Nancy Grace Roman, NASA Chief of Astronomy and "Mother of Hubble" for Ada Lovelace Day

Nancy Grace Roman, linocut, 11" x 14" on Japanese paper by Ele Willoughby, 2026

 

It is once again Ada Lovelace Day, the 17th annual international day of blogging to celebrate the 

Ada, Countess Lovelace, 3rd edition linocut by Ele Willoughby 

achievements of women in technology, science and math, Ada Lovelace Day 2026 (ALD26). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging.

You can find my previous Ada Lovelace Day posts here.

This is a hand-carved and hand-printed lino block print portrait of trail-blazing astronomer Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), NASA's first chief of astronomy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, who helped shape NASA's space astronomy program. Nicknamed the "mother of Hubble" for her role in planning the revolutionary Hubble Space Telescope, she was active in science communication and an advocate for women in science throughout her career. Recently, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope was renamed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in recognition of her enduring contributions to astronomy, and launched August 30, 2026. 

Born in Nashville, Nancy came by her love of school and science honestly from her music teacher mother Georgia Frances Smith Roman and physicist and mathematician father Irwin Roman. Her father got an oil industry geophysics job and moved the family to Oklahoma when Nancy was only 3 months old. His job also brought them to Texas, New Jersey, Michigan (where the dark night skies allowed her mother to show her the constellations and northern lights), and, when he joined the Civil Service as a geophysicist in 1936, to Nevada. The frequent moves meant that Nancy had to repeatedly work on her own to catch up with her new class and curriculum and that she did not have a lot of chance to make close friends. The next year, when Nancy was about 12, her father was hired as Senior Geophysicist at the Baltimore office of the U.S. Geological Survey, and Nancy started an astronomy club with her classmates so they could learn the constellations. By the 7th grade, she knew she would be an astronomer. She completed an accelerated program at Western High School in Baltimore, graduating in only 3 years. She never had a telescope but read every book on astronomy in the Baltimore library. As a girl, her science interests were not encouraged; when she requested a second year of algebra instead of taking Latin, her guidance counsellor "looked down her nose at me and sneered, 'What kind of lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?' That was the sort of reception I got most of the way”, Nancy recalled. But because the US entered the war, Nancy got the chance to substitute a summer of chemistry for her senior year of high school and started college early. 

 

Nancy went to Swarthmore, where she said of the dean of women "if you insisted on majoring in science or engineering, she wouldn't have anything more to do with you" but she did refer her to the astronomy department. The chair Peter van de Kamp tried to discourage her from this path but did teach her astronomy. She was able to work with two previously defunct student telescopes which gave her a feel for instruments and instrumentation and let her have "the fun of playing around with observing techniques." In her second year she began working at Swarthmore's Sproul Observatory processing astronomical photographic plates. Van de Kamp gave her a solo lecture on astrometry, which studies the precise positions and movements of celestial bodies and was his field of expertise. He suggested she learn about professional astronomy from the astronomical library. She recalls the only encouragement she got was from the Physics Department head who said, "I usually try to discourage girls from going into physics, but I think maybe you might make it." When she graduated in February 1946, Van de Kamp recommended she pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, which was rebuilding its astronomy department after the war. 

By March she was enrolled and finding classes easier than those at Swarthmore, so she asked three professors, Otto Struve, George van Biesbroeck, and William Wilson Morgan, for extra projects to help her decide what she would like to focus on for her thesis. Biesbroeck asked her to solve the orbit of a double-star. Struve gave her a couple of interesting stellar spectra to analyse. Morgan's observational project using a 12 inch (30 cm) telescope expanded into her thesis. The first time she meet her supervisor Morgan he asked her to go to his house and change the bed because his wife was sick, a task he would never have asked a male student. Surprised and flummoxed, she acquiesced. Professors complained about teaching women whom they assumed would quit to get married. Morgan was not encouraging and at one point did not even speak to her to say hello for six months. Nevertheless, she got the guidance Morgan neglected to offer from visiting scientists Bengt Stromgren and Adriaan Blaauw and she succeeded in completing her doctorate on the Ursa Major Moving Group in 1949. The stars in Ursa Major featured in my portrait, are bright remnants of a now scattered cluster; she found 200 stars that had left the Dipper at the same time, and knowing their distances from geometry she was able to determine their actual intrinsic brightnesses. This was an improvement on getting intrinsic brightness from their spectra. The night before her defence, Morgan who typically worked late, insisted on meeting her at midnight and "decided to use it as an occasion for petting"; she moved his hand several times and tried to continue their conversation. Mercifully he did not try this again. Since the disinterested Morgan was unable to tell other faculty how her research was going, they had assumed she wasn't working and were surprised when she had no trouble defending her thesis. While in graduate school she also began a life-long association with the American Association of University Women (AAUW). 

She spent two months at Warner and Swasey Observatory, in Cleveland, before agreeing to be Morgan's research associate at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. During her six years there she was able to visit the University of Chicago's McDonald Observatory in Texas for four months every year. When the position ended she was employed as an instructor and then assistant professor. As was typical at the time her salary was less than two thirds of a similarly qualified male. Department Chair and Nobel laureate Subramanyan Chandrasekhar (whom had certainly been subject of racial discrimination, but unable to recognize sexual discrimination) told her, "We don't discriminate against women - we can just get them for less." She made a study of naked-eye visible stars and noticed that the proportion of elements heavier than helium (that astronomers call metals) varied; those with stronger metal lines moved in more circular orbits closer to the galactic centre and plane of the Milky Way, and those with weaker lines moved more elliptically and further away. Younger stars are made from the expelled nuclear remnants of exploded stars that had built up heavier metals over their lifetime and then gone nova. So younger stars are more metal-rich. Older, redder, less metal-rich stars had slower, more elliptical and inclined orbits than the bluer metal-rich younger stars moving in circular orbits and sticking close to the galactic plane as they form. This gave some of the first clues about the formation of the Galaxy. Her 1950 paper was selected as one of most important 100 papers of the century in Astrophysical Journal. She then looked at star colours and spectra and found that since more of the metal lines are in the violet and UV, stars with weaker metals were slightly bluer in the UV than their colours in the red would suggest. This "UV excess" proved an easier way to distinguish the metallicity of stars and is still a useful tool. I allude to this work and later research in the stellar spectrum (at the blue end) illustrated on her shirt in my portrait. These she considered her two most important discoveries. Morgan tried to take credit for her work, though he had not been involved. Her research was very impactful and amongst the most highly-cited papers of the time, including, in 1950, three top-100 papers in a single year, with over 3,000 citations. But she was dubious of her ability to get a tenure as a woman, at an institution which could support her research. She turned down positions at Wayne State University and the University of Southern California, because they could not offer access to astronomical instrumentation she needed. She was able to use a new astrometry device for measuring photographic plates at the Argonne National Laboratory, but Yerkes would not acquire one. Likewise when she argued in 1954, they should acquire a digital computer for data analysis, still novel at the time, the department chair Chandrasekhar declared computers not useful for this purpose! While studying stars at different Galactic latitudes during her visit to the David Dunlap Observatory in Toronto she noted one which was not sun-like as expected. She thought she must have made an error and so she checked it again when she returned to Yerkes.  She had discovered that the emission spectrum of the star AG Draconis had completely changed from earlier observations. She called it a stroke of luck; this star is only in this altered state 2 to 3% of the time. This observation raised her profile. She published her new "spectral types, photoelectric magnitudes and colors, and spectroscopic parallaxes for about 600 high-velocity stars," in 1955 as part of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. She also published on the detection of exoplanets. 

