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Henrietta Leavitt, Cosmology Pioneer, Receives Belated Obituary


Longtime Slashdot reader necro81 writes: The New York Times has an occasional series called "Overlooked," whereby notable people whose deaths were overlooked at the time receive the obituary they deserve. Their latest installment eulogizes Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who passed away in 1921 at age 53. F...

Their latest installment eulogizes Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who passed away in 1921 at age 53. From the report: "In the early 20th century, when Henrietta Leavitt began studying photographs of distant stars at the Harvard College Observatory, astronomers had no idea how big the universe was... Leavitt, working as a poorly paid member of a team of mostly women [computers] who cataloged data for the scientists at the observatory, found a way to peer out into the great unknown and measure it." From the report: "[Leavitt's Law] underpinned the research of other pioneering astronomers, including Edwin Hubble and Harlow Shapley, whose work in the years after World War I demolished long-held ideas about our solar system's place in the cosmos.

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