BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Astro Women - Birthdays

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Elizabeth “Pat” Roemer was born in Oakland, California on September 4, 1929. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in astronomy, and followed that with a Ph.D. in 1955. To finance her tuition she taught classes at local public schools.

After completing her degree, she worked as an assistant astronomer at the University of Chicago, researching at their Yerkes Observatory. Her next job was as an astronomer at the US Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Then in 1966 Roemer was hired by the University of Arizona as an associate professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Three years later she was promoted to full professor. Though remaining as a faculty member there, in 1980 also became an astronomer at Steward Observatory in Tucson.

Roemer's special expertise was the detection of comets, though she also discovered the two main-belt asteroids. In addition, during her career she detected 79 returning short period comets and computed many orbits for comets and minor planets. Over a period of 25 years, she took an extensive set of photographic plates of comets, attempting to get consistent data for the magnitudes of comet nuclei. Her observations led to numerous significant cometary discoveries. Besides her research, Roemer served in astronomical commissions and organizations. She also received numerous awards for her groundbreaking work in astronomy.

[Credit: Lowell Observer, Wikipedia]
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American astrophysicist Jacqueline Hewitt was born on September 4, 1958 in Washington, D.C. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring.

Interestingly, when Hewitt graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College, it was with a degree in economics. However she had become interested in astronomy and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for her graduate studies. She began to study gravitational lensing using the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, a very large radio telescope.

After completing her Ph.D, she was made postdoctoral fellow at MIT. While analyzing data from her graduate studies, she made an astounding discovery. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring. Einstein had said that a massive object – like a galaxy, for example – could bend the light from another object, behaving like a lens.

Hewitt is currently the Julius A. Stratton Professor in Electrical Engineering and Physics at MIT. She's also received several fellowships and awards as well as being elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.

In addition to her research interests, Hewitt is interested in the development of new instrumentation and techniques for radio astronomy. And she's part of a collaboration of U.S., Australian, Indian, and New Zealand universities and research institutions that is building the Murchison Widefield Array in radio-quiet Western Australia.

[Sources: Wikipedia, MIT]
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American astronomer Anna Winlock was born on September 15, 1857 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Joseph Winlock, was an astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory. He influenced her interest in astronomy, and in addition, she turned out to be an able mathematician.

When Joseph Winlock died the family needed financial support, so Anna went to the observatory. Her father had volumes of observations, but they were of no use until the data was reduced. Since her father had taught her the principles of mathematical astronomy, she offered to do the reductions. The observatory realized they were on to a good deal. They could get the work done and at a bargain rate. They only paid her - being a woman - half the rate they would have to pay a man. Anna was one of the first “Harvard computers” but there would be further highly competent, but lowly paid, women to follow.

Five years earlier, under the direction of Joseph Winlock, the observatory collaborated with foreign observatories in a project to prepare a comprehensive star catalog. It was divided into zones, and Anna began to work on the section called the "Cambridge Zone" shortly after being hired. Working over twenty years on the project, her team's contribution of the Cambridge Zone was significant to the Astronomische Gesellschaft Katalog. The catalog contains information on more than one-hundred thousand stars, and is used worldwide by many observatories and their researchers. Besides her work on the Cambridge Zone, Anna also contributed to many independent projects. And she supervised the creation of the Observatory Annals (a collection of tables that provide the positions of variable stars in clusters) into 38 volumes.

[Source: Wikipedia]
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Sophia Brahe was born around September 22, 1556 at Knudstrup, Sweden (which was at the time was still Danish). She was the younger sister of Tycho Brahe. Coming from a noble family, both were ostracized for their scientific pursuits which were deemed inappropriate, especially for a noblewomen.

Sophia was a horticulturalist, but also educated in classical literature and chemistry. She was self-educated in astronomy, and frequently assisted her brother with his astronomical observations at his observatory Uraniborg. On one occasion she helped with the observations Tycho used to compute the total lunar eclipse of 8 December 1573.
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Russian Astronomer Pelageya Fedorovna Shajn, née Sannikova, was born September 22, 1894 to a peasant family in the village Ostanin located in the Solikamsky District of the Perm Governorate on the European slopes of the Ural mountains.

