page_title: Harvard Computers
hierarchical_section_title: Harvard Computers
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the Harvard Computers (unflatteringly known as "Pickering's Harem"), a group of women who worked under Edward Charles Pickering at the Harvard College Observatory. The photograph was taken on 13 May 1913 in front of Building C, which was then the newest building at the Observatory. The image was discovered in an album which had once belonged to Annie Jump Cannon. Image courtesy of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Back row (L to R): Margaret Harwood (far left), Mollie O'Reilly, Edward C. Pickering, Edith Gill, Annie Jump Cannon, Evelyn Leland (behind Cannon), Florence Cushman, Marion Whyte (behind Cushman), Grace Brooks.Front row: Arville Walker, unknown (possibly Johanna Mackie), Alta Carpenter, Mabel Gill, Ida Woods.
context_page_description: The Harvard Computers was a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The team was directed by Edward Charles Pickering and, following his death in 1919, by Annie Jump Cannon
  "The women were challenged to make sense of these patterns by devising a scheme for sorting the stars into categories. Annie Jump Cannon's success at this activity made her famous in her own lifetime, and she produced a stellar classification system that is still in use today. Antonia Maury discerned in the spectra a way to assess the relative sizes of stars, and Henrietta Leavitt showed how the cyclic changes of certain variable stars could serve as distance markers in space."
  Other computers in the team included Williamina Fleming and Florence Cushman. Although these women started primarily as calculators, they made significant contributions to astronomy, much of which they published in research articles.
context_section_description: The Harvard Computers was a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The team was directed by Edward Charles Pickering (1877 to 1919) and, following his death in 1919, by Annie Jump Cannon
  "The women were challenged to make sense of these patterns by devising a scheme for sorting the stars into categories. Annie Jump Cannon's success at this activity made her famous in her own lifetime, and she produced a stellar classification system that is still in use today. Antonia Maury discerned in the spectra a way to assess the relative sizes of stars, and Henrietta Leavitt showed how the cyclic changes of certain variable stars could serve as distance markers in space."
  Other computers in the team included Williamina Fleming and Florence Cushman.  Although these women started primarily as calculators, they made significant contributions to astronomy, much of which they published in research articles.
caption: Pickering and his Computers standing in front of Building C at the Harvard College Observatory, 13 May 1913
exif: {}