She met a Scottish postdoc and fell in love. Since it would have been a challenge to find two astronomy positions in the same place, she considered giving up astronomy to marry, but their relationship did not work out. His fellowship required him to go to a commonwealth country and he found a position in Australia. They wrote regularly for a few years but it was not to be. A couple of years later she was surprised by a proposal of marriage from a man with whom she had not spent a great deal of time alone; she considered it seriously but turned him down. They remained friends until he died.

Knowing the university had never appointed a woman to the academic staff she decided to move on. Morgan wanted her to stay and deliberately did not inform her of job openings but another faculty member, Gerard Kuiper had recommended to her a position and the Naval Research Laboratories in the new field of radio astronomy. She enjoyed teaching but did not want to only be a teacher, so decided government science might be her best bet. She moved to Washington, D.C. and remained there for the rest of her life. She found women were better tolerated, and better paid in government science. She spent three years at NRL, where she worked on radio astronomy, using radio astronomy for geodesy, the propagation of sound in water, and became head of the microwave spectroscopy section of the radio astronomy program. She mapped the Milky Way at 440 MHz. She also consulted on the Project Vanguard satellite program, which introduced her to space astronomy. Because of her observation of the unexpected spectra of AG Draconis, she was invited to speak in Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1956 for the dedication of the Byurakan Observatory, making her the first civilian to visit since the Cold War. NRL leaders were very interested and this and it lead to higher profile and a series of invitations to give astronomy lectures back home. Most of the science section at NASA came from NRL, so they knew Roman. She attended a talk at the newly-formed NASA by Harold Urey, where Jack Clark asked her if knew anyone interested in starting a space astronomy program there; she took that as an invitation to apply. She was offered the job, and accepted in 1959 even though she suspected a management position would mean giving up research because "the chance to start with a clean slate to map out a program that I thought would influence astronomy for fifty years was more than I could resist." 

Dr. Nancy Grace Roman is shown with a model of the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO) in 1962 (NASA)

She found her time at NRL had taught her how to work with engineers and translate between the engineers and scientists, which proved very useful at NASA. In the beginning there was no bureaucracy and plenty of funding. She recalled asking the grant office about a certain idea and being told, "Don't ask me what you ca do. Tell me what you want to do. It is up to be to find a way." She was put in charge of the Orbiting Solar Observatories (both the OSO 1 satellite in the top left and a model of the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory or AOSO in her hand are part of my portrait), worked on the first gamma-ray telescope, as well as their existing work on geodesy and relativity. As early as 1959 she suggested a space telescope could be used for exoplanet detection, and even suggested a technique employing a rotated coronagraphic mask to block the direct light from stars to resolve bodies which might otherwise been obscured by the glare, as was ultimately used by the Hubble Space Telescope and will soon be used by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. In 1960, she was made the first Chief of Astronomy in NASA's Office of Space Science, and the first woman to hold a NASA executive position. She gave lectures to introduce astronomers to the program and to meet with astronomers to find out what they wanted to research from space. As surprising as it may be today, astronomers were initially skeptical of what NASA could do for their field. She decided that NASA should manage major astronomy projects to benefit the wider scientific community rather than individual projects by scientists. She wrote in 1960, "A fundamental part of all of these plans is the participation of the entire astronomical community. NASA will act as a coordinating agency to enable astronomers to obtain the basic observations they need from outer space." Until peer-review was introduced in 1970, Roman alone judged the merit of all proposals and distributed the science budget. She lead the orbiting astronomical observatories program. The learning curve was steep. The first in a series of optical and ultraviolet telescopes was four years behind schedule and failed three days after reaching orbit in 1966. The OAO-2 launched in 1968 was the first successful space telescope and the OAO-3 Copernicus was very successful from 1972-1981. NASA learned that unforeseen technical problems were inevitable and that it was wise to keep launch dates classified. She oversaw astronomical satellites Uhuru (1970), the gamma-ray telescope Small Astronomy Satellite 2 (1972), x-ray telescope Small Astronomy Satellite 3 (1975), geodetic satellites, the Astronomy Rocket Program, the Scout Probe to measure the relativistic gravity redshift, and experiments on Spacelab, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab. She set up NASA’s scientific ballooning program and the airborne astronomy program starting with a 12 inch (30 cm) telescope on a Learjet in 1968 and the Kuiper Airborne Observatory with a 36 inch (91 cm) telescope on Lockheed C-141A Starlifter jet. She was skeptical it would pass review, but the Cosmic Background Explorer mission began during her tenure, and its results lead to the 2006 Nobel Prize for its leading scientists, as did the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, overseen by Nancy Boggess. She was most proud of the International Ultraviolet Explorer. She fought to collaborate internationally with the UK’s Science and Engineering Research Council and the European Space Agency saying, "IUE was an uphill fight. I don't mean I didn't have some support, but I think I carried it on almost single handedly.” 

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, 9.5" x 12.5" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2010 

She is most famous for her last major program, the Large Space Telescope which has since been named the Hubble Space Telescope. Though quick to share credit with her many colleagues, Nancy Grace Roman was known as the “mother of Hubble.” Getting above the atmosphere avoids the distortions it causes and allows astronomers to observe a much wider range of frequencies (which otherwise would be filtered out by the atmosphere). A large mirror is required to collect enough light from dim and distant objects. First proposed in 1946 by Lyman Spitzer, the possibility of a 3 m space telescope became more feasible in the 60s with the development of the Saturn V rocket. Roman chose to focus first on the small telescopes of OAO as proof-of-concept for the deployment and remote operation of space telescopes. Some astronomers argued for a moon-based telescope but Roman felt logistics, including the lunar dust were insurmountable. Colleagues from NASA’s Langley Research Center argued for space telescopes with human operators, but Roman considered that absurdly complicated. People need atmospheres to breathe, and the atmosphere was precisely what they were hoping to avoid. But with the success of the OAO she began lecturing on the possibility of a large space telescope. In 1969 NASA commissioned a report from the National Science Foundation which endorsed the idea. With astronomer Charles Robert O'Dell, hired in 1972 to be the Project Scientist, she was the driving force behind the project and developed the standard process by which NASA operates large astronomical projects. She set up the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) to run mission science operations. As the design process continued engineers requested a smaller mirror for technical reasons; Roman argued for a 2.4 m minimum size in order to accurately resolve Cepheid Variables in Virgo. Edwin Hubble had shown that the speed at which distant galaxies recede was proportional to distance, but the proportionality constant was not well determined. Henrietta Swan Leavitt had shown that luminosity of the class of stars called Cepheid Variables was a function of their period of variation. This let astronomers calibrate their distance in the Milky Way, and so if they could resolve these stars in Virgo, they could determine its distance. After convincing NASA and the astronomical community she next tackled policy makers, writing testimony for Congress throughout the 1970s to continue to justify the telescope and convince them to fund it. She invested in detector technology and served on the selection board for Hubble’s science operations. She argued that for the price of a trip to the movies every American would have 15 years of exciting discoveries, to justify the large price tag. Costs ultimately ran much higher, but the Hubble Space Telescope more than doubled this lifespan. Goddard wanted control of the STScI and Hubble science operations but Nancy sided with the astronomical community that it should be their hands; this nearly cost her job and lead to her retirement. 

