I just realized we did not do a sound check. I love doing book events. We need to keep books alive but thanks to the Simon Foundation for supporting all of our initiatives here and it is with our support to give a shout out and before we introduce our guests the amateur Astronomer Association of new york will be out. And will have the telescope out but the claim is the clouds will clear almost as we finish the last question. And we will do a little q a. I am sure you have heard of our guest. As a bestselling author in superb writer you said your son asked you what you were working on. He said nobody will read that. And of course galileos daughter was a popular book and more so to be knowledge with the Pulitzer Prize nomination is quite an honor. And with that Harvard College observatory. [applause] also as an assistant professor. And to the synchronicity and in their very different perspectives one as an artist do you mind being called a historian . I brought a terrible thing. I did not bring my clicker so can you advance the slides or can somebody get my clicker in my bag on the second floor . [laughter] we are rough around the edges. Go back to the first slide. So tonight conversation is so named because hundreds of thousands, 500,000 that women of the Harvard College observatory uses the innovative technique but of course sociologically before we have the right to vote. But this gaggle of women allegedly and they are so disgusted with the computers that my maid could do better job. And the scottish may did a fine job. Part of the real story is he also had a scottish made would work for him on the residence side. A pregnant woman no longer with her husband she was abandoned by her husband immediately to realize she was too intelligent to be working as a maid or domestic servants and we moved her to the observatory to gave her some computing work and then went on to become the first woman at harvard to have University Title so it depends on how you count. 1879. Only two years. Then she had to go home to have the baby then come back. 1881 is the year. Ms. Fleming. This was taken before but she is no longer there. She has died but but to start at the observatory in 1896. Next to the globe looking down to become for their classification when you learn the types of stars with the characteristics of the stars but also the woman sitting at the drafting table. But she was the first president. They were all graduate students were women. To already die with the education program. And those that paid for the research and also paid to establish fellowships for young women to come work at the observatory for one year. Then they can go somewhere else. It is amazing so do you mean the first woman . So do you strongly club did not exist and the expansion was to include men . And then to oversee the very first male phd candidate. And then without assistance. With mathematicians or astronomers. So lets go to the next light. Who . So ms. Fleming the one we are talking about first. So that greatest expansion so ms. Draper decided to do a serious project with her husband and he died so to be that independently wealthy woman to carry out the Research Program to have it named for her husband. But pickering was 30 years old in this picture when he took over the observatory. Why are they hiring a physicist to run the observatory . It is interesting because i was moved by this in a compromised position to be a maid. So i dont think he could hypothesize about women be breaking boundaries without any hesitation. And then send the results for publication. By also looking at this history . Also encouraging women to publish under their own name. If you were a computer at the observatory were part of the Bigger Picture or research but whenever discoveries were made and what they were publishing each year. So with that social burden he had severe limitations. And i am quoting from some of your books women with a knack for figures could be accommodated when they give credit to the profession. But he prefaces that to say, while it would be unseemly conceded the cold and winter of telescope computing then he talks about the computers he could not conceive of the operating the scopes. But she was the first to use the telescope she was the first to use the telescope. That he saw them to be valuable but also did not financially value them as much tonight as a part of his story. And those who are getting out the rise of womens colleges. I actually have the numbers with 25 cents an hour . But in your book you used if you take that times 285 to get the current amount that is like 6. 16 per hour but the males came at 1500 per year not scaling up for inflation for inflation completely in support and then to fire a complaint about that. But she keeps a diary. And names her son after him as well. Thats right. She goes back to scotland to have his baby out of wedlock. That is pretty significant how much she admired him. And then to be devoted in a lot of ways. They were a collegial group working in close quarters days a week and socialize on saturday night. That is tough. It has to be understandable it was toilsome. Truly toilsome. Working insane hours and a good deal of tedium involved. You get the sense that they are fatigued at times but never ungrateful or resentful. No. We are aware they were in groundbreaking research. Including pickering that science was more important and these other things socially and and one that i felt from reading your history is that it made no sense to be concerned about anything else that yet seems to think no not one additional amount of work is too much no matter the hours. If i raise the question of salary he says do i have a home to keep or family to take care of as well as the men . If they have no claims to such comfort this is the enlightened age she says. This is rich in before the women had the right to vote. But what was very interesting this is a crucial point. We still live with unequal gender pay. And also she starts to feel her were must not be of value not paid equally. I was so focused on the archives and visual i was drawn to the scrapbooks that is cut out of the current newspapers. And out of the archives. But the story flips very quickly that it is that understanding material of newspaper clippings