I wasn't able to find out what her young life was like or how she became educated in science and able to get a job at the Simeiz Observatory on the Crimean peninsula. But in 1928 she became the first woman ever to discover a minor planet – the asteroid 1112 Polonia. She went on to discover 19 minor planets and 140 variable stars, and was the co-discoverer of comet 61P/Shajn-Schaldach.

Pelageya married her colleague at the observatory, Grigory Shajn, who was a prominent Soviet scientist. After WWII he become the director of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. One of the minor planets discovered by Pelageya was named 1648 Shajna in honor of her and her husband.
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French astronomer Odette Bancilhon was born on 22 September 1908. She had a science degree and served as a meteorological assistant in Algiers for a year beginning in 1932. She was later appointed to replace Alfred Schmitt while he did his military service. During this time she discovered 1333 Cevenola, a main belt asteroid.

In 1937 she was appointed as an assistant in the observatory. She married Alfred Schmitt in 1942, and in 1950 they were transferred to the Strasbourg Observatory in France. In 1956 they went to the Quito Observatory in Ecuador, Odette working there as an assistant and Alfred as observatory director. Odette retired in 1964.

Odette has a distinction given to few people, a main-belt asteroid named in her honor. In 1951 a former colleague at the Algiers Observatory, Louis Boyer, named his discovery 1713 Bancilhon in her honor.
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Mae Jemison, born on October 17, 1956 is an extraordinarily talented woman.

As a NASA astronaut, she was the first African American woman in space. Before her time with NASA she had entered Stanford University at the age of 16 and four years later had degrees both in chemical engineering and African American studies. Jemison then went to Cornell University to complete a medical degree, following it up with some time as a general practitioner and then a medical officer with the Peace Corps in West Africa.

After leaving NASA, among her other accomplishments, she was for several years a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth Collge and the director of the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries. She continues to advocate science education and encourage minority students.

Jemison is also a trained dancer and in this video The Cosmic Dance she explains why she thinks dance was helpful for her as an astronaut.
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Henrietta Hill Swope was born on October 26, 1902 in St
Louis, Missouri, USA. She got her master's degree in astronomy while working with Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory.

Swopes's most important work was on variable stars, in particular Cepheid variables. Careful measurements of the variability of these stars made it possible to determine their distance. (This understanding was based on the work of Henrietta Leavitt who had previously worked at the Harvard College Observatory.)

In 1952, Swope went to California to work with Walter Baade on the variable stars detected by the new 200-inch Hale Telescope at Mount Palomar. It was owned by the Carnegie Institution. The largest telescope in the world (at that time) made it possible to use variable stars in other galaxies to determine their distances. She spent the rest of her career working there.

Retirement didn't end her contributions to astronomy. She had family money, and donated a large sum to the Carnegie Institution to develop optical astronomy facilities in the southern hemisphere. The Swope Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile is still in use. When she died, she left most of her estate to support Las Campanas.
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American astronomer Eleanor Frances “Glo” Helin was born on November 19, 1932. For over thirty years, she pursued astronomy and planetary science, first at the California Institute of Technology and then NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In this photo Eleanor Helin is holding the discovery announcement of near-Earth asteroid 2100 Ra-Shalom, which she discovered.

At Cal Tech she worked with Bruce Murray to start the Lunar Research Lab to study the Moon in preparation for lunar landings. From lunar craters, she went on to initiate an asteroid survey from Palomar Observatory. The program discovered thousands of asteroids plus a number of comets. Of particular interest to her were near-Earth asteroids. Having moved on to work at JPL, during the 1980s she encouraged global interest in asteroids and organized the International Near-Earth Asteroid Survey.

After 25 years of the Palomar survey, she went for upgraded technology in her Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT). It operated from JPL from 1997-2007, and it was the first automated observing program. As the principal investigator she was given the JPL Award for Excellence and her team received a Group Achievement Award from NASA.

Helin herself is credited with the discovery or co-discovery of nearly 900 asteroids plus several comets.
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Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a shuttle, was born on November 19, 1956.

In addition to being an Air Force test pilot and flight instructor, she has degrees from four different universities. This includes two masters degrees, one in operations research and one in space systems management. Collins was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1990. She flew four shuttle missions, including one that involved a docking with Russia's Mir space station.
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