Women Astronomers:
Reaching for the Stars
Mabel Armstrong
Reviewed by Jenny
Salyers
Have you ever
looked up at the sky and wondered at what you saw? Who has made
discoveries
among the stars in the past and present day? Reaching for the Stars
provides
some answers to questions such as these.
The book is laid
out in a way that introduces readers to women who study the stars from
ancient
times, to current day. Each woman is given an overview of their life,
including
the influences that drew them towards astronomy. This glimpse into the
lives of
female astronomers gives readers an idea of why these women fell in
love with
the stars, and what they accomplished in their lifetimes.
Even now, the field of astronomy is still
very male oriented, and it is nice to see the past and current
contributions
and advancements to physics, and how science looks at space and the
stars by women
scientists, and enthusiasts.
Starting back with
the Greek Hypathia, who created the astrolabe that sailors used to
measure the
positions of the stars while at sea, to Hildegarde of Bigen who as well
as the
music and medical writings that she is more famously known for believed
that
the earth rotated around the sun in a time when most people believed
otherwise.
The book then moves forward, through the dark and middle ages to
examine when
and how astronomy became a science through the works of Caroline
Herschel and
her brother in eighteenth century England.
From there, the book moves to the period
of time from 1890 through the early 1940’s when women scientists who
worked low
paid jobs processing massive amounts of data for the Harvard
observatory. The
book finally moves to study the time from the 1920’s, when American
universities first started awarding doctorates in astronomy, through
the 1980’s
when federal legislation opened all university programs to women, and
their
numbers increased in all the scientific fields. The book concludes with
the
work of well known women astronomers in the turn of the twenty-first
century.
This book is a wonderfully written reference
book for anyone who is interested in the backgrounds of the many women
who have
advanced the study of the stars over the years. It looks at the rigid
standards
of societies look at women’s roles, their struggles with running a
household,
raising children, and their love of the stars. I saw some well known
names,
among the lesser known women who advanced the study of astronomy in a
time where
women were not considered to be candidates for advanced degrees in the
field. I
personally enjoyed the mixture of biographical material with
information on the
types of tools used, the historical impact of the past on the study of
the
stars, and the more detailed explanations and illustrations of terms
commonly
used by astronomers as well as different types of stellar subject
studied.