Louisa Winlock (1860-1916) worked at Harvard College Observatory for 29 years from 1886-1915. She was the seventh female computer hired by the Harvard Observatory.1
Winlock assisted Williamina "Mina" Fleming with numerical computations and clerical work, and she assisted her sister Anna with Anna’s long-term project computing observations from the meridian circle instrument that had been installed by their father in 1870.2 She was one of 17 women who attended the second annual astronomers’ conference that was held at the HCO in August 1898.3
Winlock was the daughter of Joseph Winlock, who was the third director of the Harvard College Observatory from 1866-1875, and Mary Isabella Lane Winlock. She was the younger sister of Anna Winlock, who joined the HCO in 1875 as the first paid female staff member at the observatory and remained on the staff for 28 years. She was interred in the Winlock family plot at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA.4
Written by Elizabeth Coquillette, 2022
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): 7.↩2- Ibid., 10. : Solon 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), 111-112.↩
3- Haley, “Williamina Fleming and the Harvard College Observatory,” 16.↩
4- “Louisa Winlock,” Find A Grave, accessed May 19, 2022. ↩