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Maria Mitchell - born on August 1, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts - was a true pioneer woman. But she didn't brave a physical wilderness. Hers was the harder job of pioneering higher education for women. She was the first American woman to discover a comet, the first to be elected to scientific societies, and the first woman professor of astronomy.

Maria Mitchell

In her own words, America's first woman professor of astronomy tells of her meetings with the great and good of the nineteenth century. Maria Mitchell's sister Phebe collected excerpts from journals and letters to present a pot pourri of Maria's life, ideas and work.

Maria Mitchell - in Her Own Words

Doodles for Women Astronomers
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Hello Mona,

Greetings to you and some belated, though just as sincere, good New Year wishes to you and yours.

I have been catching up on some reading. Amazing women you are highlighting! One wonders where they store all that knowledge! Just kidding, makes a person realise that we all have the capacity for greatness no matter what we do.

Best wishes for a fabulous 2023!

Cheers

Thank you Lestie, and good 2023 wishes to you too. Nice to see you back again.

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Northern Irish astronomer and mathematician Annie Scott Dill Maunder (née Russell) was born in Strabane, County Tyron on April 14, 1868.

Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1916, she was already a member of the British Astronomical Association (of which her husband was a founder member in 1890). She had been rejected as a fellow 24 years earlier because the RAS didn't accept women until 1916. (Shame!)

Annie took part in five expeditions with her husband Edward Walter Maunder to observe total solar eclipses, these being to Lapland (9 Aug 1896), India (22 Jan 1898, during which event she obtained the longest coronal extension photographed up to that time), Algiers (28 May 1900, which she observed and photographed from the roof of the Hotel de la Régence, Algiers), Mauritius (18 May 1901) and Labrador (30 Aug 1905).

As well as serving two periods as editor of the Journal of the British Astronomical Society (1894-1896 and 1917-1930), she wrote several books in collaboration with her husband Edward Walter Maunder, including ‘The Heavens and Their Story’ (1908). The 54 km diameter lunar crater Maunder, located on the northern shores of Mare Orientale and just beyond the western limb of the Moon, is named in her honour and in honour of Edward Walter Maunder.

Credit: Society for the History of Astronomy

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American Astrophysicist Dr Kim Weaver was born on 19 April 1964 in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Dr Weaver says:

In her 20s, she had already discovered a galaxy and been awarded a PhD for her study of "The Complex Broad-band X-ray Spectra of Seyfert Galaxies". Soon after that she received a Presidential Early Career award to continue her X-ray work on black holes. She has had various jobs, including that of Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters for the Spitzer Space Telescope, Associate Director for Science at NASA's Goddard Flight Center, and more recently, US Project Scientist for XMM-Newton, an X-ray space observatory launched by the European Space Agency.

Dr Weaver says:

And she's not selfish about hoarding the excitement of X-Ray astronomy.

Books like the ones she devoured as a child make her want to inspire new generations to look to the stars. She has appeared in television programs and films as “the public face of NASA at Goddard,” and has written a popular book The Violent Universe: Joyrides Through the X-Ray Cosmos.
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Samantha Cristoforetti, born in Milan, Italy on April 26, 1977, is a standout even among extraordinary people. She's a seasoned astronaut and was a captain in the Italian Air Force. In 2022 she was the commander of Expedition 68 to the International Space Station, and has gone into space for four additional missions.

Cristoforetti graduated in 2001 from the Technical University Munich, Germany, having earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering with specialisations in aerospace propulsion and lightweight structures. As part of her degree studies, she also spent time at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France, working on an experimental project in aerodynamics. Her degree thesis was in solid rocket propellants which she wrote in a 10-month research stay at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technologies in Moscow, Russia.

After graduation, Cristoforetti joined the Italian Air Force. She was admitted to the Air Force Academy as an officer candidate and served as class leader for four years. As part of the training, she completed a bachelor's degree in aeronautical sciences at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. Following graduation, she attended the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program in the USA where she earned her fighter pilot wings. She logged over 500 hours, flying six types of military aircraft.

In 2017, together with fellow ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, she took part in a sea survival exercise organised by the Astronaut Center of China in the Yellow Sea. This was the first joint training of Chinese and non-Chinese astronauts in China. In 2019 Samantha served as commander for NASA’s 23rd Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO23) mission on a 10-day stay in the world’s only undersea research station, Aquarius.

