* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Blobrana · L

Silent Sky' Brings to Light Unsung Female Astronomer

Silent Sky, Lauren Gunderson's play about a real-life female astronomer whose research in the early 1900s altered everything we knew about the universe, will have its world premiere on the Segerstrom Stage April 1 through May 1.
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Blobrana · L

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. A graduate of Radcliffe College, Leavitt went to work in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory in a menial capacity as a "computer", assigned to count images on photographic plates. Study of the plates led Leavitt to propound a groundbreaking theory, worked out while she labored as a $10.50-a-week assistant, that was the basis for the pivotal work of astronomer Edwin Hubble. Leavitt's discovery of the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables radically changed the theory of modern astronomy, an accomplishment for which she received almost no recognition during her lifetime.
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