Harvard Computers
The Harvard Computers were multiple generations of women working as skilled workers and astronomers to process astronomical data primarily from photographic plates at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Created during the tenure of Edward Charles Pickering (1877 to 1919) and, first headed by Williamina Fleming then Annie Jump Cannon.
The women were challenged to make sense of these patterns by devising a scheme for sorting the stars into categories. Annie Jump Cannon's success at this activity made her famous in her own lifetime, and she produced a stellar classification system that is still in use today. Antonia Maury discerned in the spectra a way to assess the relative sizes of stars, and Henrietta Leavitt showed how the cyclic changes of certain variable stars could serve as distance markers in space.
While documented instances show individual women were paid for work before the 1880s, the consistent hiring of women who worked together and were managed by other women began with the photographic project funded by the scientist and philanthropist Mary Anna Draper in honor of her late husband, Henry Draper. Williamina Fleming would be the first person in charge of this group and manage and hire over 44 women anstronomical computers in her career. Anna Winlock and Florence Cushman would be early women of note, other scientists and astronomers like Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Annie Jump Cannon, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, and Dorrit Hoffleit would be employees under this group at sometime in their career. Representing many firsts for women working at Harvard University, over 200 women are known to have worked in this group from the 1870s to the 1970s. These women would perform various tasks that would be paired with their own skills and educational backgrounds. These ranged from highly specialized work like complex mathematical calculations, photometry, spectroscopy, and classifying astronomical objects to clerical, editorial, administrative, and correspondence roles. Collectively and individually, foundational discoveries were made by these female scientists in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and atomic physics,, among others.