![]() : 27 Leavitt also began working as volunteer assistant, one of the women "computers" at the Harvard College Observatory. It wasn't until her fourth year of college that Leavitt took a course in astronomy, in which she earned an A−. At Oberlin and Harvard, Leavitt studied a broad curriculum that included Latin and classical Greek, fine arts, philosophy, analytic geometry, and calculus. Leavitt attended Oberlin College before transferring to Harvard University's Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women (later Radcliffe College), receiving a bachelor's degree in 1892. ![]() (In the early Massachusetts records the family name was spelled "Levett".) Henrietta Leavitt remained deeply religious and committed to her church throughout her life. She was a descendant of Deacon John Leavitt, an English Puritan tailor, who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 17th century. Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, the daughter of Congregational church minister George Roswell Leavitt and his wife Henrietta Swan Kendrick. After Leavitt's death, Edwin Hubble used Leavitt's period-luminosity relation, together with the galactic spectral shifts first measured by Vesto Slipher at Lowell Observatory, to establish that the universe is expanding (see Hubble's law).īiography Early life and education As a result of this, it is now known that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter of about 100,000 light years. Leavitt's work allowed astronomers to measure distances up to about 200 million light years. Such techniques can only be used for measuring distances up to several hundred light years. ![]() īefore Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables, the only techniques available to astronomers for measuring the distance to a star were based on parallax and triangulation. Leavitt's discovery provided astronomers with the first standard candle with which to measure the distance to other galaxies. This work led her to discover the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variables. Ī graduate of Radcliffe College, she worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a human computer, tasked with measuring photographic plates to catalog the positions and brightness of stars. Her discovery of how to effectively measure vast distances to remote galaxies led to a shift in the understanding of the nature of the universe. Henrietta Swan Leavitt ( / ˈ l ɛ v ɪ t/ J– Decem) was an American astronomer. Leavitt's law: the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables
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