And pickerings genius was to create this photographic archive which as we pointed out, in the building that was constructed specifically to hold them all. And to keepthem from fire. They were very aware of fire. Things use to burn down a lot. Not to scare you or anything. A lot of wood. So by introducing photography instead of 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 could study a series of photographs to watch how the stars changed over time. So all of this kind of work was new and thats why they needed so many women to be looking at the employees. Could we see the next slide . Whats amazing about the story that dave was talking about is that this is actually the record we have 100 years ago of looking at the sky itself so even though we are looking at archival material, this is relevant imagery because this is the birth of photography itself and some of the very first images of the sky were taken with the drapers and at harvard of different objects but it also is still relevant now. When new objects are discovered, they look back at the harvard record of what was in that part of the sky 100 years ago. And variable stars was one of the important discoveries that came out of this incredible catalog of information. But can you tell me about this . This is to scale so this is the shadow of a penny. This little tiny strip that you are seeing is the spectra of all the stars that were captured on the place, eight inches by 10 inches. And theres a prism over the telescope. So instead of seeing the stars as points of light, they are seeing the stars spread out into its component colors but its a blackandwhite photograph so you dont see your colors. So you just have to know blue is over here and it varies all the way to read. You are looking at it with a magnifying group and you are seeing the lines that are in the spectrum and from that, from the patterns of the lines reading a classification system, deciphering the chemicals, composition of the stars. Just as an aside but one of the most interesting discoveries which the discoverer, i cant remember which one of the women made the discovery but they didnt really believe it and this was the abundance of hydrogen. Its shocking if you look at the composition of the earth you dont think of hydrogen as being overwhelmingly abundant but we are the product of stars having synthesized heavier elements and spewing it back out into the universe to make a second and thirdgeneration material. But most of the universe she realized was still primordial hydrogen, you didnt think about the big bang, this is prior to all that but we know when the universe is created its mostly just hydrogen. We dont have the means to take down nitrogen and hydrogen until you make stars so this is a peak discovery that she made. And her colleagues, professional colleagues dismissed it. People bought the stars composition of the stars was not that of the earth and that the heavy elements would be more prevalent and the idea that the universe was not interested in the lightest two elements, it took only four years from her paper. From studying the spectra and noticing in the spectra theres evidence of hydrogen absorbing in particular color. So you look at the spectra and you say hydrogen is responsible for eliminating a particular color in the spectrum and isnt that how a lot of it was done . He really knew about a topic. She studied quantum physics. From the early days of quantum where people didnt know that the bright stars and quantum physics would be relevant in the interior stars in terms of explaining their histories. Whats also interesting is that her advisor had really discouraged her from publishing them there, in your book where she writes this beautiful phd peace and is talking about the abundance of hydrogen and theres this one sentence that she said this is probably not the case. Is probably a spurious result. She undermines herself what she does so under external pressure. She first thought this is what i observe. Sure. Its so counterintuitive. But whats so interesting as you point out in your book is its 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 being discovered at that time. We should absolutely right and this again predates the predictions that led to the predictions of the big bang, and einstein turned talking about general relativity. Yes, but its close. Not in the vernacular of everybodys, einstein didnt believe in the big bang even. Even after he derived from his own theories so it was a long time between that and the universe was created and its very simple. Its one of the most elementary stuff. This is henry at 11. Who was looking at these magnificent images. Looking at images that had been taken from south america, if the whole sky had to be covered, there was a second observatory built in peru to photograph the stars of the Southern Hemisphere<\/a> and she was looking at the images of the Magellanic Clouds<\/a> and she discovered a couple thousand variable stars and made a fundamental discovery about the pattern of variation, the stars and took the longest time to go through their cycles and to be the brightest stars and she figured all the stars she were looking at were the same way so the ones that were brighter really were brighter area and that observation led to the first usable yardstick for measuring what we would count called out galactic distances. Her work enabled the size of the milky way to be determined and maybe getting ahead of the slide here. Its allgood. Trying to figure out that it was not the only galaxy in the universe , that the universe consisted of multiple gallons of the galaxy. It would be fair to say that this time they werent sure if the universe was maybe a few hundred thousand lightyears across and maybe