Roman, posing here in 1966 with a model of the observatory that would become the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA)

She took early retirement in 1979 so she could care for her elderly mother (until her death in 1992), but remained as a consultant for a year while selection of the STScI continued. Interested in programming she audited a FORTRAN course and became a consultant for ORI, Inc. from 1980 to 1988, supporting research on geodesy and astronomical catalogues. 

Hubble was scheduled to be flown on the Space Shuttle flight after Challenger; then the Challenger disaster lead to a three year delay. NASA chose to redesign payloads for robotic deployment but Hubble was too far along in its design. It was quite lucky that it could be serviced by the Space Shuttle, which allowed its initial mirror problem to be fixed and later for instruments to be sporadically upgraded, greatly increasing its abilities and lifetime. 

This in turn lead to her becoming head of the Astronomical Data Center NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 1995 and working with contractors supporting it until 1997. She spent three years training K-12 science teachers including those for underserved districts and spent ten years recording astronomy textbooks for Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic until her mid-eighties. In 1962 she was awarded with the Federal Women's Award (introduced in 1961 when they realized that the major awards for civil servants were restricted to men) by John F. Kennedy, and was selected as one of Life Magazine's 100 Most Important Young People. She received four honorary doctorates (including one from Swarthmore), NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award (1969), NASA's Outstanding Scientific Leadership Award (1978), the American Astronomical Society's William Randolf Lovelace II Award and Asteroid 2516 was named in her honour.  She was frequently recognized for her achievements and her support for women in STEM, but described her 2017 inclusion in the LEGO Women of NASA set as “by far the most fun.” She died in 2018 after a long illness.

References
 Nancy Grace Roman, Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026

Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), NASA website https://science.nasa.gov/people/nancy-roman/, accessed October 4, 2026

Hyman, Randall. How Vera Rubin and Nancy Grace Roman Transformed Astronomy. Astronomy.com, November 30, 2022. 

Roman, Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace Roman and the Dawn of Space Astronomy, Annu. Rev. Astron. Atrophy's., 2019, 57: 1-34.

See also: Nancy Grace Roman, The Mother of Hubble - Media Resources, Scientific Visualization Studio, NASA

Nancy Grace Roman, NASA Chief of Astronomy and "Mother of Hubble"

This post has moved so it can be my 2026 Ada Lovelace Day post. Find it here!

Wang Zhenyi astronomer

Wang Zhenyi, linocut, 11" x14" by Ele Willoughby, 2026

For the 12th and final #PrinterSolstice2526 prompt multiplication, I have chose Qing era polymath - astronomer, mathematician, meteorologist and poet - Wang Zhenyi (王贞仪), who amongst her accomplishments in her brief life, was a book on mathematics for young readers with simplified rules for multiplication and division, to help children learn even those she lived when formal education for girls was rare. In the absence of any known portraits, I made my print after researching Qing Dynasty pavilions, lanterns, tables and mirrors, along with women's fashions and available astronomical instruments in China in the 1790s.

Astronomer, mathematician, meteorologist and poet Wang Zhenyi (1768-1797) left her impact on Qing era China during her short life. Raised by her father and grandparents, her ancestral home was in Anhui province. Her grandfather, Wang Zhefu, an avid reader and collector of books, was governor of Fengcheng County and the Xuanhua District. When her father, Wang Xichen failed the imperial examination to enter the civil service, he decided instead to study medicine, and wrote a 4-volume Collection of Medical Prescriptions. While many Qing women were denied literacy and education, Zhenyi absorbed it all: astronomy from her grandfather, poetry from her grandmother Dong, medicine, geography and mathematics from her father. When she was 9, her grandfather died and the family travelled to Jilin near the Great Wall to mourn and attend his ornate funeral. They remained there for five years. While there, Zhenyi and three other upper-class girls studied under the Lady of Bu Qianyao, and she was able to read her grandfather's library with its full 75 bookcases. She also learned to ride, do archery on horseback and martial arts from the wife of the Mongolian General Aa. She became an expert mounted markswoman. On her own, she began further exploring mathematics and astronomy, reading Chinese texts, and Western classics like Euclid's Elements.

Zhenyi then travelled with her grandmother and father, visiting Beijing, Shaanxi, Hubei, Guangdong and Anhui. This unusual experience exposed her to more history and more breadth of society than was common for most young women. She and her father travelled south of the Yangtze river, before moving back to the capital and settling in Nanjing when she was 16. At 18, her poetry united her with female scholars in Jangling, and she began to focus on mathematics and astronomy. At 25, deemed late to marry at the time, she married Zhan Mei from Xuancheng in her home province. Their marriage was happy but they had no offspring. She gained fame from her poetry, mathematics and astronomy knowledge. She advanced meteorology to work on weather forecasts for farmers. She even took on some male students, an extraordinarily uncommon thing for a young woman scholar at the time. 

Flemish Jesuit missionary and polymath Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), known as Nan Huairen in Chinese, became Director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, introduced updated armillary spheres, sextants and celestial globes to China and had them adorned with Chinese motifs. He reformed the inaccurate Chinese calendar and diplomatically fostered Sino-European scientific exchange.

 
The Qing Dynasty closed door policy meant that astronomy in China was isolated from advancements that were being made in the West. Jesuit missionaries had shared the works of Copernicus, Galileo and Brahe. Copernicus' model was shared as a useful tool rather than a doctrine, so they could both avoid Church ire and respect local traditions. However, Newton's Principia, including his universal law of gravitation, was not available in a Chinese edition until 1850. When Wang Zhenyi took pains to explain how we could live on a globe without falling off, she was doing so without benefit of an explanation of gravity.

