Dava Sobel.
The Glass Universe: the hidden history of the women who took the measure of the stars.
Fourth Estate. 2016
Before they even had the right to vote, a
group of remarkable women were employed
by Harvard College Observatory as ‘human
computers’. In the glass photographic
plates made by their male counterparts,
the women made extraordinary discoveries
about the night sky: they discerned what
stars were made of and measured distances
across space using starlight.
The author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter and The Planets illuminates the hidden history of these incredible women who changed the burgeoning field of astronomy, our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.