that was it. It was the shape of the universe, this led to us looking at what geometry goes into spiral clusters and galaxies and place ourselves within cluster. Lets look at the next slide. Tell me about this. This is that Henrietta Swan<\/a> was looking at, most of the plates are updated about 8 and a half by 11. This is about 10 by 14 area and those different place would sit with different telescopes. Shes overlaid it with a grid so this is the small magellanic cloud. By Tandem Research<\/a> that we were working with an glass plate archives and look for the little initials in the cover of these glass plates so if you can see carefully, the curator had made a cheat sheet that made everyones initials. This is the plate that i used as source material for the next slide. This is one of your pieces. This is a painting thats done with an on a translucent piece of film and i wanted to not just make imagery that would reflect what these women are reeling at but the final image that would reflect their work with the glass plate so the painting is done on a translucent piece of pastry paper and if you will go into the process, its 60by six feet. Lets point out we have a popup show, we worked on the newly built wall here, that wall painted this morning. This afternoon. These are fans on it we are drawing it, so that is the case on the left is the scale of the different piece and we will get to how you make the actual physical piece up here. Lets see the next slide please . Thats it. Thats the one on the wall over here. This, just explain the philosophy of how this centerpiece. The thing thats fascinating me about the glass plate itself was not just that it was like the first record of the sky, whereas before if you are an astronomer you have to be a draft of men. You have to make drawings. If i say this is a certain luminosity, perhaps dave or jana might have a different interpretation of it but that they were really studying the glass plates and rarely with the ever print them as a positive so its like this is, its a reference to kind of the evolution of the photographic process so its off with a photographic negative printed into its positive but the image was never photographed and these images of stars, they are printed by using our sun and the stars though its kind of multilayered in its meaning in the process. Lets see the next slide please . I should also say as an artist with a lot of, who leverages science a lot, a resident in the Science Department<\/a>, you can see those are my equations on the back there. And its now been demolished and is being rebuilt as we see, its Pretty Amazing<\/a> so they are working in the Science Department<\/a> on the large piece which becomes a piece on the right. Here you are, you are building, what did you call this . The negative. Thats us moving off. Are science collaboration. Heres a photo shoot. Okay, the next slide. Who do we have here . Weve lost all our etiquette. Best miss fleming again, standing by one of the covers where she meets the glass plates. She was there for a very long time, wasnt she . She really oversaw the women that were working. The gop also oversee any of the men or were there two separate groups . She mostly oversaw way. They were out at night and pictures. But they were operating the telescope and the women were doing calculations. And the analysis of this other stress. She identified an enormous number of objects, is that right . It was unprecedented. She discovered i think 10 nova and hundreds of variable stars. The horsehead nebula, do we have a picture of that . She has this record of the most discoveries of variable stars at the time, probably worldwide. She succeeded definitely by miss levitt. Course. Lets see the next slide please. Tell me about this one. By identifying different plates, this series is that im working on is called each tied to one discovery each one of these women made so this is the horsehead nebula, the horsehead itself is upside down and if you look on a contemporary image of it, this is after Wilhelmina Fleming<\/a>. I love this picture. And without handling them spin ithey dont use this process tht much anymore. Its completely you have a historical record. Is 100 years of a nice guy. Next slide, please. What do we have here . This is the computing room. People hard at work. It amazed me what these women endured because all this was a wonderful opportunity to contribute to science. It was very difficult commitment. It was not an luxurious commitment. This is not a commitment to an easy life or a life of any kind of physical comfort. They were poor, poor, and they said all kinds of illnesses. Illnesses were a real threat. And they worked absurd hours. What did you think about uncovering those details . That was definite gripe. They had the same source of endlesanalysis we have, althouge influenza epidemic. They nominally worth regular hours but then, of course, anybody who is really involved in research knows that you dont stop just because its 5 00 or 6 00. They were very committed. What they gave up once at the beginning was certainly any kind of home life. Mrs. Fleming was unique as a working mother come as the sole supporter of her son. Most of the time if a woman want to get married that was the end of her career. That changed later. There is a line where someone said something to that effect that is to longer the end of your group once you get married. This was a big difference. The other thing about what youre saying about this long hours is that they given the task that in a lot of ways is really just mindnumbing of labeling stars and looking at the specter but then are not given enough time to make their own conclusions. For example, it would be like henrietta, gives us the yardstick to measure