Henrietta Swan Leavitt: Human Computer

Alright, calling Henrietta a "human computer" in the subject line might be deemed as deliberately misleading my readers. She wasn't a "human computer," as in an android or a robot of some kind, or even with the brain of a computer, like The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes (and I'm referring to the original, and best movie, not the remake!).

She was called a computer because she did computations, in a time when mechanical and electronic calculators were not readily available. Today, she's also termed an astronomer, although that's not how she was viewed at the observatory where she worked.

Henrietta was born on July 4, 1868 and died on December 12, 1921, at the age of only 53.

Henrietta graduated from Radcliffe College, a woman's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating, she went to work in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory, as a computer, earning $10.50-a-week. (Not that that was bad money in 1893!)

This was considered a menial job, although it was an extremely important one. She, along with several other women assistants, were assigned to count images on photographic plates, taken over long periods of time. By comparing plate after plate, any objects that moved could be found -- planets, comets, and so on.

Leavitt displayed such aptitude for the work that she was soon placed in charge of the other computers, and she started assessing and making her own conclusions about the data.

Henrietta's study of the plates led her to propound a groundbreaking theory, that was the basis for the pivotal work of her boss, astronomer Edwin Hubble. Leavitt's discovery of the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables radically changed the theory of modern astronomy. Hubble received the credit for this, of course --as is usually the case for any assistant who provides the information that the "name" scientist uses to come up with this theories. (However, Hubble did give her credit and point out that she should have won the Nobel prize for her work. Unfortunately, she died from cancer before she could even be nominated.

We can never know what Leavitt might not have accomplished if she'd been in good health. But constant illness sidelined her from time to time at the observatory, and she eventually passed away.