She wrote Dispute of the Procession of the Equinoxes using her observations of celestial phenomena, explaining how equinoxes, the two days each year in the spring and fall when days are nights are equal length, move and how to calculate their movements. Using both her observations and astronomical texts, she wrote about the number of stars, the direction of the revolution of the sun, moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Saturn, as well as describing lunar and solar eclipses. Only a small fraction of her works survive. Later articles included Dispute of Longitude and Stars, Explanation of Lunar Eclipses, and Explanation of the Starry Sky. Zhenyi was interested in the causes of lunar eclipses and published her correct understanding in Explanation of Lunar Eclipses. She summarized astronomical theories, from Yu Xi (307-345) who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, to Gui Shoujing (1231-1316) who is credited with inventing the gnomon and a water powered armillary sphere, and managed to calculate the length of a year as 365.2425 days (mere seconds short of the modern value). She connected these scholars' work with Islamic, Western and modern calendars. At a time when many of her contemporaries would attribute an eclipse to the anger of the gods, she bluntly wrote, "In fact, it's definitely because of the moon." She made a demonstration in an outdoor pavilion to show that how these phenomena could be simply explained by the relative motion of Earth (represented by a round table), moon (represented by a mirror) and sun (represented by a suspended round crystal lamp). Moving these three, as celestial bodies would move she could explain lunar eclipses. She could show how the Earth's shadow could pass over the Moon. She explained that a lunar eclipse can only happen during a full moon, and a solar eclipse can only happen during a new moon, but only when the alignment is right. Her work also cleared up misunderstandings about celestial mechanics and addressed the gradual shift in stellar positions. She affirmed the Earth is a sphere, writing the Theory of the Earth's Roundness, refuting ideas of a flat Earth. In The Geocentric Theory of the Annual Cycle, she made the case for a heliocentric system. She was a proponent of the Western sun-based, heliocentric calendar over the lunar calendar, for its precision and advocated for its adoption. She argued people needed to be open to new scientific and mathematical ideas, regardless of their origin. 

To improve weather-forecasting she worked on calculating atmospheric humidity. She investigated making better predictions of floods and droughts, understanding that Chinese farmers suffered in extreme weather conditions. 

She mastered the book Principles of Calculation by famed early Qing dynasty mathematician Mei Wending (1633-1721). Knowing the challenge of trying to teach oneself mathematics, she rewrote it in simpler, more accessible language as The Musts of Calculation. To further make mathematics easier for beginners, she developed simplified means of performing multiplication and division. By the time she was 24, this work culminated in her writing The Simple Principles of Calculation. Another math text which she wrote and survives today, is the Explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem and Trigonometry.

She complained that anyone with access to medical books could believe themselves experts and dispense risky medical advice. Though widely read, and taught by her father, she refrained from treating her own ailments. On the other hand, she advised being wary of quacks, and speaking up on if necessary. When her female cousin was given a prescription, she checked her pulse and consulted books on female health. She condemned the physician's prescription as unsuitable for a woman. She emphasized the use of preventative medicine and clearly had practical medical knowledge.

She wrote 13 volumes of poetry which were well-received, praised for their strength and clarity. Her style was not feminine and flowery, as was more common amongst female poets. She wrote about the classics, the history she learned travelling with her father, ordinary working people, the plight of women and the contrast between rich and poor. Her poems showed her compassion for people she encountered. She wrote about the wealthy hoarding rice until it rotted, while the poor faced starvation and how the increasing tax burden impacted rural regions. She faced criticism when she published her poems for pursuing fame and literary writing. She wrote that she "dare not defend herself" since she should adhere to Confucian ethics and its prescriptions for the roles of women, but she also wrote that the classics were intended for both men and women. Thus, it was stubborn and careless to insist that women should not read. She wrote, 

    It's made to believe,

    Women are the same as Men;

    Are you not convinced?

    Daughters can also be heroic?

She pointed out that both women and men, "are all people, who have the same reasons for studying."

She died when she was only 29, likely after a relapse of malaria. Before she died, she entrusted her manuscripts to her friend Qian Yuling, who in 1803 passed them on to her nephew Qian Yiji. He compiled her mathematics texts and wrote a preface praising her achievements. Most of her works have since been lost and are known only through references from other writers. Her work helped bridge the gap between Western and Chinese astronomy and modernize Chinese astronomical understanding. Two hundred years later, her impact is being acknowledged. In 1994 the International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature approved a small crater on Venus has being named in her honour. We can only wonder what such a prolific and insightful scholar as she might have achieved had she lived a longer life.

References

Astronomy Week 2025: Honouring the Life and Legacy of Wang Zhenyi, School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh. Accessed March, 2026.

Bernardi, Gabriela. Wang Zhenyi (1768-1797). In: The Forgotten Sisters. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26127-0_23

DeBakcszy, Dale. Champion of Chinese Heliocentrism: The Stellar Mathematics of Wang Zhenyi. The Women in Science Archive. April 25, 2023.

Lutz, R.C. Wang Zhenyi, EBSCO Knowledge Advantage. Accessed March, 2026.

Mehta, Devang. The prolific life of Wang Zhenyi, autodidact, astronomer and poet. Massive Science. November 3, 2017.

Wang Zhenyi (astronomer), Wikipedia, accessed March, 2026

Wang Zhenyi (王贞仪) – Mirror, Wellesley University blog, accessed March, 2026.

Wing-Chung Ho, Clara. The Cultivation of Female Talent: Views on Women's Education in China During the Early and High Qing Periods. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. Vol. 38, No. 2, Women's History (1995), pp. 191-223 (33 pages)

Yang, Binbin. Guardians of Family Health in Qing China: From the Exemplary Wife to the Reformer. Modern China. Vol. 41, No. 5 (September 2015), pp. 506-538 (33 pages). Published By: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Also, hat's off to this tumblr which carefully presents a full history of Qing Dynasty women's fashions and hairstyles:

https://audreydoeskaren.tumblr.com/post/697018790909820928/abridged-history-of-qing-dynasty-han-womens

Elisabeth Koopmann-Hevelius Set Her Sight on Being an Astronomer

Elisabeth Koopmann-Hevelius, linocut print 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2026

For the 11th #PrinterSolstice2526 prompt angle, I've made a portrait of astronomer Elisabeth Koopman Hevelius using (sextant or ) an octant, literally measuring angles to astronomical bodies. 

One of the earliest recorded women astronomers, Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann-Hevelius (Elżbieta Heweliusz, 1647-1693) was born to a wealthy, land-holding, Dutch Lutheran, merchant Nicolas Koopman (1601-1672) and his wife Joanna Mennings (or Mennix; 1602-1676) in the largely German-speaking city of Danzig, then part of the Pomeranian Vovoidship of Royal Prussia in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, part of the Hanseatic League, now known as Gdańsk, Poland.  Her parents had been married in Amsterdam in 1633, then moved to Hamburg and again to Danzig by 1636. Her education included languages (including at some point Latin, the international language of science of the day) and natural sciences. Elisabeth was fascinated with astronomy from the time she was a child. The year she was born, local politician, brewer and astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) published his beautifully and elaborately illustrated Selanographia, about the moon, the first geographical book about a body other than the Earth. By 1650 he already had an international reputation, a complex of three houses and 200 square metre observatory equipped with several large telescopes, the largest observatory in Europe. The young Elisabeth approached him and he promised he would show her the splendour of the night sky when she was older. In 1662, his first wife Katharina Rebeschke died. Elisabeth had become ever more fascinated by astronomy and had realized that Johannes was in fact a renown astronomer, and her admiration of him grew. She reminded the elder astronomer of his promise. Despite their age difference, based largely on their mutual love of astronomy, the two decided they could be happy together and wed when Elisabeth was 16 and he was 52, in 1663. Such an age gap would not have shocked their contemporaries, and for a young woman like Elisabeth, barred from university education, marriage would have been the only means for her to pursue astronomy. Elisabeth had to run the complicated Hevelius household and she both assisted Johannes and pursued her own astronomical interests. They had four children; a son, who died in infancy and three surviving daughters. 