the universe. But shes not in a situation where then shes a researcher, think to make the jump that will get to what thi the supply slatn our talk, to really take over as the discoverer. The slide before this, when shes tired she is fully unique because she is hired not only as computer but shes also hired to work the telescope at night and into down in peru and is physically writing about how heavy the telescope is in pushing it around and playing with the lenses. Its a different that most of the other computers. Some of the frustration that they dont have the opportunity to extend the work that theres a sense they know that the great volume of material but also some implications, and you get the sense they feel this frustration of not being able to pursue it. Im not so sure. That is certainly the retrospective view. Im not sure they felt that. I did really admire in your book you did not try to impose the lens of the present on the past, and you just take it as it is. I think thats what gives the certain moments in the book of clarity when these women speak in their own words and in the journal, so much impact because you havent colored it at all. You havent delivered the impact of it so that when it comes i think thats really powerful. When ms. Gannon says come she goes to that meeting about classification and shes the only woman at a table of men come and she writes in her journal that since i have been most of the world to work on the subject i had to do most of the talking. [laughter] while were on her, she says, this is a bit out of context, shes really talking about after a personal trauma, but she says may i be led into a use of busy lifeguards ive not afraid of work. I long for it. Thats beautiful. I was going to say just this idea of recognition versus participation. And in the beginning of the observatory, pickering puts out an ad and it gets just endless responses from educated women who had just gotten out of college who are willing to come to the observatory at a basically begging to work for free, not toy 5 cents an hour but for free. And so i think the kind avail a context about recognition, they just wanted to work. Next slide, please. This is thats where i she was not one of she discovered a comet in 1847 which made her worldfamo worldfamous. Dont mess with her. Spirit she looks like shes ready take it off the stand and swing it. Amazing. [laughter] spirit when Matthew Vassar<\/a> started Vassar College<\/a> he hired her as because of the storm as she taught the other women who came to work at harvard. Maria mitchell many people think it is an unsung genius, just a true extraordinary she did computing work. Interesting. She was very admired i get the impression. Can we see the next slide . These are also students at wellesley. Annie janet is at the third from the right. She was working in a physics lab that have been modeled on pickering physics lab at mit. Annie canids teacher had been a 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 computer. Its important here since its come up and up at times to acknowledge the impact of the womens colleges. This is incredibly impactful and pickering knew it. He thought for a highly other womens colleges and it was a lot of aggression against them, and he would say all you had to do is look at what these women are producing to understand the impact, if just people knew. They could see the contributions of their making to signs that people would understand the importance of womens colleges. And t add the context of time and what was going on in the world at this point when he is hiring the computers, we are still 40 years before women get the right to vote. Thats just mind blowing. 40 years before women vote theres a room of 20 women at the Harvard Observatory<\/a> doing physics. Its pretty incredible. Id like to see the book that tells us how we went from there to what we were in like the 70s and early 80s. We are Getting Better<\/a> but how did that happen . We will talk about that over wine upstairs. The next slide, please. Try to keep my eye on the time. This is peru. This is the rudimentary first observatory. And next slide. That at a later stage in the shadow of the volcano they felt was extinct. Lets get to the nonextent falconer. The reason why this is relevant is because this was built by built by the Harvard Group<\/a> with a wonderful endowment that he was able to secure. It enabled the photography of the southern sky. How problematic as the volcano been . They lost the weather after a certain number of years, and the talent which it been perfect just the rainy season got longer and longer and so the moved everything to south africa. I just want to point out when you said that this was because of a donation, it because of a donation from a separate female donor. So that was really another totally as are part of the lineage of the Harvard Observatory<\/a> is that it was run by women like it was also funded by women. This is mrs. Bruce, pay for the telescope which i think we have next slide. We are going go out of order. And we go one more . Dont mind us. And this is in, at that site in the town were just looking at. So i think the site, they want a new much larger telescope if you said you needed a 50,000, and she can forward and wrote him a check. He also spent some of his own wallet. He often put money back into the observatory just to keep things going. Can we go back, james, just to the picnic scene . Picnic in peru. Bailey and his wife are there. They really started the place and i think your next picture is a globular cluster. He became very interested in these globular clusters of stars, a technical term, a big glob of stars. And he noticed that they were full of variable stars, which is interested in. So