Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer and graduate of Radcliffe College, who worked as a computer at the Harvard College Observatory (HCO), where she examined glass photographic plates and measured the brightness, or magnitude, of stars. This work led her to discover the relation between the luminosity and the period of brightening/dimming of Cepheid variables. This discovery provided astronomers with the first “standard candle” with which to measure the distance to faraway galaxies.
Read more here about Henrietta Leavitt's life and science, her work identifying variable stars, and how Leavitt's work gives us the ability to measure the universe.
Relevant Archival Search Results
Within Harvard
Records of the Harvard College Observatory Director Edward Charles Pickering
A Search of “Leavitt” within this Collection:
Leavitt, Henrietta S. (Miss), 1902 - 1918
ITEM — Box: 140, Folder: 36 Identifier: UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14
“Leavitt’s letters to Pickering chronicle her determination of the position and magnitudes of stars; other letters note her absences from work due to illness and family obligations.”
Leavitt, Henrietta S., [circa 1902]
ITEM — Box: 111, Folder: 41 Identifier: UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14
No description included with the item in the collection. Based on title and additional details, assumed to be Correspondence between Henrietta Swan Leavitt and E.C. Pickering, circa 1902.
ITEM — Box: 151, Folder: 26 Identifier: UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14
“Included are summaries of the work done at the Observatory, published in scientific magazines by Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta S. Leavitt, and Pickering in 1917.”
Letterbook B7, 1908 June 16-1910 December 31
ITEM — Box: 24 Identifier: UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14, UAV 630.14
“Copied into Volume 24 (starting on page 577) is a collection of measurements and exposures of variable stars recorded from photographic plates from February 1911 to February 1912. According to a note in the volume, this information came from files in the Harvard College Observatory reflector room and a file drawer in Solon I. Bailey’s office. Included are statements on composite spectra compiled at the Harvard College Observatory by Annie J. Cannon (1911 February) and on the observed magnitudes of W Crucis, a variable star in the constellation Crux by Henrietta S. Leavitt (1911 December 14).”
Records of Harvard College Observatory Director Harlow Shapley:
A Search of “Leavitt” within this Collection:
ITEM - Box: 10, Folder: 8 Identifier: UAV 630.22
Contains correspondence with many, including astronomer Henritta Swan Leavitt.
ITEM — Box: 15, Folder: 5 Identifier: UAV 630.22
“Correspondence between Harlow Shapley with, and related to, various female employees of the Harvard College Observatory, such as Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Cecilia Payne, and Adelaide Ames."
ITEM — Box: 108 Identifier: UAV 630.22
“Bound volume of "B" copies of outgoing correspondence written by Harlow Shapley, mostly relating to Observatory business and scientific information, particularly relating to stars. The majority of the correspondents are Shapley's astronomy colleagues, from the United States and abroad, including Annie Jump Cannon... Henritta Swan Leavitt... and many others."
External
Hathitrust
Search of “Henrietta Swan Leavitt” yielded several mildly substantive results as brief genealogical information regarding Leavitt’s parents and wider family.
Researcher Note: For context, Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s mother was also named Henrietta Swan (née Kendrick) and she married George R. Leavitt. The subject of this resource page never married.
Page 83 in object.
*Available online through Hathitrust, and both digitally and in-person at the New England Historic Genealogy Society.
Page 82 in object.
*Available online through Hathitrust, and both digitally and in-person at the New England Historic Genealogy Society.
Researcher Notes:
-Further results on Hathitrust for this search included several editions of the ‘Social register of New York’ for various years. These proved inconclusive.
-Other volumes of Leavitt : Descendants of John Leavitt…. Published in other years do not include Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
Photographs of Her, including groups
Seated at Desk Circa 1900-1917
ITEM — Box: HUGFP 125.82, Box 2 Identifier: HUGFP 125, HUGFP 125.82, HUGFP 125.82 (Henrietta Swan Leavitt sitting at desk, 1916 or 1917)
*digital copy exists in Harvard University Archives Photograph Collection: Portraits
Photographic views of the Harvard College Observatory
Group Photograph - 1910
ITEM — Box: 2, Folder: 26 Identifier: HUV 1210
*sixth from the left, between Mary Vann and Mollie O’Reilly.
Radcliffe College Archives IX-8-70v-20
Standing with Annie Jump Cannon
Harvard University Archives HUP Cannon, Annie Jump (1) (papers of Annie jump cannon?)
PHaEDRA Notebooks at Wolbach Collection
Harvard College Observatory observations, logs, instrument readings, and calculations
Henrietta S Leavitt Notebooks, 1895-1921.
Sub-Series Identifier: KG11365-6
Leavitt’s logbooks can be viewed digitally through Project PHaADRA
Secondary Sources
Miss Leavitt’s Stars by George Johnson
The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and other Recollections - Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Ed. Katharine Haramundanis
Women of Science: Righting the Record Gabriele Kass-Simon, Patricia Farnes, Deborah Nash
Women in the history of variable star astronomy. Essay by E. Dorrit Hoffleit
(direct to source)
Pg. 3
This essay discusses several notable women, including Leavitt, in the field of variable star observing. It was written in 1993 by Dorrit Hoffleit for the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO).
The Women of the Moon - Daniel R. Altschuler,
Fernando J. Ballesteros.
Pages 157–166. Pub 2019.
Bibliographic and Encyclopedic sources
Smithsonian Learning Lab: Web Sources
Smithsonian Learning Lab: The Science of Henrietta Swan Leavitt
The 'star-fiend' who unlocked the Universe - BBC Future
Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Physics Today
Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers
Popular Media and Commemoration
Moon Crater Named in her honor