Talk:Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Nobel nomination

The ACS Bio states that "Professor Mittag-Leffler of the Swedish Academy of Sciences sent her a letter in 1925, declaring his intent to nominate her for the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year for her role..." [my emphasis]

The claim that he "considered" her and that Shapley claimed 'interpretating' her results is supported by a non-English-language citation. (I.E. I can't read it.) This question deserves resolving. I've added '1926' to the awards section but found no further resolution.
It further occurs to me that Shapley may have made the post-mortem claim in hopes that Harvard would reap a Nobel. Excuseable, perhaps. Twang (talk) 08:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

quote: women were not allowed to operate telescopes

I'm not sure about this. The main reason she was not operating the telescope is that the Cepheids she was most interested in were in the Magellanic Clouds, which are southern hemisphere objects. I.e. she was in the US and the telescope was in Chile.

There is also the fact that there are examples of earlier women astronomers who did operate telescopes, Caroline Herschel for example.

She deserves much more exposure. I'm happy someone took the time to create the entry for her. But I'd like to see a better reference, and perhaps more detail for the "women were not allowed to operate telescopes" quote.J8h (talk) 20:03, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with all that you say, editor J8h. Perhaps the restriction was only for the women at her institution? I'm sure you're looking for more info, and when time allows I shall help in the search for better references. For example, the ACS bio mentioned in the previous comment is now a dead link and needs to be resolved. I checked the ACS website to see if the page had been moved, but evidently they have rm'd the bio. I would love to find her bio on the internet, the one mentioned in the article by George Johnson, and am still searching.

As for the entry, Leavitt certainly deserves as much exposure as possible. I consider her the "Mother of Modern Astronomy" since it was she who made the discovery that led to the realization that the Milky Way galaxy is not the entire Universe— that there are billions of other galaxies outside the Milky Way. She's a remarkable historical figure and I shall pay more attention to this article's improvement.

 —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  17:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

• Follow up. Found some pages out of Johnson's book, and on page 28 was Bailey's obit quote, so I rm'd the deadlink and replaced it with the new source.

 —  Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  08:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Glad you were able to locate a source for that. I think Johnson's book is quite good overall. MarmadukePercy (talk) 09:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I want to get a copy and devour it! Thank you for taking the time to comment and Happiest of holidays to you and yours!

 —  Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  16:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The ref. given, number 4, seems to say nothing about the ban on operating telescopes.

Cat:Women in technology

This is a newly created cat by 28bytes on 17 February 2011.  — Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  06:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)