From Powells.com
Staff Pick
With clarity, elegance, and zeal, Dava Sobel pays homage to the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cataloging and discovering stars, advancing theories, and creating new methods of classification. The Glass Universe is a fascinating tribute to some long-overlooked stars of science. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the captivating, little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy.
"Sensitive, exacting, and lit with the wonder of discovery." Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or human computers, to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon 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 from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.
The glass universe of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in 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 ten novae and more than three hundred 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, 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 the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.
Review
"This is intellectual history at its finest. Dava Sobel is extraordinarily accomplished at uncovering the hidden stories of science." Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Chord and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March
Review
"Sobel knows how to tell an engaging story…. With grace, clarity, and a flair for characterization, [she] places these early women astronomers in the wider historical context of their field for the very first time." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"[Sobel] soars higher than ever before…[continuing] her streak of luminous science writing with this fascinating, witty, and most elegant history…The Glass Universe is a feast for those eager to absorb forgotten stories of resolute American women who expanded human knowledge." Booklist (Starred Review)
About the Author
Dava Sobel, a former New York Times science reporter, is the author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, and Letters to Father. In her thirty years as a science journalist, she has written for many magazines, and coauthored six books, including Is Anyone Out There? with astronomer Frank Drake and The Illustrated Longitude with William J. H. Andrews. Sobel has been awarded the National Science Board’s prestigious Individual Public Service Award, the Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science, and the Harrison Medal from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.