with the recognition but at the same time but then the president of harvard refuses to give for that title. Though the new president. So she is known worldwide and has set the classification system used today but but is not even recognizing the brilliant scientist within the corral at harvard. And to be visually recruited. Im sorry i dont have any of those pictures. The next slide . But to speak around the observation the reporter writing things down. What think of using emulsion and but pickerings genius genius was to create this archive that still exist half a million gas class plates are in the building that was constructed specifically to hold them all and keep him safe from fire. He was very afraid of what woul would. Things used to burn down a lot in colonial times. [laughter] it is a lot of what. But to observe being through the telescope you would collect a record over hours and stars would show up that could not be seen by di in the telescope then you daddy a series of photographs how the stars changed over time. That is why they needed so many women. So what is amazing so 100 years ago at the sky itself. This is still very relevant imagery with the birth of photography itself with the first images of the sky. But it is relevant now. It pays to look back at the harvard record. So what came out of that so those little tiny strips are the spectra of all the stars and there is a prison over the telescope so you see the lights spread out into the component colors. So to see the lines in the spectra and then to decipher the chemicals but i cannot remember which of the women made the discovery which was the abundance of hydrogen. So we dont think of hydrogen as being overwhelmingly abundant to have your elements and spew that back out into the universe. Second or Third Generation material but with that original stuff she did not think about the big bang but it is mostly just hydrogen you cannot make carbon and oxygen until you make the stars. It was a deep discovery. But the composition of the stars so with the idea most of the universe tested of those two elements. So to notice in the spectra to say hydrogen is responsible isnt that how a lot of that was done . Its probably a spurious result. She at first thought this is what i observed. Whats interesting is you point out in your book its such a new subject that it was sent so far out there for an astronomer to make a discovery and speculated the same time because everything was just being discovered at that time. Shes absolutely right and it predates einsteins predictions that led to the prediction of the big bang. Im not sure exactly the year. It could have been close. Its pretty close. So its close but is not in the vernacular of everybody. Einstein didnt believe in the big bang. After people derived it from his own theories so its a long time between that and people starting to understand that the universe is very involved in its elementary stuff. Its pretty amazing. This is Henrietta Leavitt who was looking at that magnificent images, who was looking at images taken from south america. This whole sky had to be covered. There was a second observatory built in peru that started in the Southern Hemisphere and she was looking at images of the Magellanic Clouds and to discover 12,000 veritable stars and made a fundamental discovery about the pattern of variation that the stars that took the longest time to go to their cycles would be the brightest stars and she figured all of the star she was looking at were roughly the same distance away so they really were brighter. That observation went to the first usable yardstick for measuring what we would call galactic distances and take distances and her work enabled the milky way to be determined and i may be getting ahead of the slides here. It was not the only galaxy in the universe and the universe consisted of multiple galaxies. Would the fair to say at that time they were sure the universe was just a few hundred thousand lightyears across and that was it. In times and the shape of the universe led to us looking at geometry of spiral galaxies within that geometry. Was good to the next slide. So we have tell me about this. This is a place that Henrietta Swan leavitt was looking at. Most of the places as david said our 8. 5 by 11. Stand by 14, 17. The standard size and different place would fit with different telescopes and hear what she has done that she has overlaid it with a grid. This is a small Magellanic Clouds. In my research that we were working without knowing each other i would go out to the harvard glass plate archives and look for the little initial on the cover of the class play. You can see carefully the curator had made a cheat sheet that had everyones initials and so this is the plates used as source material. Next slide. Next slide please. This is one of your pieces. This is a painting that is done with ink on a translucent piece of film and i wanted to not just make imagery that would reflect what these women were looking at but the final image itself would reflect their work with the glass plates. The painting is done on a translucent piece of paper and if you go into. How big was the paper . 60 by 60. We have work on the newly built a wall the wall. The wall was painted this morning. So the good piece on the left is the scale of this piece and we will get to how you make the physical piece up here. Lets see the next slide, please. Okay thats it. Thats the one on the wall. Lets just explain the philosophy of this. The thing that fascinated me about the glass plate itself was not just that it was the first record of the sky. The four fewer and is garner yet to be a draftsman so youd have to make drying and also say this is a certain luminosity perhaps dava or so they may have been different interpretation that they were studying the glass plates and rarely would they print them and positives. Its a reference to the evolution of the photographic process. It starts off with a photographic negative printed into its positive but the image was never photographed. They are images of stars preprinted by using our son so its multilayered in its meaning in the process. Lets see the next slide, please. Lia i should say so artist with a lot of science residents in the Science Department. You can see