Reach Across the Stars: New app offers interactive exploration of women in astronomy
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Loading... - Perseus Halkias
- 29 Jun 2022
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Today, more women than ever are studying space. The number of female physicists, astronomers, mathematicians and more is steadily rising, after centuries of male overrepresentation in science. This has meant more role models for girls and young women deciding what they want to do with their future, and an increased diversity of viewpoints and ideas for science as a whole.
But of course, it wasn’t always that way. Women were historically excluded from scientific research, something that only began to slowly change in the last century. But that doesn’t mean that women haven’t been part of science. In astronomy alone, female astronomers, mathematicians and scientists did fundamental observing work, discovered comets, organized star catalogs and more. But their achievements were often overshadowed by the work of — or worse, falsely attributed to — their male colleagues, meaning that our understanding of the history of astronomy is incomplete.
That’s changed in recent years as books, movies and more have illuminated the lives of these brilliant women — not least of which was the movie Hidden Figures, which chronicled the work of female African-American mathematicians at NASA. But women’s contributions to the study of the universe goes back centuries.
Caroline Herschel
Beginning in the 18th century, Caroline Herschel, a German astronomer, made observations of the night sky, looking for new nebulae and comets. She would go on to discover multiple previously unknown comets, including 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, and perform work that formed the basis for the New General Catalogue of deep sky objects that’s still in use today. Read More...
