sweet auburn | winter 2025-2026 mentored, and worked alongside as Women Astronomical Computers at the Harvard College Observatory. In the decades that followed her death, a hundred and fifty more women would ascend Observatory Hill to measure and map the stars and galaxies on glass. 30 They, too, would make new discoveries, name new stars, and open paths for others to follow— each one sparking a new light Fleming first helped to ignite.
Now, time and weather have softened the Italian marble of Fleming’ s low monument. Its pale veins, softened edges, and fine grooves hold the memory of rain; its surface glimmers faintly in sunlight, as though still reflecting the stars she measured on glass. The grain of the stone reveals what looks like the latent image of one last radiant burst of light— a supernova. Carved into stone if not into the stars or ledgers, spoken now by visitors and strangers, it names her labor that opened the universe for others to follow. 31 Here, in the rock itself— born of stardust— the universe she mapped leans close and calls her by her true title at last: ASTRONOMER.
1
“ Mrs. Fleming.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 72, no. 4( 1912): 261 – 64. https:// doi. org / 10.1093 / mnras / 72.4.261.
2 John O’ Connor and Edmund Robertson,“ Williamina Paton Fleming.” In MacTutor: Maths History, Biographies( School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, June 2023). https:// mathshistory. st-andrews. ac. uk / Biographies / Fleming /.
3 Paul A. Haley,“ Williamina Fleming and the Harvard College Observatory,” The Antiquarian Astronomer: Journal of the Society for the History of Astronomy, no. 11( June 2017): 2 – 32.
4 M. Susan Barger, and William B. White, The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science( Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991): 86 – 90.
5 Alex McGrath,“ Harvard Photos of Eclipses through the Years,” The Harvard Gazette, August 18, 2017. https:// news. harvard. edu / gazette / story / 2017 / 08 / harvard-photos-of-eclipses-through-theyears /.
6“ The Harvard Plate Stacks, Center for Astrophysics.” Accessed October 9, 2025. https:// platestacks. cfa. harvard. edu /.
7 Williamina P. Fleming,“ A Field for Woman’ s Work in Astronomy,” Astronomy and Astro-Physics 12, no. 8( 1893): 683.
8 Susan Sontag, On Photography( Paperback reissue edition; Picador / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025).
9 Fleming,“ A Field for Woman’ s Work in Astronomy,” 688.
10
E. C. Pickering,“ A New Star in Centaurus: The New Algol Variable in Delphinus,” Astronomische Nachrichten 139( January 1896): 249. https:// doi. org / 10.1002 / asna. 18961391604.
11
Harvard University. The Harvard University Catalogue: 1898 – 1899, Official Register of Harvard University( Harvard University Press, 1899: 28 and 605 – 606. https:// catalog. hathitrust. org / Record / 006923722.
12
Harvard University,“ Chest of 1900,” 1899 – 1900. HUA 900. xx, Harvard University Archives. https:// id. lib. harvard. edu / ead / hua09003 / catalog Accessed October 08, 2025.
13
1900 U. S. Census, Cambridge Ward 5, Middlesex, Massachusetts; Roll: 657; Page: 21; Enumeration District: 0727.
14
Williamina P. Fleming,“ Journal of Williamina Paton Fleming, 1900 Mar. 1 – Apr. 18: Curator of Astronomical Photographs, Harvard College Observatory- Harvard University,” 1900. Harvard University Archives, HUA 900.11, Box 2.
15
Fleming,“ Journal of Williamina Paton Fleming, 1900,” HUA 900.11, Box 2, p. 4.
16
Priscilla F. Bok,“ Annie Jump Cannon, 1863 – 1941,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 53( June 1941): 166. https:// doi. org / 10.1086 / 125296.
17
Arthur Poynton,“ Honorary Degrees,” Oxford University Gazette 55, no. 1777( 1925): 759 – 61.
18
Boston Sunday Post( Boston, MA),“ Keeping House: Domestic Scientist Gives Key to Its Success,” July 1, 1900. https:// access. newspaperarchive. com / boston-sunday-post / 1900-07-01 / page-8 /
19
Fleming,“ Journal of Williamina Paton Fleming, 1900,” HUA 900.11, Box 2, pp. 16 – 17.
20
Fleming,“ Journal of Williamina Paton Fleming, 1900,” HUA 900.11, Box 2, pp. 18 – 19.
21
Fleming,“ Journal of Williamina Paton Fleming, 1900,” HUA 900.11, Box 2, p. 21.
22
Fleming,“ Journal of Williamina Paton Fleming, 1900,” HUA 900.11, Box 2, p. 22.
23
Williamina Fleming,“ Notes on Draper Catalog; Accounts of Share-Holders of the Camera,” 1892 – 1896, Harvard Plate Stacks: Project Phaedra 895.
24
Fleming,“ Notes on Draper Catalog,” p. 152.
25
Annie Jump Cannon, In the Footsteps of Columbus( Boston L. Barta & Co., Printers, 1893). Pdf. https:// www. loc. gov / item / 07006496 /.
26
Dava Sobel, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars( Penguin Publishing Group, 2016), 135 – 40.
27
J. S. Plaskett,“ The Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 4( October 1910): 373.
28
J. S. Plaskett,“ Photo Album of the 4th Conference of the International Union for Solar Research.” Photo album, California, 1910, p. 7. Mount Wilson Observatory Photographs and Audiovisual Materials. https:// hdl. huntington. org / iiif / info / p15150coll2 / 5846 / manifest. json.
29
Plaskett,“ Photo Album,” p. 10.
30
Lindsay Smith Zrull,“ Women in Glass: Women at the Harvard Observatory during the Era of Astronomical Glass Plate Photography, 1875 – 1975,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 52( May 2021): 115 – 46. https:// doi. org / 10.1177 / 00218286211000470.
31
See Maria McEachern’ s photographs of Fleming’ s monument in Anna Von Mertens, Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt( The MIT Press, 2024): 177 – 81.
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