in a closeup picture he and his wife would try to count the number of stars in each cluster. When they got close to the center it was impossible. But then they were also looking at pictures of the same clusters over time to see the variation. Lia, isnt this one of the plates, this image . I think this is a glass plate. Yes. Its interesting because until they could understand distances to things, they couldnt really know what these globular clusters are. Now we know that there are some in our galaxy and their other galaxies as well but the ones we looking at here in our own galaxy and its orbiting oddly it can imagine a galaxy as a plane with a spiral, the globular clusters live load more freely than that. They are not as down to the plane. But how would you know looking at this whether it was in your own galaxy or incredibly far away when they are pinpoints, right . You see no extension of the space of the store so you cant tell by that. How would you tell . This is when you are mentioning henrietta that she gave us the way to gauge the distance. Next image please. I decide to throw this in. This is a globular cluster taken by the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>. We do a little better now. We can see tremendous detail, but think about the timescale between when these women were working, hubble who will come to after the telescope is named, was in the early 1920s did some of his most impactful work. The satellite is launched a few decades, several decades later. Its quite extraordinarily short scale really to think about going from where they were with his glass plates to launching an object into space. Or even sing like is this object in our galaxy . When they started doing their study of the glass plates we did know what a galaxy was. Even the definition of galaxy and what that could possibly be is also theres an ideal close our galaxy was the entire universe. Thats all that there was. Of course now we know there are as many galaxies in our observable universe as there are stars in her own galaxy. Thats a pretty big leap. Can we see the next slide . One more. Lia, told me about this. So this is what of the most interesting parts of the plates is the actual notation that the women would use on top of the glass plate. So dava making their undergoing a process to scan each of the class plates. Whether doing is photographing all of this beautiful like calligraphy almost on top of it where their stupid things from numbering systems to classification of petes. Whether doing is they are scraping the plates and photographing them. Harvard look at this as an archived astronomy, not as an archive of the start of the women at harvard. How delicate are the plates when you handled them . Is it incredibly anxiety producing precious . Absolutely. Is someone breathing down your neck when you are in like the real . No. They show you very carefully you dont touch the plate. He basically, you can see that the sleeve come all the sleeves for the most part are original and thats why you can see, some of them are in extraordinary, the sleeves themselves have beautiful writing of conversations back and forth. I think its really the initials of different women and different writing back and forth. Next slide, please. This is part of digging into the process of how you make hi thesn response to the plates. This is based on one of the nebula i found in the plate and painted upstairs on the third floor. Sunny california. Printed with one of my student assistants, natalie is here. Can we see the next slide while you talk . Were doing art here, everyone. This is mixing the chemistry. We take the studio and turn it into a dark room, lacking everything out and mixing photo emotion and encoding it on essentially largescale water color paper. Next slide, please. We are turned on the light for the sake of the photograph. That would be a bad thing to do, trust me. We turn the studio into a dark room. The negative is then pressed in between this kind of painting of photo emulsion on a piece of paper pressed between glass, and then it is exposed out in the sun. Go to the next one. You get these big baths of emulsion. When youve been testing chemicals in this way, in this very spot, and you go through a lot of different recipes such as you mix it and you are done. Its a store bought one and you kind of compare it again. How do you come to decide which is the right one when you hit the right recipe . The first print that we did was that these on the left, and i think we were printing every friday for almost three months before we got the very first usable print. And also the sun moves so the print, the Exposure Time<\/a> that you use at noon in the summer in los angeles is different than Exposure Time<\/a> that you would use in the winter. And so the wind is actually very small and changes throughout the day. An Exposure Time<\/a> of eight minutes becomes 20 minutes when you move two hours into the afternoon. And just to experiment with all of that. Next slide, please. This is the piece on the wall. So this is the print, you know, you declare of the final print. Each of the prints themselves are of each painting and a unique. Even if its a photographic print i can make another one by using the negative. You can see like around the edges that in the dark is very hard to figure out if the emulsion is on. So i kind of like the painting itself has a lot of nebulous activity in it. Sometimes you kind of cant tell, is in the background emulsion or is it the painting itself. You often exhibit a negative and the Positive Side<\/a> by side. What sort of defiance that choice if you decide to show the negative or not . Is it youre thinking more about a process as opposed to final product . Processing is important