Williamina Fleming

In 1837 chemist and educator Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke College. It was the first of what came to be known as the “Seven Sisters,” colleges that historically provided higher education to women – including Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Radcliffe, and Mt. Holyoke. These East Coast colleges were considered the women’s equivalent to the Ivy League. Many of the women who worked at the Harvard Observatory were educated at these colleges. 

[Image courtesy of Vassar College Archives]

Williamina Paton Fleming was born on May 15, 1857, in Dundee, Scotland.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

Maria Michell, known as American’s first woman astronomer, was one of the first professors hired at Vassar Female College. She was appointed to teach astronomy and as the director of the Vassar Observatory.

[Image Vassar Library Special Collections]

In 1877, Edward Pickering was appointed director of Harvard College observatory.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

In 1878, Fleming and her husband emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. Most sources say her husband abandoned her soon after they arrived in America, leaving Fleming pregnant and alone in a new country.

[Image Courtesy of Boston Public Library]

To support herself and her unborn child, Fleming took a position as a maid at the residence of Edward Charles Pickering, Director of the Harvard Observatory. Pickering, recognizing her intelligence, soon moved Fleming into the Observatory to do part-time clerical and computing work, analyzing glass photographic plates of the stars, the central work of the Observatory at this time. Soon thereafter, the impending birth of her child sent Fleming back to Scotland where she remained for over a year. When she returned to Boston, she left her son, Edward Charles Pickering Fleming, in the care of her mother and grandmother. Edward later joined his mother in Massachusetts and eventually went on to study at MIT.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

Upon Fleming’s return to the United States in 1881, Pickering hired her to be a member of the Observatory’s permanent staff.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

Throughout the 1880’s, Fleming personally classified some 10,000 stars for the new Catalogue of Stars which Pickering published in 1890.

[Image Courtesy of Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics]

In 1893, Fleming published an article in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics called “A Field for Women’s Work in Astronomy,” advocating for more women to work in the sciences. 

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

In 1895, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Annie Jump Cannon were both selected to work unpaid internships at the Observatory. Leavitt and Cannon, who like Fleming, were employed by Pickering as women ‘computers’ to calculate the positions of stars, went on to become some of the most notable names in the Observatory’s history. While Fleming had no formal higher education, many of her colleagues, like Leavitt and Cannon, were graduates of the newly opened women’s colleges, including prestigious schools like Wellesley.

[Image Courtesy of Getty]

In 1899, after almost 20 years at the Observatory, Fleming was promoted to Curator of Astronomical Photographs — the first woman ever to hold a Harvard University title. In this role, Fleming became the supervisor of about 15 other women.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

In her diary, Fleming described that she and the women computers in Pickering’s Observatory worked six days a week and earned far less than men doing comparable work. Despite her advocacy, Fleming was unable to convince Pickering that the women should receive higher pay. Fleming also stated how much she valued her work. You can access her diary here. 

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

Fleming received American citizenship.

[Image courtesy of Ancestry.com]

Fleming died of pneumonia on May 21, 1911, at the age of 54. In her 30-year career, Fleming discovered 10 novae, 310 variable stars, and 59 gaseous nebulae — including the iconic Horsehead Nebula. She also recognized the existence of earth-sized stars later named white dwarfs. Fleming was a single mother, who lived independently, and successfully put her son through college at the turn of the 20th century.

[Image courtesy of Nasa]

In 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting suffrage to women in the United States. The issue of equal pay which Fleming fought for, still has not been fully achieved.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives]

In 2005, Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) began digitizing Harvard’s massive collection of photographic plates, including those studied by Fleming and the Harvard Observatory’s other women computers, and using computerized algorithms to find and store all the data hidden in them. The initiative,  a project of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is ongoing, and is making the photographic information  which Fleming and her colleagues discovered and studied available to astronomers everywhere.

[Image courtesy of Harvard University]