Henrietta Leavitt Story

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4th, 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a "computer", tasked with examining photographic plates in order to measure and catalogue the brightness of stars.

The ‘Harvard Computers’ work was to meticulously study photographic plates of images of star fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud taken through the lens of a large telescope, detailing the changes in the brightness of variable stars.

She was the first person to discover and explain the relationship between the brightness of pulsating variable stars, known as Cepheid variables, and their pulsation period. Her discovery provided the first momentous step along the road to finding the true size and scale of the visible universe.

Her early death at the age of 53 left colleagues bereft of her great mind and her positive aura:

"…she had the happy, joyful, faculty of appreciating all that was worthy and lovable in others, and was possessed of a nature so full of sunshine that, to her, all of life became beautiful and full of meaning” Solon Irving Bailey, Astronomer, Harvard University