Evelyn Frances Leland (1867-1931) worked at the Harvard observatory for 36 years between 1889-1925. She calculated stellar spectra and became an expert on variable stars.
Leland assisted Williamina Fleming with measuring the brightness and period of tens of thousands of variable stars in clusters such as Omega Centauri, Alpha Centauri, M5, and Epsilon Aurigae.1 2 In 1903, she and Miss Fleming investigated a new possible nova in Gemini that was discovered by an English astronomer.3 4 Beginning in 1906, Leland partnered with Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt to use Harvard’s plate collection to systematically search for variable stars throughout the whole sky. Each of the three women were assigned one third of the sky, and they used a search method developed by Leavitt that involved visually comparing five time-lapsed images of each area of the sky.5 6
Leland also made measurements of brightness and/or position for astronomical bodies such as stars Nova Sagittarii and Mu Serpentis, asteroid Eros, and Saturn’s moon Phoebe.7 Because Leland spent so much of her career working with plates made by Solon Bailey at the observatory in Arequipa, Peru, she built a particularly strong familiarity with the southern skies.8 She became such a reliable resource for Bailey that he would sometimes ship his plates from Peru to Cambridge with instructions specifically addressed to her.9
Leland can be seen in many of the most prominent historical photographs of the Harvard observatory women computers, including standing second from the left in the famous “Paper Doll” photo.10
Written by Elizabeth Coquillette, 2022
Selected Publications:
Bailey, Solon I. and Evelyn F. Leland. (1899). “The periods of variable stars in the cluster Messier 5.” Astrophysical Journal, 10 (November): 255-260. doi: 10.1086/140643
Leland, Evelyn F. (1906). “The Algol Variable, 41° 851. 041342.” Harvard College Observatory Circular, vol. 114 (March): 1-3.
Leland, Evelyn F. and Edward C. Pickering. (1907). “Standard Stellar Magnitudes.” Harvard College Observatory Circular, vol. 125 (February): 1-3.
Leland, Evelyn F. and Edward C. Pickering. (1910). “20 New Variable Stars in Harvard Map, Nos. 2, 5, 32, 44, and 53.” Harvard College Observatory Circular, vol. 152 (January): 1-3.
Pickering, Edward C., Williamina P. Fleming, and Evelyn F. Leland (1903). “Nova Geminorum before its discovery.” Astrophysical Journal, 17 (May): 305-308. doi: 10.1086/141030
Citations:
1- Paul A. Haley, “Williamina Fleming and the Harvard College Observatory.” The Antiquarian Astronomer: Journal of the Society for the History of Astronomy, no. 17 (June 2017): 13.↩Evelyn F. Leland, Assorted logbooks, 1893-1923, (Cambridge, MA: John G. Wolbach Library, Harvard College Observatory). Project PHaEDRA. Harvard College Observatory observations, logs, instrument readings, and calculations, (accessed May 10, 2022).↩
3Haley, “Williamina Fleming and the Harvard College Observatory,” 19-20. ↩
4-Edward C. Pickering, Williamina P. Fleming, and Evelyn F. Leland, “Nova Geminorum before its discovery,” Astrophysical Journal, 17 (May 1903), 305-308. ↩
5 Dava Sobel, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took Measure of the Stars (New York: Viking, 2016), 123-124.↩
6Solon I. Bailey, The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839 to 1927; an outline of the origin, development, and researches of the Astronomical observatory of Harvard College together with brief biographies of its leading members (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931), 180-181.↩
7 Leland, Assorted logbooks, 1893-1923, Project PHaEDRA.↩
8 Sobel, The Glass Universe, p. 123.↩
9Evelyn F. Leland, Measures of Eros #26, 1902 (Cambridge, MA: John G. Wolbach Library, Harvard College Observatory). Project PHaEDRA. Harvard College Observatory observations, logs, instrument readings, and calculations, (accessed May 10, 2022).↩
10“Harvard College Observatory History in Images,” Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, accessed May 12, 2022. https://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Observatory/eleland.html↩