Detail of Johannes and Elisabeth Hevelius observing the sky with a brass octant (1673).

While awaiting the arrival a new assistant, Elisabeth aided her husband in his observations; she excelled at the job and loved observing. In 1663, France awarded him a pension for his astronomical work, and Johannes began corresponding with Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society in London. Elisabeth became his partner in observation from 1664 onwards. That year, Johannes was inducted as the first foreign member of the Royal Society of London. Also that year their son John Adeodatus was born but he died a year later. Their daughters Catherine Elisabeth, Julia Renata and Flora Constance were born in 1666, 1668 and 1672, respectively.  In 1668, Johannes published their work in Cometographia, listing comets and sunspots. Showing herself to be competent in the use of the large sextants and quadrants, when Johannes published his Machina coelestis in 1673 he included two engravings showing Elisabeth using the octant and sextant with him respectively. These are the first printed images of a woman astronomer at work. They employed advanced astronomical instruments such as brass quadrants, sextants and octants (named for the amount of a circle they encompassed) and their observatory was a hub of innovation. The large sextants and octants required two people to operate. Each were equipped with an alidade, a sort of ruler to fix on the distant object being observed, and then its position could be read off. Johannes had invented his own precise alidade with cylinder to fix an objects position. With her knowledge of language, Elisabeth corresponded and struck up friendships with other astronomers. The French physicist and astronomer François Arago recounted that that she was both making useful observations and preforming calculations. In 1677 they were visited by King Jan III Sobieski, who gave them a stipend. Despite owning telescopes with which he had for instance, carefully observed the surface of the moon, Johannes was a hold-out where it came to making observations of stellar positions with telescopes, first employed for astronomy by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) in 1609.  Johannes feared that telescopic observations might introduce distortions in locations. He is considered the last great astronomer to make observations with the unaided eye. 

This unusual attitude towards telescopes lead Johannes into controversy. In England, at the Royal Society, Robert Hooke accused him of making inaccurate observations and sent fellow astronomer Edmond Halley to visit Danzig, from May 26, to July 18, 1679. While Hooke was right about the utility of using telescopes, Halley was very impressed with the precision of Johannes and Elisabeth's naked-eye observations. Though privately he doubted naked-eye observations were the way to go, he confessed that in his controlled test, he could not determine which observations were more accurate. Six separate observers, including Johannes, Elisabeth and Halley with his with a 2-foot quadrant with telescopic sights made the same observations and Halley compared the data. Hooke was quite rude about the entire debacle, and Hevelius responded in kind. Other astronomers, like John Wallis, defended Hevelius because they were annoyed with Hooke. None of the members of the Royal Society involved in the bitter dispute came away with their reputations unbesmirched, with the exception of Halley, who had more diplomatic sense than the rest of them. That summer, they published Machina coelestis par posterior 'Astronomical instruments, second part' including a biography of Johannes, description of their instruments and 1,564-star catalogue of stars based on their observations.  

Then September 26, 1679 they suffered a devastating fire which destroyed their home, their observatory, their instruments, their library and printing press. Luckily, as Johannes wrote, before the fire he was feeling uneasy and "To lift my spirits, I persuaded my young wife, the faithful assistant for my nightly observations, to spend the night in our country retreat outside the walls of the city..." so they were unharmed. People present, including their 13 year old daughter Catherine Elisabeth managed to save several books including Kepler's works (purchased from his son), his new and improved celestial globe, thirteen volumes of his correspondence with scientists and royalty and the most importantly, the star catalogue by breaking into the burning house and throwing them out the windows! Luckily, dozens of copies of Machina coelestis which had already been sent out were not destroyed, but they lost everything else. Elisabeth had asked Halley to buy her a silk dress in London, in exchange for three of Johannes' books, and he wrote how when choosing the fabric he was uncertain if she would be in mourning because, having heard about the fire, astronomers in England feared Johannes had perished. Both King Jan III Sobieski and King Louis XIV of France sent them thousands of thalers to help them rebuild, and Sobieski granted him a yearly stipend of 1,000 Danzig gulden for the remainder of his life,  but it was nowhere near the estimated value of what they lost, which was over thirty thousand thalers. Undetered, they rebuilt their observatory by August 1781 and resumed work on their star catalogue, incorporating 341 stars only visible in the southern hemisphere, reported to them by their friend Edmond Halley. Elisabeth did much of the mathematical calculations and editing of the text. 

Johannes and Elisabeth Hevelius observing the sky with a brass octant (1673), Engraving from Johannes Hevelius' Machine Colestis: Pars Prior fig. O, facing p. 254. 

In 1685, Johannes published Annus climacterius 'Climactic Year' documenting their most recent observations and retelling the tale of the 1679 fire. Swiss mathematician and astronomer, Johann III Bernouilli wrote that Elisabeth contracted smallpox and was badly marked by it. Though Johannes had never contracted the disease he nursed her and never left her sick-bed. They began working on what would be Johannes' final publication. He died on his 76th birthday in 1687. After his death, she secured funding, took over the completion and publication of the Prodomus Astronomicae, 'The Elements of Astronomy". In 1690 she published the Prodomus Astronomicae, documenting two decades of observations, in three parts: the Prodomus was a preface with unpublished observations, which Elisabeth completed as well as writing and signing the dedication to the king as "Elisabeth, widow of Hevelius";  Catalogus Stellar Fixarum 'Catalogue of the Fixed Stars' (dated 1687) was a star catalogue including the positions and relevant data for 1,888 stars; and Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia 'Sobieksi's Heavens, or a Map of the Heavens' (dated 1687) was a 56 sheet atlas of constellations for both northern and southern hemispheres from the catalogue complete with seven new constellations he delineated which are still in use (Canes Venatici, Lecerta, Leo Minor, Lynx, Scutum, Sextans, and Vulpecula) plus three which are now obsolete (Cerebus, Mons Maenads, and Triangulum Minus). Hevelius named one of these constellations for the king (Scutum Sobiescianum, or 'Shield of Sobieski' shortened now to Scutum) and one for his precious sextant, as well as several animals. It represented a significant advancement in astronomical observations and knowledge, containing both more stars and more accurate positions than Johan Bayer's Uranometria (based on Tycho Brahe's measurements). Elisabeth had not only ushered the book through publication, she participated in observations and calculations in a meticulous and systematic way. She died three years later, December 22, 1693 at 46 and was buried in the same tomb as her late husband. Arago wrote, "A complimentary remark was always made about Madame Hevelius, who was the first woman, to my knowledge, who was not frighted to face the fatigue of making astronomical observations and calculations." Arago was unaware of how Sophia Brahe (1556 or 1559-1643) had aided her brother Tycho, or of their near-contemporary Maria Cunitz (1610-1664), who was rather isolated from the astronomical community, so we should say that Elisabeth was amongst the first but not the earliest woman bravely facing late night observing and astronomical calculations. But her correspondence and friendships with fellow astronomers, as well as her collaboration with her husband, appearance in his books and her publication of the Prodomus, means that she and her accomplishments were recognized and remembered. A minor planet discovered at the Palomar Observatory in 1960 was named 12625 Koopman and a crater on Venus is named Corpman, a variant on the spelling of her maiden name, were named in her honour.

