# Talk:Henrietta Swan Leavitt

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The ACS Bio states that "Professor Mittag-Leffler of the Swedish Academy of Sciences sent her a letter in 1925, declaring his intent to nominate her for the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year for her role..." [my emphasis]
The claim that he "considered" her and that Shapley claimed 'interpretating' her results is supported by a non-English-language citation. (I.E. I can't read it.) This question deserves resolving. I've added '1926' to the awards section but found no further resolution.It further occurs to me that Shapley may have made the post-mortem claim in hopes that Harvard would reap a Nobel. Excuseable, perhaps. Twang (talk) 08:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Later, Hubble used Leavitt Law to show that Andromeda is a galaxy outside the Milky Way. Independently, they were considered for the Nobel Prize, but their early death prevented it.

I'm not sure about this. The main reason she was not operating the telescope is that the Cepheids she was most interested in were in the Magellanic Clouds, which are southern hemisphere objects. I.e. she was in the US and the telescope was in Chile.
There is also the fact that there are examples of earlier women astronomers who did operate telescopes, Caroline Herschel for example.
She deserves much more exposure. I'm happy someone took the time to create the entry for her. But I'd like to see a better reference, and perhaps more detail for the "women were not allowed to operate telescopes" quote.J8h (talk) 20:03, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with all that you say, editor J8h.  Perhaps the restriction was only for the women at her institution?  I'm sure you're looking for more info, and when time allows I shall help in the search for better references.  For example, the ACS bio mentioned in the previous comment is now a dead link and needs to be resolved.  I checked the ACS website to see if the page had been moved, but evidently they have rm'd the bio.  I would love to find her bio on the internet, the one mentioned in the article by George Johnson, and am still searching.
As for the entry, Leavitt certainly deserves as much exposure as possible.  I consider her the "Mother of Modern Astronomy" since it was she who made the discovery that led to the realization that the Milky Way galaxy is not the entire Universe— that there are billions of other galaxies outside the Milky Way.  She's a remarkable historical figure and I shall pay more attention to this article's improvement.
 —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  17:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Follow up. Found some pages out of Johnson's book, and on page 28 was Bailey's obit quote, so I rm'd the deadlink and replaced it with the new source.
 —  Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  08:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Glad you were able to locate a source for that. I think Johnson's book is quite good overall. MarmadukePercy (talk) 09:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I want to get a copy and devour it!  Thank you for taking the time to comment and Happiest of holidays to you and yours!
 —  Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  16:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
The ref. given, number 4, seems to say nothing about the ban on operating telescopes.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.204.57 (talk) 14:25, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Caroline Herschel was operating a telescope long before then.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.120.119.12 (talk) 12:34, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
I replaced an Unreliable source? tag (inserted by Special:Contributions/38.88.230.162) with a Dubious tag.  Quoting the anonymous editor, "A simple web search leads to several source's[sic], some cited back to first hand accounts contradicting the statement in question. It is an un-cited generalization implying women were simply a.) banned b.) not just at Harvard, but (presumptively implying) everywhere as well, and c.) without any exceptions from operating telescopes, when the apparent reality is the culture around Harvard saw it as (rougly ranging from unsightly to inappropriate) for a women to work w..." The cited source (Exploratorium) does back up the claim, stating "In the early 1900s, women were not allowed to operate telescopes," and it's a reliable source.  However, the Exploratorium page is a one-paragraph summary of HSL's work, and it lacks nuance and detail.  Dgorsline (talk) 12:51, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

This is a newly created cat by 28bytes on 17 February 2011.  — Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  06:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Henrietta Swan Leavitt/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) 20:46, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality: 

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists: 

Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. Has an appropriate reference section: 

B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary: 
Citation required templates added. Supply the required references. Also: Ventrudo is in the references, but not used.
C. No original research: 

Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects: 

B. Focused: 

Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias: 

Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc: 

Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content: 
Good job finding images
B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions: 

Overall:
Pass or Fail: 

