Miss Leavitt's Stars

When I saw Eva at A Striped Armchair's post* about George Johnson's Miss Leavitt's Stars, I decided to add it to my TBR list. Then the Women Unbound Challenge came up and I decided I'd start the challenge with this little biography of sorts. I'm glad I did. It was a quick read and while there was way more science than biography, it was really fascinating to see how one woman's observations made such an impact on what we know about the universe.

Henrietta Leavitt was one of the women hired to work as a "computer" for the observatory at Harvard in the 1900s. She spent countless hours determining the brightness and color of stars, which from the sound of it was fairly tedious work. She made a discovery about variable stars which allowed her director to begin measuring how far those stars were. Later, her discovery made it possible to measure the size of the universe.

Her dedication to her work even as she suffered from various illnesses was inspiring. At times, she had to take a break from working but she never seemed to stop thinking about her variable stars. It was less of a job and more of a passion for her and that's so awesome.

I suppose my only complaint is that I wish there was more about Leavitt. I did love learning about the impact her work made though. Overall, I really liked it. Enough that when I saw that this is part of a series of books about scientific discoveries that have greatly impacted society, I added all of them to my TBR list. They're all by different authors, so it'll add a bunch of new authors for me. The link to the Great Discoveries series is here.

*Eva's thoughts are here.