References

Ashworth, William B. Scientist of the Day - Elisabeth Hevelius. Linda Hall Library, University of Missouri-Kansas City. December 22, 2017.

Elisabeth Hevelius, Wikipedia, accessed February, 2026.

Jardine, Lisa. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke - The Man Who Measured London. Harper Collins. New York. 2003.

Masters, Karen. The Astronomers' Library. Ivy Press. London. 2024. 

Lutz, R.C. Elisabeth Hevelius, EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, 2022.

O'Connor, J.J. and E.F. Robertson. Elisabetha Koopman (1647-1493) - Biography. MacTutor. School of Mathematics and Statistics, St Andrews University. December, 2008.

O'Connor, J.J. and E.F. Robertson. Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) - Biography. MacTutor. School of Mathematics and Statistics, St Andrews University. December, 2008.

Popova, Maria. Ordering the Heavens: Hevelius's Revolutionary 17th-Century Star-Catalog and the First Moon Map. The Marginalian. 2014.

Margaret Burbidge, B2FH and stellar nucleosynthesis

Margaret Burbidge, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2025

The #printerSolstice2425 prompt this week is iron, so after talking last week about how certain numbers of nucleons are "magic" as you grow increasingly large nuclei, this week, we're talking about how you do that: how you grow nuclei from a single proton to the largest naturally-occurring transuranic elements. Astrophysicist Margaret Burbidge is one of the people instrumental in building our understanding stellar nucleosynthesis, how nuclei are produced in stars and you and I are all stardust. She was the first author of a monumental scientific paper Synthesis of the Elements in Stars, which became known as B²FH from the initials of its authors: Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge (her husband), William A. Fowler and Fred Hoyle. The landmark paper, one of the most-influential in astronomy and nuclear physics, reviewed everything then known stellar nucleosynthesis, how elements are made, backed up the theory with astronomical and laboratory data and in further explained how elements heavier than iron are made and the abundances of the various elements. Generations of astronomers apparently used to joke that "the early Universe made hydrogen and helium, Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle made all the rest." Elements up to iron can be built up by nuclear fusion, both slow and rapid neutron-capture, in stars and  B²FH also explained how heavier elements are made. At the base of my print is a stellar absorption spectrum of the sort she gathered and used in arguments presented in B2FH and a cross-section of a supergiant star and how nucleosynthesis leads to a nested series of shells where increasingly heavy elements are burned as fuel producing new elements through fusion. The shells from outermost in are: hydrogen (H), helium (He), carbon (C), neon (Ne), oxygen (O), silicon (Si) and iron (Fe). Behind her is space with stars and galaxies to represent her observations.

Born in Davenport, UK, she was the sort of clever child who deduced that she was born exactly 9 months after the November 11 Armistice which ended the first world war, and concluded she was likely conceived when it was announced. Her father Stanley John Peachey was a lecturer in chemistry at  the Manchester School of Technology (now part of the University of Manchester) and her mother Marjorie Stott Peachey had been one of his students. As a small child her father got a patent related to the vulcanization of rubber, which made him enough money to move to the family to London where he set up his own industrial chemistry lab. She was "star-struck" on a ferry trip over the English Channel at the age of 4, away from the bright lights of London, and by 12, she was reading astronomy textbooks by James Jeans, a distant relative of her mother. She and her younger sister Audrey were expected to pursue education and careers. She gained experience working in her father's lab, before his death when she was 17.  She passed the university entrance exams a year early and thus had an extra year at her high school, taken under the wing of the science teacher, where she was given the run of the physics laboratory to perform her own experiments in electricity, magnetism and optics. This was a unheard of opportunity for a young woman in the mid-30s. She went to University College London (UCL) to study astronomy, where she graduated with her undergraduate with first class honours to little celebration with war looming in 1939. She studied spectroscopy at Imperial College and then she proceeded to pursue graduate school at the University of London Observatory. She split her time between her studies and fabricating optical instruments for the armed forces. Her 1943 thesis was on the spectrum of the star Gamma Cassiopeiae. Many of the men in the department were busy with war work, so she was granted more independence and responsibility than might otherwise have been the case. She made observations at Mill Hill observatory, in the cramped space, in the cold under the open dome while German bombs fell nearby. She never complained, being determined always in her work. “Those nights, standing or sitting on a ladder in the dome of the [J. G.] Wilson reflector [at Mill Hill] . . . fulfilled my early dreams,” she later recalled. Upon seeing a photographic plate of a spiral galaxy for the first time, she said it felt almost sinful to be enjoying astronomy so much and be employed as an astronomer.

Since women were denied access to Mount Wilson Observatory, (on the basis there was no women's bathroom), Margaret's 1945 application to use the telescope was rejected.  She wrote about the experience that a “guiding operational principle in my life was activated: If frustrated in one’s endeavor by a stone wall or any kind of blockage, one must find a way around — another route towards one’s goal. This is advice I have given to many women facing similar situations.” She stayed on in London as Assistant Directory of the observatory.