in this work. Its not just important terms of an artistic process but i think it highlights the history of this project. Im not a historian sans so glad to find out that dava of writing this amazing account of these women while i was thinking of our meeting was a happy time for both of us. I had to tell how i was in the archives and i was meeting an astronomer there, very well known astronomer, a win, and you said you have to read dava sobel unpublished manuscript of this story. How was i going to happen . Theres no way. Sure enough you got to read the end. Actually a when was celia paynes student. Theres a physicist at harvard now who is cecelia paynes, was one of her causally an incredible lineage. Its sort of like hidden in plain view. Anyone kind of knows that there are women there but maybe not actually understand the full impact of what i had women at harvard say to me that they knew that thered been some women working there but they always thought it was some kind of cute, quaint story. They didnt realize they were actually doing science. This is interesting as a scientist. I did not know the story really until lia brought it to my attention. I kind of heard of Pickering Harold<\/a> and i had this silly version which is pretty amusing and thats what it gets passed on. It was, i really did not know about it. I think thats interesting the idea of education of why cant we be educated in parallel as scientists or historians or writers to have the Bigger Picture<\/a> all times. Its something that were not doing right i think . Its interesting. I also found other scientists at harvard who had the same reaction that you did, like i did knew it was there but i buti didnt really know what it was, which is really astounding because the glass plates on his physical things. Its not just this story, but we had this amazing physical lineage to this story that takes up three stories that if you are a ph. D student at harvard you would walk by the door that is this astronomical archive. I spent a lot of time at the center for astrophysics at harvard when i was a graduate student at mit and i saw all those pictures. They didnt even register. Who is annie cannon . I was back at harvard for about a week in november and i was like theres a picture. Im sure it has been up there since i was in grad school. Its pretty dusty. It doesnt look new. Its funny i didnt even really notice, even in the fiber, the fabric of the buildings that i haunted. I went to almost every day for years. Next slide, please. Lets can we call this the paper dolls. So there they all are. Henrietta is on the side with a black bow, and annie cannon is all in white with a similar bill but not as dark. So this is just a staff out for a lark kind of post. Like your picture with janna. Im sure it will be equally famous one day. Next slide, please. We were talking about his books in the context of that photo. These are the record books. People wrote down what they were doing, what they were looking at. You used these. How did you use of these . I was looking at the handwriting. I was in a lot of ways directed to some of the specific plates that different women were using but i was just interested in any kind of physical imagery, like mentioning the archives are in a different library and those are actually her notebooks and her journals, some christmas cards. But then in the records you can also see like these endless notetaking with their initials on all these things. I just think that link to the lineage is really powerful to see a visual replication of all of this writing. In addition to the glass plates theres also very extensive card catalogs that map the entire sky. The project itself basically, draper was looking to photograph the entire sky. That was really incredible undertaking. So not just that they were taking his glass plates and numbering stars, but they were mapping the entire sky, softball, north and south hemisphere. Just to connect the pieces, he died prematurely and his wife finds the computer of the observatory ever after. Next slide. Also im thinking my friend maria residing in the audience, i believe we took this compass of a glass plate but it was taken by her iphone. Of the glass plate. This looks like andromeda but we think it was taken by who do you think took it . Who do you think took this plate . [inaudible] annie cannon, but it is andromeda. Its much bigger than our galaxy but again im not sure exactly a year of this plate but we dont know it at the time annie cannon knew that these galaxies were entire collection of hundreds of billions of stars, and that there were some millions of lightyears away an entire other island universes. Next slide. This is hubble. This is the difference in terms of the obscurity of the women and the acclaim. So here hubble is an incredibly famous astronomer. This is probably in early 1920s. Hubble is an interesting character. We will go into hubble but he is charming, even with his fake british accent because he was an anglophile. He was working at mount wilson which sort of looms above pasadena and caltech with some of the most powerful telescopes at the time and he was in pursuit of these nebula that may or may not event at our galaxy. Next slide. I love this image. This is a negative image that hubble took at mount wilson and its dated sixth of october, 1923 and its a dramatic moment. David, do you want to talk about this at all . So most of the stars using our foreground stars in this picture but he was identified stars that were identified as part opart of the state and notg conversely thought he found a nova up top where it says but then you realize it was a variable star. It was one of a variable star. So with that he was able to tell the distance of the andromeda nebula