Miss Mitchell was a member of several learned societies and the author of a number of papers containing the results of her observations on Jupiter and Saturn and their satellites. But she is notable chiefly for being the first woman astronomer in the United States and for training up a number of young women who have followed in her footsteps as enthusiastic astronomers. She held her position at Vassar until 1889, when she died, a few months before her seventy-first birthday.
Since the pioneer days of Miss Caroline Herschel, the number of women throughout the world who have achieved distinction in astronomy has rapidly augmented. One of the most noted of these was Caterina Scarpellini, niece of Feliciano Scarpellini, professor of astronomy in Rome, restorer of the Academy of the Lyncei, and founder of the Capitoline Observatory. Born in 1808, she manifested at an early age a decided taste for astronomy, which was carefully developed by her uncle. She it was who organized the Meteorologico Ozonometric station in Rome and edited its monthly bulletin. She exhibited a special interest in shooting stars and prepared the first catalogue of these meteors observed in Italy. In 1854 she discovered a comet. She has also left valuable studies on the probable influence of the moon on earthquakes—studies which brought her distinction from several of the learned societies of Europe. In 1872 the Italian government decreed her a gold medal for her statistical labors in science. Since her death her countrymen have recognized the value of her contributions to science by erecting a statue to her memory.
Another woman who has won enduring fame in the annals of astronomy is Miss Dorothea Klumpke, of San Francisco. While yet quite young, she and her sisters were taken to Europe to be educated. There she soon became proficient in a number of languages, and then devoted herself to the study of mathematics and astronomy. After securing her baccalaureate and licentiate in Paris, she applied for admission as a student to the Paris observatory. "The directors of the observatory consulted the statutes. No woman had hitherto proposed herself as a colleague, but there was no rule opposing it. They themselves approved, and gave her a telescope to make her own observations. After a time she completed the work begun by Mme. Kovalévsky on the rings of Saturn, which she made the subject of her thesis, and, when she had become Doctor of Science, she was given a decoration by the Institute and made an Officier de l'Académie."
After Miss Klumpke had brilliantly defended her thesis in the Sorbonne, M. Darboux, the president of the jury, complimented the young American doctor on her splendid work and concluded a notable address in her honor in the following laudatory words:
"The great names of Galileo, of Huyghens, of Cassini, of Laplace, without speaking of those of my illustrious colleagues and friends, are attached to the history of every serious step forward made in this attractive and difficult theory of Saturn's rings. Your work constitutes another valuable contribution to the same subject and places you in an honorable rank beside those women who have consecrated themselves to the study of mathematics. In the last century Maria Agnesi gave us a treatise on the differential and integral calculus. Since then Sophie Germain, as remarkable for her literary and philosophical talent as for her faculty for mathematics, won the esteem of the great geometricians who honored our country at the commencement of this century. It is but a few years since the Academy awarded one of its most beautiful prizes which will place the name of Mme. Kovalévsky beside those of Euler and Lagrange in the history of discoveries relative to the theory of the movement of a solid body about a fixed point.... And you, mademoiselle, your thesis is the first which a woman has presented and successfully defended before our faculty for the degree of doctor in mathematics. You worthily open the way, and the faculty unanimously makes haste to declare you worthy of obtaining the degree of doctor."
Besides her thesis just referred to, Miss Klumpke is the author of numerous communications to scientific journals and learned societies regarding her researches on the spectra of stars and meteorites and other allied subjects. For many years she was at the head of the bureau in the Paris Observatory for measuring the photographic plates that are to be used in the large catalogue of stars and map of the heavens which are to constitute the crowning achievements of the International Astronomical Congress. She was the first woman to be elected a member of the Astronomical Society of France, and the character of her work as an observer as well as a computer has given her an enviable position among the astronomers of the world.[150]
In America another woman has won renown among astronomers by successfully executing the same kind of work as was entrusted to Miss Dorothea Klumpke in Paris. For many years Mrs. W. Fleming, with her large corps of women assistants, had charge of the immense collection of astronomical photographs in the Observatory of Harvard University. To her and her staff were assigned the reductions and measurements of the photographic and photometric work done in Cambridge and Arequipa, Peru. She was singularly successful in her studies of photographic plates and made many discoveries which astronomers regard of the greatest importance. By such studies she and her assistants detected many new nebulæ, double and variable stars, besides spectra of different types and of rare interest. In addition to this they examined and classified tens of thousands of photographs of stellar spectra, a labor which involved countless details of reduction and measurements of exceeding delicacy and skill.
A complete list of the women who, during the past half century, have devoted themselves to the study of astronomy and who have contributed to its advancement by their observations and writings would be a very long one. Among those, however, whose labors have attracted special notice, mention must be made of the Misses Antonia C. Maury, Florence Cushman, Louisa D. Wells, Mabel C. Stephens, Eva F. Leland, Anna Winlock, Annie J. Cannon and Henrietta S. Leavitt, all of whom are on the staff of the Harvard Observatory.
Then, too, there are many women who occupy important positions as professors or assistant professors in our colleges and universities. Chief among these in the United States are Sarah F. Whiting, of Wellesley; Mary W. Whitney, of Vassar; Mary E. Boyd, of Smith; Susan Cunningham, of Swarthmore, and Annie S. Young, of Mt. Holyoke. Nor must we forget such able computers as Mrs. Margaretta Palmer, of Yale, and Miss Hanna Mace, the clever assistant of the late Simon Newcomb in the Naval Observatory in Washington.
In the Old World among the women who, during the last few decades, have materially contributed to the progress of astronomy, either as observers and computers or as writers, are Miss Alice Everett, who has done splendid work in the observatories of Greenwich and Potsdam, Misses M. A. Orr, Mary Ashley, Alice Brown, Mary Proctor—daughter of the late astronomer, R. A. Proctor—Agnes M. and Ellen M. Clerke, and Lady Huggins, of England; Mmes. Jansen, Faye, and Flammarion, in France; the Countess Bobinski, in Russia; and Miss Pogson, in the Observatory of Madras, India.