my equations on the back there. And its now been demolished and its being rebuilt as we speak. Theres lia in the Science Department working on a large piece. Here you are building what you call the negative. Can we go to the next slide . Thats us goofing off. This is the collaboration. The next slide and who do we have here . We have lost all of our etiquette. That is mrs. Fleming standing by one of the cupboards where she keeps her glass plates. She was there for a very long time, wasnt she . She really oversaw the women that were working. Did she oversee any of the men or were they two separate groups . She mostly oversaw the women. They were operating the telescope. She identified an enormous number of objects. Is that right . She discovered hundreds of variable stars and i think we have a picture. She has this record of the most discoveries in of the variable stars at the time probably worldwide. Definitely by ms. Leavitt. Lets see the next slide please. Tell me about that. Identifying different plates the theory that im working on is tied to one discovery that one of these women made so this is the horse head nebula. The horse head is upside down and if you look on a contemporary image it looks a little bit more force like but this is after wilhelm in a fleming. Can we go to the next slide please . I love this picture. Over there in the corner. It looks like she is working on an ipad. Did does, doesnt it . Its glass plates and she has to than the frames that they use. Its very fragile. When you work on them theres a danger that they will break which is why they are all digitized now soap scientists can have access to them easily. They dont use this process that much anymore. Its 100 years of the night sky. Amazing. Next slide, please. This is the computing realm. Hard at work. It amazed me what these women and or it because theres this wonderful opportunity to contribute to science. It was very difficult commitment. It was not at looks areas commitment or not a commitment to an easy life or a life of any kind of physical comfort. They were poor and they suffered all kinds of illnesses. Illnesses for a real threat and they worked absurd hours. What did you think about uncovering those details . Is cold and flu. They have the same elements as we had. They nominally worked regular hours but then of course anybody who is really involved in research knows that you dont stop at 5 00 or 6 00. They were very committed. What they gave up at the beginning was certainly any kind of home life. Mrs. Fleming was unique as a working mother and the sole supporter of her son. And most of the times the women wanted to get married. That was the end of her career. There is a line where someone says the into that effect that its no longer the end of your career wants to get married and this was a big change. Anything about what you are saying about the long hours is they are given the task that in a lot of ways is really just mindnumbing labeling stars and looking at the spectra but they are not given enough time to make their own conclusions. An example would be like henrietta. She discovered variables and that gave us a yardstick to measure the universe but shes not in the situation where c. He is a researcher to make the jump which is implied later on in our talk to take over as the discoverer. In the slide of four that annie joe cannon would shes hired shes fully unique because hes hired on amazed at your to work the telescope at night and ends up in peru physically writing about the telescope and pushing it around and playing with the lenses. Its different than most of the other computers. And theres the frustration that they dont have the opportunity to extend their work. Theres a sense they know there is a great volume of material but also some implications and to get the sense that they feel this frustration of not being able to pursue it. That certainly the retrospect of you. Im not sure they felt that. I did admire in your book that you did not try to impose the lens of the present on the past and you take it as it is and i think thats what keeps a certain moments in the book of clarity when these women speak in their own words and theres so much impact as you have not it at all. You havent diluted the impact. When it comes i think its really powerful. And was when ms. Cannon goes to the meeting about spectral classification and shes the only woman at a table of men. She writes in her journal since i had done most of the world work on the subject i had to do most of the talking. She takes it in stride and why we are on annie joe cannon this is a little bit out of context so shes talking about a personal trauma but she said may be led into a youthful busy life. Im not afraid of work. I long for it. And this idea just of recognition versus participation in the beginning of the observatory pickering puts out an ad and he gets endless responses from educated women who had just gotten out of college who are willing to come to the observatory and are basically begging to work for free, not 25 cents an hour but for free. I think the recognition of discovery but they just wanted to work. They just wanted to work and to contribute. Next slide, please. Its amazing. She discovered a comet in 1847 which made her world famous famous. No one messed with her. She looks like shes ready to take it off the standard swing it. Matthew hired her as professor of astronomy and she came to work at harvard. Mariah many people think is an unsung genius of church extraordinary. Theres a great book on Mariah Mitchell. And she was very admired. Can we see the next slide . These are also students at wellesley. Annie was a third the third from the right she was working the physics lab that had been modeled on pickerings lab and annie cannons teacher had been a pickering student. Thats why her education equipped her to be the first woman at the observatory who could use the telescope. I think its important to acknowledge the impact of the womens college. This is incredibly impactful and pickering knew it. He thought very highly of the womens colleges and there was a lot of aggression against them. And he would say all you have to do is look at what these women are producing to understand the impact and people just knew. They could see the co