Mary Louise Miller Thorndike (c. 1908-?) worked at the Harvard College Observatory from approximately 1926-1931 and 1934-1941.
Miller Thorndike did volunteer computing work at the HCO under the supervision of Cecilia Payne (later Payne-Gaposchkin) while she was an undergraduate studying astronomy at Mount Holyoke.1 After graduating in 1931, she was appointed as an assistant at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in California,2 where she helped to calculate the orbit of the Ryves Comet.3 In approximately 1934, she returned to the HCO, where she worked for several years on surveying and counting variable stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud.4
Miller Thorndike was born to Mr. and Mrs. Fred R. Miller.5 In 1933, she married Samuel Lothrop Thorndike,6 a fellow astronomer who worked as a doctoral student at the Lick Observatory and a research associate at the HCO, respectively, at the same time that his wife worked at those institutions.7 The couple had two children, Samuel L. Thorndike Jr. and Janet Thorndike.8
Written by Elizabeth Coquillette, 2022
Selected Publications:
Bower, Ernest C. and Mary L. Miller. “Comet 1931c (Ryves).” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific vol. 43, no. 555 (October 1931), p. 357. Bitcode: 1931PASP…43..357B
Bower, Ernest C. and Mary L. Miller “Elements and ephemeris of Comet 1931c (Ryves).” Lick Observatory Bulletin no. 438 (1931), p. 179-180. Bibcode: 1931LicOB..15..179B
Citations:
1- Mary L. Miller and Cecilia H. Payne, Various Plate measures logbook, 1926, Cambridge, MA: John G. Wolbach Library, Harvard College Observatory, Project PHaEDRA [1926phae.proj.1131M] (accessed August 16, 2022).↩2- R. G. Aitken, “Fellows and Assistants at the Lick Observatory for the Year 1931-1932,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific vol. 43, no. 253 (1931), p. 223. Bibcode:1931PASP…43..223A↩
3- Ernest C. Bower and Mary L. Miller, “Comet 1931c (Ryves),” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific vol. 43, no. 555 (October 1931), p. 357. Bibcode: 1931PASP…43..357B↩
4- Mary L. Miller logbooks 1935-1941: Star Counts on the LMC [1935phae.proj.2494M]; Bright Variable Star Survey, Field 8 [1935phae.proj.2495M]; Variables in LMC, 33 [1941phae.proj.2452M], Cambridge, MA: John G. Wolbach Library, Harvard College Observatory, Project PHaEDRA (accessed August 16, 2022).↩
5- “Mary Louise Miller Mt. Holyoke 1931 To Wed S. L. Thorndike,” Transcript-Telegram (Holyoke, Massachusetts), September 29, 1933.↩
6- Ibid.↩
7- “Register: University of California 1932-33, volume 2,” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1933: 77; Samuel L. Thorndike, “Variable Stars in Milky Way Field 377,” Harvard College Observatory Bulletin 916 (October 1941): 4-5.↩
8- “Thorndike-Eames Bridal Solemnized Saturday Afternoon,” The Bridgeport Post (Bridgeport, Connecticut), June 11, 1961.↩