and put it far outside the milky way. That was the proof that the milky way was not the sum total of the universe. So by using methods work, he expands the universe from a few hundred thousand light years suddenly to millions and that we know its 97 billion lightyears across as far as i can see and possibly beyond. And that its full of these thiis also andromeda which is te relevance of the previous glass plate that they were capturing images of andromeda as well. This is really the moment of the huge discovery, the universe is huge. There are other galaxies and the universe is expanding and all relies on his work spirit this cut circles back to this idea where these women are able to kind of create the data or the information, but then they are not given time to do the research and make their own conclusion. Levitt is the observatory gets a letter that someone wants to nominate her for the nobel prize, but he doesnt realize that she passed away five years before. At that time it was shapely it was the drug tribally and he wrote, basically if given the time that she would have possibly come to our own conclusion but she went on to kind of hand over the yardstick and kind of walk away spirit that yardstick she handed over was pretty thoroughly analyzed. She really had discovered in mathematical law that allowed to come so she did this t demand analysis in and of its own right and yes maybe she wouldve gone on to the knowhow to leverage it. Speaker discovery which has been known as more and more people are not call it the levitt law. Next slide, please its not my favorite photograph of andromeda but this is the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> picture of andromeda. Its a lot of color. Im not so sure, i kind of like looking at the in black and white. This is a thousand times bigger than ours. One day we will merge so we will all be one big galaxy one day in a few billion years. Next slide. Suggest on our closing slide, is there anyone in this image you want to identify that we missed . We havent spoken about ms. Morey or down on the floor is margaret harwood. She was the first one to come to the observatory and then have a fellowship name for Maria Mitchell<\/a>. And she went to work at Maria Mitchell<\/a>s own observatory on nantucket and she was the director there for 40 years. Lia, do you have favorites in this crowd . Is any cancer your favorite . Because of her adventurous spirit, but dava mentioned ms. Morey. She came in and out of working for the observatory but had a family tied to the donor who let all of these women work correct me if im wrong, but wasnt pickering uncomfortable about paying her solo a salary because of her for his college graduate. He did have that reaction to think he almost did want to hire because he knew he would be paying her . 2 25 cents an hourd he thought that was not right. But Williamina Fleming<\/a> oversaw anyone and 25 cents an hour was fine. Spirit just to close before we open for questions, i wanted to read this quote which is from Maria Mitchell<\/a> who was as was said not one of the Harvard Computers<\/a> but incredibly influential, and she said, if this is at the age of 36 come and again again i am borrowing from a friend maria who gave me this tidbit, the best that we set up my life so far is that it has been industrious. The best they can be said of me is that ive not pretended to what i was not. And i thought that was a very sort of a lovely summary of, i wonder, a lot of the sentiments of the women in pickering sarum . Definitely industrious and unpretentious. They found a way to be who they really were. I mean, i dont know, lets not get me on ourselves but just to accept despite certain limitations or maybe even because of them. Maybe even because they didnt have other opportunities, they found a way to do something that was their choice. And they created a community in and of themselves that was, it was just really the sense that sharing and experience and the accounts of them, not only just getting together socially but doing poetry readings about the night sky. Really beautiful story. On that note lets think our guests and will open it up for questions. [applause]spin with microphones floating around so if you have a question, waved frantically to someone who has a microphone. Over here. If i could do two quick questions. The first is, these women worked very hard with her eyes. Did they develop visual problems . Yes. Theres one on record who advocate eyeglasses in the midst of her work but you can see just from looking at some of the plates what a string that would be. My other question is how you can get where youre to go to see the total eclipse of the sun in august . Jackson hole, wyoming, dear. Theres a question up in front and then behind, second row. So listening to this im beginning to wonder what happened to the men . Because what i hear is and what i read in the book is women actually had everything. They really enjoyed the work and they got recognition for pickering and i think they got the recognition of the only thing they didnt get was a money. So how about the men that did this . Did they get recognition . Are you asking whether meant at all or did they make more money . They make more money, right . They did, yes. Then in with a telescope operators. Did also get recognition and Career Advancement<\/a> through the work in the observatory. Whether famous men who were computers . Not so much as computers but being able to make those photographs was there exacting. So those people were well known. So bailey, the one who opened, did all the reconnaissance work to find a place in south america, he published widely. The men were well known, too. Spirit whether some crazy theories though, wasnt bailey who had a