15 Facts About Williamina Fleming

Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming was a pioneering Scottish astronomer, who made significant contributions to the field despite facing gender biases.

Williamina Fleming was a single mother hired by the director of the Harvard College Observatory to help in the photographic classification of stellar spectra.

Williamina Fleming helped develop a common designation system for stars and cataloged more than ten thousand stars, 59 gaseous nebulae, over 310 variable stars, and 10 novae and other astronomical phenomena.

Williamina Fleming's work has had a lasting impact on our understanding of the universe.

Williamina Fleming Paton Stevens was born in Dundee, Scotland, at 86 Nethergate, on 15 May 1857 to Mary Walker and Robert Stevens, a carver and gilder.

Pickering's wife Elizabeth recommended Williamina as having talents beyond custodial and maternal arts, and in 1879, Pickering hired Fleming to conduct part-time administrative work at the observatory.

In 1881, Pickering formally invited Williamina Fleming to join the HCO and taught her how to analyze stellar spectra.

Williamina Fleming became one of the founding members of the Harvard Computers, an all-women cadre of human computers hired by Pickering to compute mathematical classifications and edit the observatory's publications.

Williamina Fleming devised a system for classifying stars according to the relative amount of hydrogen observed in their spectra, known as the Pickering-Williamina Fleming system.

Williamina Fleming made it possible to go back and compare recorded plates by organizing thousands of photographs by telescope along with other identifying factors.

At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Williamina Fleming openly advocated for other women in the sciences in her talk "A Field for Woman's Work in Astronomy", where she openly promoted hiring female assistants in astronomy.

Williamina Fleming described the bright nebula as having "a semicircular indentation 5 minutes in diameter 30 minutes south of Zeta Orionis".

Williamina Fleming is credited with the discovery of the first white dwarf:.

In 1910, Williamina Fleming published her discovery of white dwarf stars.

Williamina Fleming died of pneumonia in Boston on 21 May 1911, aged 54.