Henrietta Swan Leavitt was one of Harvard's "computers", women paid to study glass photographic plates of the night sky. Working through thousands of pulsing stars, she noticed that the brighter ones pulsed more slowly. That simple pattern, published in 1912, gave astronomers a ruler to measure the universe. Edwin Hubble later used it to prove there are galaxies far beyond our own. She did it star by star, with painstaking care, while gradually losing her hearing.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Pioneering Astronomer
EXTRA-ORDINARY TRAIT
PRECISION
JFDI PILLAR
J — JUDGMENT
COUNTRY & REGION
USA (Americas)
LIFESPAN
1868 – 1921
GENDER
Woman
EDITION
No.002
✦ DEFINING MOMENT
Holding a glass photographic plate up to the light at Harvard Observatory, spotting the pattern in the stars.
✦ ARCHIVAL DOSSIER
The Story
✦ DID YOU KNOW?
A Swedish mathematician wanted to nominate her for the Nobel Prize in 1925, not knowing she had died four years earlier.
✦ YOUR TURN
What pattern are you close enough to spot that others keep missing?
COLLECTIBLE EDITIONS
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