Although Cristoforetti has a passion for science and technology, she is also an avid reader with in interest in humanities. She, of course, speaks Italian, but also speaks English, German, French, Russian and Chinese. Her husband is an astronaut trainer and they have two children.

[Source: European Space Agency]

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Katherine J. Mack, popularly known as Katie Mack, was born 1 May 1981. She is a theoretical cosmologist, writer and science communicator. Captivated by science as a child, she built solar-powered cars out of Lego, and was encouraged by her mother to watch Star Trek and Star Wars. Mack's grandfather worked on the Apollo 11 mission.

So, no surprise when she went to study at Cal Tech in southern California. She got a degree in physics and then went on to a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton University. Postdoctoral work followed as a research fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge in England. In 2012, Mack was a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia. And she was involved with the construction of the dark matter detector SABRE.

She had held posts at the University of North Carolina, but In June 2022 she joins the Perimeter Institute in Canada as the inaugural Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication. The institute's director said, “Her unique talents will allow her to make important contributions in all facets of Perimeter – not only as a terrific researcher, but also as a gifted science communicator who builds bridges between scientists and the wider world.”

Mack’s research concerns the physics of the universe from beginning to end, including topics such as dark matter, black holes, fast radio bursts, and the formation of the first galaxies. But in addition, throughout her career, she has also placed an emphasis on sharing science with the broader public. As @AstroKatie, she has amassed a following of more than 400,000 on Twitter. Her popular writing has appeared in major publications including Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, and Cosmos. She's also interested in the intersection of art, poetry and science.

In 2020, she released her first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which examines five ways the universe could end and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology. It was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, among many other accolades, and continues a storied tradition of science communication of which Hawking himself is perhaps the most known example.

She popularly goes by the name Katie Mack. In an online discussion, a man unwisely suggested to her that she should learn some "actual SCIENCE". Her many fans were amused by her response: “I dunno, man, I already went and got a PhD in astrophysics. Seems like more than that would be overkill at this point”.

[Sources: Wikipedia, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics]

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Cecilia Payne - known later as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin - was born in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, England on May 10, 1900. She studied at Cambridge University where she became interested in astronomy and was encouraged and assisted by Arthur Eddington. Although she fulfilled the requirements for a degree, the university didn't award degrees to women then. However, she was able to get a scholarship to Harvard College Observatory in the USA. Her research included many years of working with variable stars and novae, her efforts adding greatly to our understanding of the nature of these objects. Her thesis, published in 1925 as 'Stellar Atmospheres' and since described as '. . . the best Ph.D. thesis in astronomy ever written', resulted in her becoming the first recipient of a Ph.D. from Harvard College Observatory.

Payne-Gaposchkin spent her entire academic career at Harvard, and in 1956 was promoted to the position of full professor by Donald Menzel, the Director of the Harvard College Observatory. This was followed by her appointment to the Chair of the Department of Astronomy, her students including many individuals who were destined to play important roles in astronomy, including Helen Sawyer Hogg, Joseph Ashbrook and Frank Drake. The minor planet 2039 Payne-Gaposchkin, discovered on 14 Feb 1974 by astronomers at the Agassiz Station of the Harvard College Observatory in Massachusetts, USA, is named in her honour.

[Society for the History of Astronomy]

More about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

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In the late 19th century, Harvard College Observatory was one of the world's top observatories. This was due to the vision, commitment and organizing skills of its director Edward Pickering. But his vision was realized through the hard work and dedication of a team of women assistants sometimes dismissively called Pickering's harem. One of the women was Williamina (Mina) Fleming, who began as a housekeeper and ended her career as an astronomer of international repute.

Williamina Paton Stevens was born in Dundee, Scotland on May 15, 1857. Here is more about the life of Williamina Fleming.

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Achievements may be honored with prizes and medals, but few get represented as children's toys. However Lego responded to a proposal to showcase women in space and astronomy by making a Lego set representing four such women and their major contributions. Who were these women? One of them was American astronomer Nancy Grace Roman who was born on May 16, 1925 in Nashville, Tennessee.
NASA Women in Lego

Roman was a noted American astronomer who made important contributions to stellar classification and motions, and became the first female executive at NASA, and served as NASA's first Chief of Astronomy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, establishing her as one of the "visionary founders of the US civilian space program". She created NASA's space astronomy program and is known to many as the "Mother of Hubble" for her foundational role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. Throughout her career, Roman was also an active public speaker and educator, and an advocate for women in the sciences. [Wikipedia]