Anne Hagopian van Buren (1927-2008) did computing work at the HCO from c.1945-c.1950 as an undergraduate student in astronomy at Radcliffe College.1
She entered Radcliffe College to study astronomy after winning a scholarship in 1944 through the third annual Science Talent Search for high school students, a competition which continues through the present day.2 After graduating, she left astronomy to marry theologian Paul van Buren and have four children.3 She then turned to art history, earning her PhD in art history from Bryn Mawr College in 1970 and going on to teach at Tufts University. She is remembered as a prominent expert in 14th and 15th Netherlandish art who proudly used her scientific training to enhance her art history research.4
Written by Elizabeth Coquillette, 2022
Citations:
1-Lindsay Smith Zrull, “Women in Glass: Women at the Harvard Observatory during the Era of Astronomical Glass Plate Photography, 1875-1975,” Journal of the History of Astronomy, vol. 52, no. 2 (2021): 133.↩2- “Anne Hagopian (1927-2008), 1944: Object Details,” Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Archives.; “Science: Boy & Girl Scientists,” Time Magazine, March 20, 1944. ↩
3- Elizabeth J. Moodey, “In Memoriam: Anne Hagopian van Buren,” Historians of Netherlandish Art.↩
4- Ibid.↩