Process Paper
The topics of space and astronomy have interested me for many years. I often spend a lot of my time on the internet looking up new information or reading books about those subjects. I came across Henrietta Swan Leavitt while looking up questions on the internet about the size of the universe. A long trail of different topics and links on Wikipedia eventually led me to her name. I was amazed that she had accomplished something so important, yet I had never read about her before. I chose Leavitt as my unsung hero because she contributed so much to the history of astronomy and our understanding of the universe, but she received little to no recognition.
I started my research of Leavitt on Wikipedia by reading about her background, her education and how she began in her field of study. Here I found very broad information with limited details. I continued my research on her early life using space.com, where I found most of my content about her career and her discoveries. I didn’t know much about her specific field of study, Cepheid variable stars. The Encyclopedia Britannica article on Cepheid variable stars was the most helpful source for understanding more about her research. I also found an informative radio interview with an astronomer who spoke about Henrietta Swan Leavitt and her lack of recognition in the history of astronomy.
Creating a website seemed to be the most logical format to present the information I found in an organized and appealing way. I found many pictures of Leavitt at work and pictures of the materials with which she worked. I also wanted a medium where I would be able to change things quickly if needed, and a website is perfect for editing and adding new information. Most importantly, the internet is the easiest and most common way to share ideas with a large audience. Publishing a website about Leavitt is the most effective mode to share awareness about her contributions and hopefully bring some recognition to her accomplishments.
I enjoyed learning how to create a website since I had never made one before. The only issue I encountered was that it would sometimes freeze and I would have to start over. Also, it was hard to create the pages in a way that were informative yet intriguing at the same time. I wanted to make a website that would interest people at first glance and encourage them to want to read and learn more about an important woman who has been unrecognized for her accomplishments.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s discovery of the relation between Cepheid stars' luminosity/pulsation periods and their distance from the Earth shaped the future of astronomy and how scientists measure objects in our universe. Edwin Hubble, creator of Hubble’s Law, which is the idea that the universe is expanding and accelerating, based his work off of Leavitt’s calculations and discovery. In 1990, NASA launched the Hubble Telescope which is still orbiting the earth today. The Hubble Telescope has taken hundreds of thousands of images, which amaze people all over the world and lead to new research in the field of astronomy. Without Leavitt’s work, Hubble may not have devised his Law of Expansion and we might not have as deep of an understanding about space and our location in the universe. Leavitt made an enormous contribution to the history of science and she is barely known to the world. She is a perfect example of a hero who is unknown to our society. She is a true unsung hero.
"Miss Leavitt’s work on the variable stars… has afforded us a very powerful tool in measuring great stellar distances."
-Harlow Shapely, Head of Harvard Observatory
​
"The most dramatic application [of Leavitt's discovery] was Hubble’s use in 1924 of a Cepheid variable to determine the distance to the great nebula in Andromeda, which was the first distance measurement for a galaxy outside the Milky Way."
-Encyclopedia Britannica
​
Female assistants were "capable of doing as much and as good routine work as astronomers who would receive much larger salaries. Three or four times as many assistants can thus be employed, and the work done correspondingly increased for a given expenditure."
-Edward Pickering
​
Her Legacy
1908- Leavitt made her groundbreaking discovery.
1912- Leavitt's boss, Edward Pickering, published her research and explanation of her discovery under his name.
1923- Edwin Hubble used Leavitt's formula to prove that distant nebulae are actually galaxies.
1924- A scientist from the Swedish Academy of Science attempted to nominate Leavitt for the Nobel Prize, but was unsuccessful since she had died three years earlier.
1924- Hubble discovered the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), using Leavitt's formula.
1929- Hubble's work led to what is now called Hubble's Law, which astrophysicists still use today to prove that the universe is expanding.
1990s-The Hubble Space Telescope captured images that prove that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
About
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She began her college education at Oberlin College and graduated from the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, now known as Radcliffe College. She studied art and music during her first three years of college and didn't discover her love of astronomy until her senior year. After earning her undergraduate degree, she took graduate level courses at Harvard College. While there, she began volunteering at the Harvard College Observatory, which she did for fourteen years before becoming a paid employee. Her boss, Edward Pickering, was low on funding and hired twenty women because he did not have to pay them as much as men. The women were considered "computers" and most were paid twenty-five cents an hour; however Leavitt was paid thirty cents an hour because her work was considered more valuable. During most of her time at Harvard, Leavitt suffered from various illnesses. One of the most serious side effects was increasing deafness. In 1921 she was promoted to head of the Photographic Photometry department until her death later that year from cancer.
Mapping The Stars
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an astronomer for the Harvard College Observatory in the early twentieth century. She discovered a formula that could be used to measure the distance to stars and other galaxies from Earth. Leavitt started at Harvard as a volunteer in 1893 and wasn't paid for her work until 1907. Her work was tedious and included measuring and recording the brightness of stars. Since women were not allowed to use telescopes at the time, she had to use photographic plates to study the skies. Over the fourteen years that Leavitt worked at the observatory, she discovered around 2,400 stars and 4 novas. Leavitt's most important discovery during these years was the relationship between the luminosity and the pulsation period of Cepheid variable stars. The formula that she developed using this relationship allows scientists to measure vast distances in the universe.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt's research made it possible to measure the distances of far away stars and prove that the universe is expanding. Leavitt was an astronomer in the early 1900s who received very little recognition for her work.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
"The Woman Who Measured the Universe"
Click on each picture for more information
Feedback is welcome and appreciated