Harvard College Observatory astronomical notebook kept by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, 1912-1919

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Harvard College Observatory astronomical notebook kept by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, 1912-1919

http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990019713370203941/catalog

The notebook, kept by Harvard College Observatory astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt, is a handwritten research notebook containing her astronomical notes from 1912 to 1919. It has 56 pages of chronological notes, dating from August 1912 to September 1919, with most of the entries from 1912 to 1916. The notebook contains research plans, comments, progresses, measurements, discoveries, calculations, and some notes for assistants. The topics of the notebook include variables, the relationship between brightness and period of variables, Cepheid variables, Magellanic Clouds, and photographic plates.

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Harvard University Archives.

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SNAC Resource ID: 8184022

Harvard University Archives.

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Harvard College Observatory

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In 1839, the Harvard Corporation appointed William Cranch Bond the first Astronomical Observer to the University, thereby taking the first step in establishing the Harvard College Observatory, after which the first telescope was installed in 1847. Scholars and students had studied astronomy at Harvard since the seventeenth century, but it wasn’t until a large comet sparked public interest in 1843 that donors began donating funds to build an observatory. During the tenure of the Harvar...

Harvard University

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Harvard College was founded by a vote of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts on October 28, 1636 that allocated “400£ towards a schoale or colledge.” Subsequent legislative acts established the Board of Overseers, but it was the Charter of 1650 that created the Harvard Corporation as the College's primary governing board and defined its composition and authority. The College Charter became a contentious target for College officials, the Massachusetts Governor and General C...

Leavitt, Henrietta Swan, 1868-1921

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Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts on July 4, 1868. Leavitt attended Oberlin College for two years before transferring to Harvard University's Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women (later Radcliffe College), where she received a bachelor's degree in 1892. She worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a human computer, tasked with measuring photographic plates to catalog the positions and brightness of stars. This work led her to discover the relation between...