crazy to do just would not give up on . It was pickering was brother. Spirit healing the moon and observing vegetation on the moon. Water on the moon. Theres little over exuberance and the theorizing. In the second row. You mentioned you had not learned about this in your training to become a scientist and im wondering if theres any sort of movement, to find women in stem now but its a insert systematic change in curricula in science curricula in high school . I definitely dont know about ayes. I didnt study site in high school so i dont know either from firsthand experience or from professional experience. I dont think theres a change in curricula but i think what is important is that books like this are being published and that theyre being widely received. Because the education cant just be limited to technical classroom. We have to start have a greater appreciation of the impact of science on culture. I think this is very much our mission here at pioneer, its why were building a site to pop in this context. Its very intentional that it is in this context. We are changing in a more important way maybe then a specific curriculum which is we are thinking more about who we are in the world and where using the scientific lens i think to understand a lot of that. I notice there are some professors are from columbia. Just be like speaking to that . Joe . No . Whether this curricula has been changing over the years . I will say joe is from columbia and also a famous astronomer. I do think the astronomy textbooks and did a quite a bit more historically conscious. For example, Henrietta Leavitt<\/a> is credited in all the textbooks and i havent seen the actual sort of phrase but there is the linear relationship and its always show and its considered the discovery of essentially the distance scale of the universe out to the local group and a little bit beyond spirits of the local group being a group of galaxies that are sort of clustered together . Several hundred galaxies that are marauding around the universe together. Let me ask you another question. I believe that the curating of the harvard plates actually remained virtually all female enterprise throughout the 20th century, and maybe even to this very day spec the curator is a woman. Has been for a long time. And i believe all curators until now have all been women, i believe. Spirit at harvard . Yes spirit how is that into word . There have been many directors, it costs money to run this operation and i know from explain a lot of harvard professors when he comes time to shave off the budget, they point to the plate stack and so what are they doing here . Mrs. Draper not only paid for the work during her lifetime but she provided for the continuation and the preservation of plates in her will. So part of the money is still coming from her. Spirit quite amazing spirit also there hasnt been very many curators. I think it starts with Williamina Fleming<\/a>, annie cannon and two others, and now onto the number five. So in this entire lineage that youre looking at, its actually a small number of women. And to have another, one more question. I think with time for maybe two more questions. One in the back. Spirit i was through scope how long does it take to read one of the plates . Even for one of the astronomers when he first collected the plates . They were never fully red. Because the density of information is so great that i dont think anyone felt that they been completely lets have a look at when the plates that was marked up in great detail, the one with opinion on it. How would that have taken to market up in the great detail . I dont know that i can answer that. Also maybe someone marked it up in 10 years later they said theres a noble or a variable star, as good back 10 years and check this part of the sky and then they would have a cluster spec questions were asked in different times and so the same plate might yield 10 answers or spark six research projects. I dont know that that question is answerable. Its a great question spirit was it exclusively at harvard the plates were used . Mount wilson had a plate. But many people came from europe and spent months at harvard just because of the plate collection. It was a magnet. Thats why ms. Pain came. That was the draw for. That and the fact she could have a future in astronomy in this country . Last question here. We have one there and then we will come around to the front. Spirit this is a question for lia, the artist in the group. If you look at most of contemporary art, the great museums in the world, most of the subject matter that artists concentrate on has to do with the physical world that we can see on a terrestrial manner. Bowls of fruit, landscape, people. What is it that gave rise to this viewpoint towards the terrestrial, the extraterrestrial rather . And the second part of the question would be that is there a connection between the notion of the feminine and the cosmic . Great questions. Spirit a light one for lia. Well, i think that, when i think about the absolute fundamental connection of arts and science its the fascination of nature and the desire to replicate it or understand in some way. So 500 years ago that might have been make a painting at something and then we have the advanced technology of the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>. I think theres always been a fascination with the sky but also a horror of the sky. Jinnah, hundreds of years ago you see a comment you did know was, or an eclipse that could actually be, produce notions of the sublime of terror in a lot of ways. So i think that the notion of representing the sky that hasnt been in the lineage of art history is in a lot of ways because of the lack of technology. And as we get closer