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In a cramped Harvard University sub-basement, a team of women is working to document the rich history of women astronomers.
More than 40 years before women gained the right to vote, female "computers" at Harvard College Observatory were making major astronomical discoveries.
Between 1885 and 1927, the observatory employed about 80 women who studied glass plate photographs of the stars. They found galaxies and nebulas and created methods to measure distance in space.
They were famous - newspapers wrote about them, they published scientific papers under their own names. But they were virtually forgotten during the next century.
But a recent discovery of thousands of pages of their calculations by a modern group of women has spurred new interest in their legacy.
A worthy effort, though the correct term for "female 'computer'" is "femputer", at least according to Futurama.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:54AM (1 child)
This [linkedin.com] is the Linkedin profile for the individual who's doing this research.
It's the same story literally every single time. This individual likely came from a very wealthy background given she went to an no-name private university that's about $50k a year. And followed it up by skipping around to universities including Harvard collecting more degrees. So where did she decide to focus her studies?
- Undergraduate: BA in Women's History
- Masters #1 - MS in in Information, Archive Management
- Masters #2 - Literature and Creative Writing
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So now she's off to study this elusive question of why are there no women in STEM. The answer is even closer than standing right in front of her. She is the answer.
Like most people I know in science, it's never been a question for myself. And it had nothing to do with role models or anything like that. I had quite the opposite myself. I grew up in a single parent family mostly taking care of myself as my mother worked multiple jobs just to make ends meet. What drove me certainly wasn't any particular toys or access I had at home. Nonetheless I managed to learn - spending my time doing things like tearing apart my mother's blow dryer, just to see how it worked. Let's say that her response to that was not exactly what you'd call encouraging to science. And I enjoyed cartoons yet found myself constantly drawn even more to PBS and programs like Nova. And Nova has always tried to engage in social justice and would regularly bring on 'underrepresented' groups. Nonetheless I didn't really care who was presenting, speaking, or what was between their legs. It could have been a robot for all I cared (that actually would have likely been even cooler) - what I found fascinating was the science. Discovering the universe. Oh and going through school as a kid obsessed with science and math. Yeah, that makes you the coolest kid the school! The fact that statement is absurdly laughable tells you all you need to know about how incentivized this is in our educational system.
These people always give the same excuse for why they didn't actually do something meaningful with their lives - they just didn't have the role models. Nobody told them to go do it. That daftness is very telling. Scientists are very rarely the sort driven by what others tell them to do. Even at university, if somebody learns you're majoring in physics - you're going to get a few raised eyebrows. And on top of this, science is materially very unrewarding. When kids are young even if they are raised by parents who try to push them it was always to be a Doctor or a Lawyer. And it wasn't because those careers were intrinsically rewarding, but because they made a lot of money. A post-doc researcher is one of the most highly educated and knowledgeable individuals in the world. Many plumbers make more than they do. Seriously. Or consider the things we play with. Do you get action figures of Stephen Hawking? No, you get G.I. Joe and Wolverine.
I think these cases are mostly sad. It's likely this individual has found her decisions in life to be unfulfilling and is looking to prevent people from doing as she did. Yet in the process of this she's lashing out and blaming everybody except for herself. In this case she's even still very young. She's about 28. Why not go back to school and pick up a degree in physics and actually having the LinkedIn profile image mean something instead of being just being a poser? Given she has all the fundamentals out of the way she could graduate in 2 years easily and be involved in postgrad research by the time she's 30. But she won't. Has she bothered to ask herself why? Is she still going to blame other people, or society? Most problems of this sort can be answered with but a single item: a mirror.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:28PM
So where did she decide to focus her studies?
- Undergraduate: BA in Women's History
- Masters #1 - MS in in Information, Archive Management
- Masters #2 - Literature and Creative Writing
Sounds like she focused on history and writing. You know...the two skills that tend to be most helpful when WRITING a HISTORY project.