The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars

Name: The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
SKU: 58376
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4.4 | 432 ratings

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Last update: 05-24-2024

About this item

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Dava Sobel returns with the captivating, little-known true story of a group of women whose remarkable contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

In the mid-19th century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers", to interpret the observations made via telescope by their male counterparts each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but by the 1880s the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges - Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith.

As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The "glass universe" of half a million plates that Harvard amassed in this period - thanks in part to the early financial support of another woman, Mrs. Anna Draper, whose late husband pioneered the technique of stellar photography - enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight.

Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify 10 novae and more than 300 variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard - and Harvard's first female department chair.

Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of a group of remarkable women who, through their hard work and groundbreaking discoveries, disproved the commonly held belief that the gentler sex had little to contribute to human knowledge.

Robert H. Moore

A great read, an important part of science history. Highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2018

I've been teaching general education astronomy classes for several years and had brought up the Harvard "Calculators" in lecture, so I was eager to get a more in-depth understanding of that era in astronomy. I had expected to read about how poorly the women were treated, kept from telescope work and relegated to menial tasks of looking at photographic plates, etc. Instead, we see strong and brilliant women changing the course of astronomy by their hard work, scientific acumen and strokes of genius. The expected resistance to women in leadership roles is there, to be sure, but not so much within the Harvard observatory community as from the university higher-ups. Several of these "calculator" women were internationally recognized as leaders in the field. Even the wealthy benefactors (such as Henry Draper's widow, Anna Draper), who helped the observatory's work to greatly expand, were women.

Whether you're specifically interested in the subject of women in science or not, this book is just a great snapshot of science history, period. From the late 1800's, when next to nothing was known about what stars were made of, their lifecycle, whether there were other galaxies or not, etc., to the work of Edwin Hubble in the 1920's and 30's, with the discovery of an expanding universe populated by untold numbers of galaxies, a scientific road runs through the work of the ladies of the Harvard Observatory. The "big names" (like Hubble, Hertzsprung, Russell) were indebted to their work.

In short, another great book from Dava Sobel. Previous books (Longitude and Galileo's Daughter) are also well worth reading. She is thorough but never plodding in her retelling of history. It feels alive, moving at times, and always interesting.

C. Talento

It is a very good, well researched read

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2017

This year's Oscars put the attention on the women computers who helped NASA get to the Moon in the 1960s but even before NASA there was another group of female computers who were responsible for many of the systems we use today to classify stars.

Sobel does an excellent job of telling these ladies stories in The Glass Universe. This book is very science heavy but the author writes in such a way that a non-science person can understand.

It is also very people heavy and sometimes the story can get lost in all these women's threads but you still come away with an understanding of who these women were and how the work they were doing for Harvard was pretty revolutionary for the time.

A must read for fans of astronomy, science, women's history or history in general.

Meribeth Meixner Reed, PhD

I am a fan because I have enjoyed Sobel's Longitude and Galileo's Daughter many times each

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2017

Meribeth Meixner Reed, PhD
6 June 2017

Sobel, Dava. (2016). The Glass Universe: How the ladies of the Harvard Observatory took the measure of the stars. New York, NY: Viking.

Women's expeditions into advanced mathematics and science are not the same as men's. That was notoriously true in 19th and 20th century America, as gate-keepers protecting the realm of men (while ostensibly and disingenuously protecting the fairer sex) unapologetically denied gender equality. Recall that before 1920, women in most of the US did not have the right to vote.

Glass Universe is an important women's history overlaid on a history of astronomy and astrophysics. The title refers to the half million glass photographic plates on which stellar observations were recorded, and the subtitle reveals the subject of Dava Sobel's exploration, developed through a series of biographies. A chronologic approach was taken, focusing on several key players with a large supporting cast, while the observatory is the stage.

Award-winning science writer Sobel introduces a cadre of astronomers previously known to few of us, although their discoveries and taxonomies are fundamental today. I am a fan because I have enjoyed Sobel's Longitude and Galileo's Daughter many times each. Her research is rigorous, and she treats her subject astronomers with admiration and love, describing women pioneers in photography; spectroscopy; stellar origins, evolution, and chemistry; and astrophysics. Positions of primacy are given to Williamina Fleming (1857-1911), who devised a classification scheme for stars and discovered more than 300 variable stars; and Antonia Maury (1866-1952), whose enhanced spectral classification scheme based on improvements in photography distinguished between giant and dwarf stars, and who identified spectroscopic binaries.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) established a system to measure distances across space based on the brightness of stars, and her co-worker of two decades, Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) classified and cataloged the light spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars. Cannon also mentored Cecilia Payne (Gaposchkin)(1900-1979), who revealed the physical and chemical nature of stars, the articulation of physics and astronomy, or astrophysics. Hers was the first PhD in Astronomy conferred by Harvard/Radcliffe (1925). Heiresses Anna Palmer Draper (1839-1914) and Catherine Wolfe Bruce (1816-1900) also advanced astronomy as generous benefactors.

Reading this book required three and four bookmarks. The text is 323 pages, including bibliography and index. There is so much information -- unwrapping the life stories of many astronomers -- that I frequently flipped back and forth between sections to help me distinguish between individuals. An extensive timeline is concealed under the title Highlights of the Observatory (pp. 273-279), and that was important to bookmark, as is the alphabetic catalog of astronomers and others (pp. 285-292), and the glossary located between them. Six color photos are centered in the book, which includes 20 pictures of the visionaries. But the unconventional lack of scholarly references and citations is not explained, despite the wide use of quotations, and it is not clear why the academic title Dr. was so seldom and inconsistently used.

Through this book, Sobel opened a new universe for me, sending me searching for more information on these fascinating women of science. These astronomers who changed our understanding of the universe demonstrated resilience in the face of denied academic degrees, titles, awards, positions, and reasonable pay based explicitly on their gender, even as they published seminal works in the science.

Like artists, scientists pursue original thoughts and intellectual challenges. The interpretation of findings and written expression are steps in a solitary creative endeavor. They must have great faith in those to whom they reveal and entrust their discoveries. I imagine these pioneers created a supportive environment for each other, a privileged sisterhood, enabling them to retain their unique positions in the observatory and the academy, fully aware that most women were denied access to such work and study. And they were probably not surprised when others took credit for their work. Yet the women remained committed to expanding, generating, and then sharing knowledge. They were as brilliant as the stars they were measuring in as many dimensions.

Mike R

absolutely fascinating study of the early women astronomers

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2024

This was a fantastic book about the early days of astronomy and the importance of Harvard University in many, many discoveries that led to understanding the stars and galaxies in the sky. Highly recommended!!!!

Jamie

Not to my taste

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2016

Perhaps Dava Sobel was attempting to create the atmosphere of 1900 by always referring to the women who worked at the Harvard observatory as "ladies" and always referring to the individual women as Miss X or Mrs. Y. If so, she badly failed, and only succeeded in irritating the reader by treating the women as if their only meaningful identity was that of an unmarried daughter or as a wife (or widow). The science is very thin, a surface covering of descriptions without scientific depth. For example, she repeatedly mentions that the spectra of stars reflect their chemical composition, and mentions hydrogen or helium or sodium lines, by doesn't even make an attempt to explain why the different elements give rise to the lines they do or how the elements are inferred from their spectra. For me, the book was without any building tension, without excitement, without scientific depth, and, amazingly, without conveying the personalities of the women. They are cardboard figures, unknown to the reader, much as was Galileo's daughter in the eponymous book. I won't read Dava Sobel again.

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