Williamina Fleming: Talented educator and honored Harvard astronomer. Photo credit: Astronomical Photographs at Harvard College Observatory.
I love to share stories about educators who have earned accolades for their work in scientific fields. Williamina Fleming, an immigrant from Dundee, Scotland, was one such educator.
Born on May 15, 1857, Williamina immigrated to the United States with her husband. The couple landed in Boston, Massachusetts. She was in her early 20’s and pregnant when her husband abandoned her. After her son was born, Williamina was forced to find a way to support herself and her baby on her own. She took a job as a housekeeper in the home of Edward Charles Pickering, who happened to be the Director of Harvard College Observatory.
One day, Williamina’s employer became frustrated with the men he employed. In the heat of the moment, he yelled out, “My Scottish maid could do better!” While said in jest, there was a great deal of truth to his utterance. Williamina had been an advanced student while in Scotland. There she had been a pupil-teacher by the time she was 14 years old. She continued to teach for five years until she married.
In 1881, recognizing his housekeeper’s outstanding scholastic abilities, Pickering hired Williamina to be the first of what would become a famous group of Harvard Computers. All women, they studied the stars through glass plate photographs. A few years later, Williamina became curator of astronomical photographs. This role came with the responsibility of managing a dozen women computers.
While working at the observator, the former teacher devised and helped implement a system of assigning stars a letter according to how much hydrogen could be observed in their spectra. Her most notable achievement, however, is her discovery of the Horsehead Nebula in 1888.
Williamina went on to discover many stars and receive numerous awards and honors. She became a member of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America, the Astronomical Society of France, and an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London. The Astronomical society of Mexico honored her with the Guadalupe Almendaro Medal. She was also named an Honorary fellow in astronomy at Wellesley College.
Williamina passed away from pneumonia in Boston on May 11, 1911, at the young age of 54.
Read more about this amazing teacher at ScientificWomen.net.