She met theoretical physicist Geoffrey Burbidge who was in grad school at UCL in 1947 and the two were married in 1948. Their personalities and persons contrasted; Geoff was a large guy who enjoyed arguing pugnaciously whereas Margaret was petite and known for her demure, friendly but quiet demeanour. But he was supportive, loyal and good friends even with colleagues with whom he disagreed and her quietness hid her steely resolve. They were a good match and proved a symbiotic team. Her passion for astronomy was so strong she convinced him to switch to theoretical astrophysics and the two collaborated regularly throughout their subsequent careers. They moved to the US for jobs at observatories at Harvard and the University of Chicago (where Margaret was excited to attend a workshop held by Harold Urey and Maria Goeppert Mayer on the abundance of the elements), before returning to the UK. Seeking two positions and telescope accessed required them to move repeatedly. Willy Fowler recalled a "wonderful Charles Laughton replica," that is Geoff looking and sounding like the famous British-American actor, walked into his office, where he was on sabbatical at Cambridge and said, "why don't you work on problems important for astrophysics?" Hoyle had been working on nuclear reactions in stars since before WWII. When Fowler returned to the US he recommended the Burbidges accompany him; Fred Hoyle was already a frequent visitor. Margaret could work at the Mount Wilson Observatory and Geoff at CalTech. But the Director of Mount Wilson wrote to say the single toilet precluded hiring a woman, still, ten years after her application to do a post-doc there. So, ever-pragmatic, they swapped jobs; Geoff took the Mount Wilson job and Margaret the one at CalTech. She had to pose as Geoffrey's assistant every time he purported went to Mount Wilson and live on a separate cottage on the grounds, as a means to gain access. Geoff worked in the dark room and smoked cigars while Margaret did the observing at night. It took until 1965 for Mount Wilson to officially allow women observers. Once in California they worked on their famous 108-page paper with Fowler and Hoyle, after having first collaborated while at Cambridge. The Burbidges had been looking at spectra of stars with unusual surface conditions; these could be due to upward mixing of nuclear reaction products and proved useful in the paper. They suspected neutron-capture. Fowler's nuclear physics group had been calculating cross-sections of reactions necessary to build heavier elements. Margaret wrote the paper while pregnant. The paper showed how elements were formed at various stages of the lifecycle of stars, explained the existence of of all but the lightest elements (which we now know were in fact formed in the Big Bang) and showed how we, and everything but some of those lightest elements are made of stardust.

They had a daughter, Sarah, in 1956. In 1962 they were both hired by UCSD; to get around anti-nepotism rules, Geoffrey was hired by the physics department and Margaret was hired by the chemistry department, until the rule was changed and she too joined the physics department.

Though her observations helped provide evidence of the Big Bang, Margaret and Geoffrey both followed Fred Hoyle into the "steady state" camp, and were skeptical of the Big Bang theory. Hoyle in fact had derisively coined the term "Big Bang" to poke fun at the idea. His idea was that maker was more or less continuously in a steady state. created and density remained constant. Nonetheless, the name Big Bang stuck and the theory is now become accepted by the field at large. Though Margaret, the observational astronomer, unlike Geoff, rarely commented on theoretical matters, so she is not strongly associated with choosing the wrong side of the Big Bang versus Steady State cosmology debate. She rather worked to keep an open mind.

In the '50s and '60s she measured flat rotational curves for spiral galaxies based on optical observations. Later Vera Rubin got similar results and was able to infer the existence of dark matter galactic haloes. In the '60s and '70s she worked on galaxies and quasars, helping to determine their distance, luminosity and internal processes, finding the most distance object then known (which remained the most distant known object for a decade). With access to the Lick Observatory telescope she was in the right place to join the race to find new and more distant quasars, and known for literally racing to work in the couple's 1961 Jaguar Mark II. Geoff on the other hand never learned to drive, though they both loved that car.  Margaret's work on quasars was very important and lead to advancements like the understanding that galaxies have black holes at their centres. The shear distance to these objects was another blow to Geoff's favoured Steady State model; the expansion of the universe due to the Big Bang was needed to explain objects at the cosmological distances. 

In 1972 she declined the American Astronomical Society's Annie Jump Canon Medal because it is only awarded to women. She wrote, “It is high time that discrimination in favor of, as well as against, women in professional life be removed.” This sparked conversation and forced the AAS to look into discrimination on the basis of sex for the first time and lead eventually to the formation of the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy. They also changed the rules of the Annie Jump Canon Medal, awarding it only to early career women who choose to apply for it. 

Burbidge was director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (1972–1973), She was the first woman in any of these roles. She was notably, the first director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 300 years who was not made the Astronomer Royal (and the title was bestowed instead on one of her male peers). At various times she attributed this to sexism or a political desire to reduce the influence of the Royal Greenwich Observatory; either way she resigned after 18 months. She was president of the American Astronomical Society (1976–1978), and following her election, she took US citizenship. As president, she got to introduce the first woman to receive the Russel Lecture Award for lifetime excellence in astronomical research: Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin. Burbidge herself later received the award in 1984. When the US Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced, but failed to pass in the required minimum of 38 states, Margaret proposed that AAS meetings be banned in states which had not passed the ERA. The proposal was contentious but she succeeded in having it passed. In the '80s and '90s she worked on the development and use of the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. She was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1983). In 1983, Fowler received the Nobel Prize for his work on stellar nucleosynthesis and expressed his surprise that Burbidge was not included; she of course was circumspect and did not comment. She was the first female president of the International Astronomical Union's commission on galaxies. She was the first woman to win the Bruce Medal. She was awarded the Medal of Science by President Reagan in 1985, was a fellow of the Royal Society, and the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. Burbidge was the first director of the Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences at UCSD and worked there until retirement in 1988. Fowler died in 1995. Hoyle died in 2001. Geoffrey died in 2010. Margaret was the sole surviving author of B²FH, until her death at age 100 in 2020 after a fall. She had been one of the great observational astronomers of the 20th century, a role model and trail blazer for women in the field and a strong voice for eliminating bias against women that she had faced in her career.

References

Alpha process, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025

B2FH, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025

Burbidge, E. Margaret, Geoffrey Burbidge, William A. Fowler, and Fred Hoyle, Synthesis of the Elements in Stars, Reviews of Modern Physics, vol 29, 4, October, 1957.

Clark, Stuart. Margaret Burbidge Obituary. The Guardian. April 22, 2020.

Cohen, Adam D. In Memoriam: Margaret Burbidge, Pioneering Astronomer and Advocate for Women in Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 8, 2020.

Dillon, Cynthia. Trailblazing astronomer Margaret Burbidge turns 100 years old. University of California. October 17, 2019.

Margaret Burbidge, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025

Ostriker, Jeremiah, and Freeman Kenneth ; Eleanor Margaret Burbidge. Physics Today 1 September 2020; 73 (9): 60. https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4575

Rubin, Vera C. E. Margaret Burbidge, President-Elect. Science. Vol. 211, Issue 4485, pp. 915-916, DOI: 10.1126/science.7008193 February 21, 1981.

• Sargent Anneila I. and 
• Longair Malcolm S.
 

2021Eleanor Margaret Burbidge. 12 August 1919—5 April 2020Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc.7111–35http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2021.0017

Skuse, Ben. Celebrating Astronomer Margaret Burbidge, 1919-2020. Sky & Telescope. April 6, 2020

Smith, Harrison. Margaret Burbidge: Pioneering astrophysicist who showed we are all made of stardust. The Independent. April 22, 2020.

Stellar nucleosynthesis, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025

Trimble, Virginia. E. Margaret Burbidge (1919-2020). Nature. April 27, 2020.

Annie Jump Cannon, Census Taker of the Sky

Annie Jump Cannon, 11" x 14" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2024

I knew the #PrinterSolstice prompt "spectrum" called for another scientist portrait!