To editor Ian (Wiki Ed): Would you mind, please, to explain why you feel those two edits you made were copyvio fixes?  And if they are copyvios, why not just fix them (put them in your own words, etc.) rather than remove them from this "Natural sciences good article"?  It's just that I find it rather profound that this article made it to GA status while it contained copyvios. – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 00:56, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and restored most of the deletions in rewritten form. The section "Personal life" had a lot of duplication about her eduction, and not much on her personal life, I worked the non duplicative parts into other sections--agr (talk) 03:18, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for that, agr – and while I'm no expert, I'd like to note two items to the remover of the material:
Exact wording of excerpts is allowed in order to maintain precision and conciseness, especially for quotations, and
brief excerpts of copyrighted works are allowed under the fair-use statutes.
I know there is a tendency on Wikipedia to err on the safe side, but I don't think there were or are any true copyvios in this article. – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 09:38, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Everything I removed was lifted verbatim or nearly verbatim (recall the close paraphrase is still copyvio) from the sources, so yes, that's unambiguous copyvio. In the case of the quote, the words introducing the quote were taken verbatim from the source. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:13, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
As for fair use - see WP:NFCC. Lifting a paragraph from a source and re-using it here without quotes is clear copyvio. Use it with quotations and the basic questions come into play - is it the subject of critical commentary? Is it replaceable? No, and yes. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:18, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
To Ian (Wiki Ed) and agr:  Okay, as I said I am no expert on copyright; however, I still find it perplexing that Leavitt's article could attain GA status while it contains copyvios.  In any case, Joys and Happy Holidays to you and yours! – Paine  16:24, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
I think the short answer is that nobody is perfect and we are all volunteers. It's easy to overlook small sections of text copied from the sources. It is also something that is easy enough to fix. Hers is an amazing and important story and I hope the article is a little better for everyone's efforts. Happy holidays to you too.--agr (talk) 17:04, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm bothered by the following quotation in the "Influence" secxtion, which (a) is more about Hubble than Leavitt, (b) strikes me as a put-down of Leavitt's work and (c) is purely subjective.  I've removed it to here.  If it belongs anywhere (which I doubt) it belongs with Hubble.

"If Henrietta Leavitt had provided the key to determine the size of the cosmos, then it was Edwin Powell Hubble who inserted it in the lock and provided the observations that allowed it to be turned," wrote David H. and Matthew D.H. Clark in their book Measuring the Cosmos.
Zaslav (talk) 04:06, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

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In the third paragraph under Biography - Early years and education, I added a clarification needed template after the sentence "However, invented the title Curator of Astronomical Photographs for her in 1898." The reason for this is that it is unclear who invented the title. I considered simply changing the sentence to "However, the title Curator of Astronomical Photographs was invented for her in 1898" to remove the need for a "who", but decided to add the clarification template instead in the hopes someone will know who invented the title.
Thanks,
Dbusb (talk) 19:11, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Your statement " Such techniques can only be used for measuring distances up to hundreds of light years" is wrong.      Parallax is not applicable for distances of "hundreds of light years".  
Arydberg (talk) 02:14, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

From the Sloan Digital Sky Survey site:
The Hipparcos satellite, which makes its measurements from Earth orbit, measured the parallax distances to about 120,000 stars with an accuracy of 0.001 arc seconds, and about 2.5 million stars with a lesser degree of accuracy. This gives accurate distances to stars out to several hundred light-years.
Gaia measurements are even more accurate. -- Elphion (talk) 20:38, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps, since the focus is on the contemporary importance of Leavitt's discovery, a better sentence would be 'Such techniques could at that time only be used for measuring distances up to about ten light years'. Neither, I think, is there any point including 'triangulation' as well as 'parallax'. 14.49.193.100 (talk) 05:39, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Way down in this entry it mentions that Leavitt worked with "Annie Jump Cannon, who was also deaf." Nowhere above is Leavitt described as being deaf. If indeed she was deaf, this would seem important to mention in her early or educational biography. 2001:5A8:6122:B600:7D14:393:29CE:8D05 (talk) 17:14, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

The original wording was who shared the experience of being deaf. Someone changed it to who also was deaf, and someone else changed it to who was also deaf. I removed it entirely (for now), as nothing in the article establishes that Leavitt was deaf, although there are categories on the article that imply it. I need to do some more research. Schazjmd (talk) 17:24, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
I restored the content and added the information about Leavitt becoming deaf, based on a source already used in the article. Schazjmd (talk) 17:32, 14 May 2025 (UTC)