to the stars with the newest telescopes or the lag machine measuring gravitational waves, will have different entry points of how to represent and get in touch with the objects in the sky. Dava and i spent the afternoon talking about is really incredible painting, i think would be interested in, its dated 1492 but in the sky there is, theres a ufo. They are xrated and its not only a ufo because i think for a long time they thought someone definitely has come back 100 years go and added his ufo. But in the painting there is a figure thats lucky and pointed at the sky. Spirit what . Was as an idea of being visited, you know, but i think theres frescoes representing the sky. I think it created a lot of mystery and awe in humankind. Sorry, was a followup to that . [inaudible] i think for me the relationship to the idea of experience, and that to me is i think a universal experience, but in a lot of ways a feminine one. One last question up in the front. It was just a question about the digitizing of the class plates. When is that project like slated to be finished and will not be accessible to the public or will it be part of the archives . It will be accessible to the public. It will all be online. Some of the images already are. The project had a little hiccup about a year ago and plate stacks were flooded and all the digitizing equipment was drowned. But it has been rebuilt and carrying forward its been going on about 10 years. And i think they probably need another five to 10, maybe less. Im not sure quickly they are going now. I mean, it kind of makes me wonder, this is just why speculation but to joes point about when someone in the Astronomy Department<\/a> at harvard need space and a. 23 stories, metal cabinets of glass plates, whats going to happen once this archive is complete. So some of the plates have just beautiful writing on them or wonderful notation and those of an set aside that there such a small amount that a been set aside. Essentially they are photographing the covers, photographing the notation and then raise ringtones glass plates and skin again so that someone can go online and use them as a reference of what the sky was like 100 years ago. So is it going to be necessary to have his physical plates in the future . That was the followup when you said they were scraping them, they are ruining them for the sake of digitizing them . They wash off the notations. Spewing so they are destroying the original . Yes. Not the image but the writing on them. So when the women would put numbers or other marks on the plate, that have to be washed off before the digitizing. The reason for that is you saw the vast notation on some of his slides. If youre looking for a startup and you want to see whether they are a nova, you cant see underneath number one through 2000 and 100 or so so there scraping not the emulsion side of the photographic image but the side that the comedy opposite side which is where the women would write the notation. Presumably there is some way so ive digitally looking at an image and separating out the notation from the original why dont they scan, photographing with notations . Spirit and then they scanned them. Its very interesting, i know we have to wrap up but its very interesting, the physicality of the plates is inspiring to you. Im not a luddite. Im all for digitization and all of that is wonderful but you would not have worked with your process had it not been for the physicality of their process can we truly defined, your work isnt just the final thing on the wall. Your work is the actual act of having the sun exposing them. Its the light of the star that makes these images. I mean, that they exposed by a star to create them. Yeah, and my own work i think the process highlights the history which is essential, but that i dont know, theres something in the physical link of imagining them as not just a romantic notion, but that, again, the way we can contextualize what the system objects are, that harvard looks at them as an astronomical archive. If you go to a different part of a different library and you look at Annie Jump Cannon<\/a> scrapbooks as the lineage of Annie Jump Cannon<\/a> but the Astronomy Department<\/a> at harvard doesnt see that. Im hoping that dava book makes a been so excited about this history that they will never think of scraping and other plate. This is interesting because he was saying was also important join you to the topic as a writer speak the persistence of the plates, that they retained their value after all this time, that it was fascinating. How did you even discover the project . Through wendy freedman. Spirit a famous astronomer. She mentioned the importance of Henrietta Leavitt<\/a> in her work, and then when i went to learn more about Henrietta Leavitt<\/a>, i found that whole room full of women. Which is very surprising. Well, thats a beautiful place to close, and right before we take a minute, yes, we can applaud right for a minute, i would remind you will have a book signing, the astronomers are outside. Please stay and enjoy yourselves and whats fake our guests. [applause] lets thank our guests. Amateur Astronomers Association<\/a> has viewings right outside. If you want to look through a telescope and see what we have to see tonight, please do so. Heres a look at some authors resource featured on both tds after words","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia902904.us.archive.org\/25\/items\/CSPAN2_20170212_153000_Dava_Sobel_Discusses_The_Glass_Universe\/CSPAN2_20170212_153000_Dava_Sobel_Discusses_The_Glass_Universe.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20170212_153000_Dava_Sobel_Discusses_The_Glass_Universe_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240627T12:35:10+00:00"}