i learned that in the 1880s, the Harvard Observatory director was frustrated with his staff, and would say โMy Scottish maid could do better!โ So, he hired his Scottish maid. Williamina Fleming ran a team for decades, classified tens of thousands of stars, & discovered white dwarfs and the Horsehead Nebula (x)
โShe became one of the founding members of theย Harvard Computers, an all-women cadre ofย human computersย hired by Pickering to compute mathematical classifications and edit the observatoryโs publications.
The group included Harvard computer and astronomerย Henrietta Swan Leavitt,ย Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming, andย Antonia Maury.โ
Finally, a grumpy old man who put his money where his mouth was

























