Florence Cushman

Florence Cushman (1860-1940) was an American astronomer specializing in stellar classification at the Harvard College Observatory who worked on the Henry Draper Catalogue.

Life
The Harvard Computers and Edward Charles Pickering, Harvard College Observatory, May 1913. Back row (L to R): Margaret Harwood, Mollie O'Reilly, Edward C. Pickering, Edith Gill, Annie Jump Cannon, Evelyn Lland, Florence Cushman, Marion Whyte, Grace Brooks. Front row: Arville Walker, possibly Johanna Mackie, Alta Carpenter, Mabel Gill, Ida Woods.

Florence was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1860 and received her early education at Charlestown High School, where she graduated in 1877. In 1888, she began work at the Harvard College Observatory as an employee of Edward Pickering. Florence was one of the "Harvard Computers"[1] who worked under Pickering and, following his death in 1919, Annie Jump Cannon.[2] Her classifications of stellar spectra contributed to Henry Draper Catalogue between 1918 and 1934.[3] She stayed as an astronomer at the Observatory until 1937 and died in 1940 at the age of 80.[4]

Career at the Harvard College Observatory

Florence Cushman worked at the Harvard College Observatory from 1918 to 1937.[5] Over the course of her nearly fifty-year career, she employed the objective prism method to analyze, classify, and catalog the optical spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars. In the 19th century, the photographic revolution enabled more detailed analysis of the night sky than had been possible with solely eye-based observations. In order to obtain optical spectra for measurement, male astronomers at the Observatory exposed glass photographic plates on which the astronomical images were captured at night.

During the daytime, female assistants like Florence analyzed the resultant spectra by reducing values, computing magnitudes, and cataloging their findings.[6][7] She is credited with determining the positions and magnitudes of the stars listed in the 1918 edition of the Henry Draper Catalogue,[8] which featured the spectra of roughly 222,000 stars. In describing the dedication and efficiency with which the Harvard Computers, including Florence, undertook this effort, Edward Pickering said, "a loss of one minute in the reduction of each estimate would delay the publication of the entire work by the equivalent of the time of one assistant for two years."[9]


See also

References
  1. Hern, Daisy; ez (2019-05-23). "The Famous Women Who Explored Space". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  2. "The Female Astronomers Who Captured the Stars".
  3. Spradley, Joseph (1990). "Women in the Stars". The Physics Teacher. 28 (6): 372–377. Bibcode:1990PhTea..28..372S. doi:10.1119/1.2343078.
  4. Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey (1986). "Cushman, Florence". Women in science : antiquity through the nineteenth century : a biographical dictionary with annotated bibliography (Reprinted ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. p. 181. ISBN 9780262650380.
  5. "The pioneering women who helped us picture the stars". Cosmos Magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  6. "Computers at Work: Astronomical labor at the HCO at the turn of the century".
  7. Vidyasagar, Aparna (2019-11-13). "How One Woman Helped Measure the Universe". KCET. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  8. Cannon, Annie J.; Pickering, Edward C. (1918) "The Henry Draper Catalogue". Annals of Harvard College Observatory.; hours 0 to 3, 91 (1918), Bibcode: 1918AnHar..91....1C; hours 4 to 6, 92 (1918), Bibcode: 1918AnHar..92....1C; hours 7 to 8, 93 (1919), Bibcode: 1919AnHar..93....1C; hours 9 to 11, 94 (1919), Bibcode: 1919AnHar..94....1C; hours 12 to 14, 95 (1920), Bibcode: 1920AnHar..95....1C; hours 15 to 16, 96 (1921), Bibcode: 1921AnHar..96....1C; hours 17 to 18, 97 (1922), Bibcode: 1922AnHar..97....1C; hours 19 to 20, 98 (1923), Bibcode: 1923AnHar..98....1C; hours 21 to 23, 99 (1924), Bibcode: 1924AnHar..99....1C.
  9. Dava, Sobel. The Glass Universe : How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. New York. ISBN 0143111345. OCLC 972263666.
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