10 Women Who Changed Science and the World by Catherine Whitlock

Author:Catherine Whitlock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2019-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

6

Henrietta Leavitt

(1868–1921)

Royal Astronomical Society/Science Photo Library

Henrietta Leavitt was an American with an influence that made her a star among astronomers. She discovered a way of ranking stars’ magnitudes using photographic plates, which became a standard in the field. Henrietta also developed a method by which astronomers can accurately measure extragalactic distances known as the period-luminosity relation. This enabled her to determine the distance to stars that are so far enough away that we can learn about the scale of our universe from them. So important was this work that, in 1923, it enabled Edwin Hubble to show that the great Andromeda Nebula, Messier 31, was much too far away to be part of our galaxy.

Henrietta was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1926, but sadly she died five years earlier at the age of just fifty-three, so could not be considered for it as the Nobel Prize is never awarded posthumously. Although she received very little recognition during her lifetime, a fellow astronomer subsequently described her as a “star fiend.” Since her death, her contribution to twentieth-century astronomy has been more widely recognized: the crater Leavitt on the Moon is named in her honor, as is the asteroid 5383 Leavitt.

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