History of Women Pioneers in Astronomy

A session co-sponsored with DAP was held to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henrietta Swan Leavitt. It opened with a talk by acclaimed author Dava Sobel on Leavitt and Celia Payne and the women computers of the Harvard Observatory. She discussed the role of the Observatory’s director Edward Pickering in promoting women contributor’s to astronomy. Alan Lightman, who had been unable to attend due to a flight cancellation, gave his talk via audio link. He gave some additional little-known details on the life of Leavitt and the session closed with a presentation by Adam Reiss on the most recent work using Leavitt’s law to calibrate supernova measurements of the rate of acceleration of the Universe’s expansion. The session thus managed to bridge the purely historical with the current relevance of the work of 19th century women astronomers such as Leavitt. The session was chaired by Priya Natarajan and was well attended with an interested audience.

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