[WnCC] Harvard Computers

[Kumar Ayush]

Dear Friends

Please give me a few minutes of your time to share an interesting bit of history from late 19th/early 20th century.

"Edward Charles Pickering (director of the Harvard Observatory from 1877 to 1919) decided to hire women as skilled workers to process astronomical data. Among these women were Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Cecilia Payne and Antonia Maury. This staff came to be known as the Harvard Computers"  Wikipedia

In my notes, I would record this as one of the earliest significant developments in modern data science. Pickering believed that eye observations would soon be obsolete in accuracy and feasibility as compared to photographs. You can examine the photographs in much more detail, in the comfort of your laboratory much after the observation has been taken. This attitude presents an advance in the fundamental idea that systemic storing of data can help us make useful predictions about nature.

In this case, the Computers, some of which were formally trained in physics and astronomy, led to notable contributions in our knowledge of the universe.

• Williamina Fleming, one of the first computers, is credited to discover the Horsehead Nebula and one of the first extensive catalogues of Stellar Spectra (1890; 10,000 stars).

• Annie Jump Cannon created the stellar classification system still in use today; OBAFGKM. The mnemonic for this is "Oh Be A Fine Girl/Guy Kiss Me"
  
  
• Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered Cepheid variables, which served as a crucial stick in the distance ladder. A few years later, Edwin Hubble would use this information to show that the Andromeda 'Nebula' is a galaxy of its own, 778 kilo parsec away from our Milky Way Galaxy, thus giving humanity its first understanding of a Universe larger than we had ever imagined.
  
  
• Payne-Gaposchkin discovered that the sun's atmosphere is mostly hydrogen, which went against the traditional thinking of the time that the sun and the Earth shared a similar composition.

This list is in no way exhaustive, and I have skimmed over several points, to focus your attention on the contribution of these great women to the fields of physics and astronomy, and to data science. They were paid abysmally less as compared to men of their time, and yet their meticulous work brought them to glory. They were called "Pickering's Harem" at a point, which is a derogatory term to be used in 2018. However, today, we shall remember and salute them as Harvard Computers, a group of great women who revolutionised the world.

Mark your calendar on March 10, 2018, at IITB. We celebrate Data Science Day, which includes a screening of the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Stanford conference, along with a panel discussion which includes leading women professors in data science from IITB. For more information, visit https://dsd.wncc-iitb.org/

Refs:

https://www.space.com/34675-harvard-computers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Computers
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-women-who-mapped-the-universe-and-still-couldnt-get-any-respect-9287444/?no-ist

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Regards
Kumar Ayush

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