My hand printed lino block portrait of trailblazing American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941) shows her with her stellar classification system which sorted stars based on spectral types and turned out to reveal their temperature from hot blue stars through cool red stars into O,B,A, F, G, K and M, as shown on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram behind her. Along with her supervisor Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, the first serious stellar classification scheme. The name, citing Harvard rather than Cannon herself, who still lacked a university appointment, makes her achievement less visible than it might have been.

The eldest of three daughters of Delaware shipbuilder and state senator Wilson Cannon and his second wife Mary Jump, Annie was born in Dover, Delaware. Her mother taught her the constellations, home economics (and the organization skills she would later need) and encouraged her to pursue her own interests. Annie and her mother used old astronomy textbooks to identify stars they could see by climbing out a trapdoor onto their roof. She studied mathematics, chemistry, and biology at Wellesley College, a top school for women, where she excelled at math. She studied physics with Sarah Frances Whiting, one of the few US women physicists at the time, and became the valedictorian. She graduated with a degree in physics in 1884 and returned home to Delaware. Over the next decade she studied the new art of photography, photographing her travels through Europe with her Blair box camera. The Blair company published her photos and prose about Spain, "In the Footsteps of Columbus" and distributed it as a souvenir at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.

A cheerful and energetic person, she lost most of her hearing as a young adult, possibly due to scarlet fever. She found it made it hard to socialize. Then her mother died in 1894, which made family life difficult too. She wrote Sarah Frances Whiting seeking a job and was hired as a junior physics teacher, which allowed her to take graduate physics and astronomy classes and study spectroscopy on her own. She gained access to a better telescope by enrolling in Radcliffe College (a women's college affiliated with Harvard) in 1894 as a "special student" which allowed her to use the he Harvard College Observatory. Harvard astronomer Edward C. Pickering hired her as his assistant in 1896. He was running a program to map and catalogue every visible star in the sky to a photographic magnitude of about 9 (16 times fainter than visible by human eye alone) to complete the Henry Draper Catalogue, a research program fund by the widow of a wealthy physician and amateur astronomer. He hired men to do the physical jobs of operating heavy telescopes and making photographs. He hired and supervised a group of women (whom he could pay as little as 25 cents an hour to work seven hours a day, six days a week) known as the Harvard Computers to do examine data, do calculations and catalogue photos - work he did not deem proper scientific analysis. Though hired as mere "computers" this team included such astronomy luminaries as Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Williamina Fleming and Antonia Maury who made important advancements in the field. Pickering wanted the optical spectra of as many spectra as possible with the goal of indexing and classifying stars by spectra. The Draper Catalogue became an indispensable tool for astronomers.

Cannon worked at the Observatory until 1940. In her first three years, she classified 1000 stars. By 1911 she was made the Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard and by 1913 she had learned to accurately classify 200 stars an hour! She published her first star catalogue in 1901. She finished her studies at Wellesley and was awarded a master's in 1907. In 1927, Pickering  said "Miss Cannon is the only person in the world—man or woman—who can do this work so quickly," about her skills in star classification.

The classification work was begun by Nettie Farrar, but she left the Observatory after a few months to get married. Antonia Maury (the first person to detect an calculate the orbit of a spectroscopic binary, and Draper's niece) took over. She insisted on a complex scheme, to the dismay of project manager Williamina Fleming (who catalogues ten thousand stars, 59 gaseous nebulae, over 310 variable stars, 10 novae and other astronomical phenomena including discovering the Horsehead Nebula) who wanted a simpler scheme. Cannon negotiated a compromise, applying a scheme dividing of stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M, based on the Balmer absorption lines of hydrogen. Later when the scheme was understood to reflect stellar temperatures her initial sequence of the classes was reordered to go from hot to cold.

Cannon excelled at the work thanks to her organizational skills and patience with the tediousness of the work. Her calm, friendly and hardworking personality lead her to a sort of ambassador-like role, brokering exchanges of equipment between male colleagues.  Nicknamed "Census Taker of the Sky,"  she catalogued an estimated  350,000 stars, more than any other person. She also discovered 300 variable stars, five novas, and one spectroscopic binary.

In 1914, she was admitted as an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Awarded an honorary doctor's degree in math and astronomy from Groningen University in 1921, she became one of the first women to receive an honorary doctorate from a European university. On May 9, 1922, the International Astronomical Union passed the resolution to formally adopt Cannon's stellar classification system. With minor changes (to include intensity as well as temperature) Annie Jump Cannon's classification system is still in use today. She got the opportunity to spend six months in Arequipa, Peru, photographing stars in the Southern hemisphere. In 1925 she became the first woman to receive an honorary science doctorate from Oxford and was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 1929 she chosen as one of the "greatest living American women" by the League of Women Voters. In 1931, she was the first woman to win the Henry Draper Medal. In 1932 she won the Ellen Richards prize from the Association to Aid Scientific Research by Woman. She represented professional woman at at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933. She became the William C. Bond Astronomer at Harvard University in 1938.

Cecilia Payne (later Payne-Gaposchkin) used Cannon's data to show that stars are mainly composed of hydrogen and helium.

Cannon retired in 1940 but kept working at the Observatory until a few weeks before she died at 77. Her work helped women gain acceptance and respect in the field. A dedicated suffragette she was also a member of the National Women’s Party. As The Woman Citizen’s noted in 1924, despite her achievements “The traffic policeman on Harvard Square does not recognize her name. The brass and parades are missing. She steps into no polished limousine at the end of the day’s session to be driven by a liveried chauffeur to a marble mansion.” But her legacy lives on in the discoveries she made, the classification system she developed, and the trail she blazed for women in astronomy. In 1935 she created the Annie J. Cannon Prize, awarded by the American Astronomical Society, for "the woman of any country, whose contributions to the science of astronomy are the most distinguished." The first recipient became the first woman full professor of astronomy at Harvard: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Like her mother before her, and her first physics professor Sarah Frances Whiting, Annie was able to mentor and promote the next generation of women astronomers. Payne-Gaposchkin wrote in Science, upon her death, “On the thirteenth of April, 1941, the world lost a great scientist and a great woman, astronomy lost a distinguished contributor and countless human beings lost a beloved friend by the death of Miss Annie J. Cannon.” Harlow Shapely, Directory of the Harvard Observatory wrote, “Her official position at the Harvard Observatory was the William Cranch Bond Astronomer and Curator of the Photographic Collection. Her unofficial position was dean of women astronomers of the world and a leading and most honored woman scientist.”

 

References

Annie Jump Cannon, wikipedia, accessed February 2024 

Christ, Marian., Annie Jump Cannon, American Philosophical Society, January 16, 2022.

Geiling,  Natasha., The Women Who Mapped the Universe and Still Couldn’t Get Any Respect, Smithsonian Magazine, September 18, 2013

Murphy, Norah M., Eyes to the Sky: Annie Jump Cannon and the Harvard Observatory, The Harvard Crimsom, May 5, 2017

Stellar classification, wikipedia, accessed February 2024