A MMWSS Thank You!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 5, 2020

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our “mini” online version of the Maria Mitchell Women of Science Symposium. It was sad to not be in-person for a two-day event but I believe – and people have said – that it was a wonderful experience.


A special thanks to our keynote Catalina Martinez and to our panelists: Dorene Price, Amy Bower, Serra Hoagland, and Sabine von Sengbusch. And thank you to our MMWSS co-chairs Gwyneth Packard and Joe Santucci as well as out presenters Celia Mulcahey and Jocelyn Navarro. And another thank you to Gwyneth Packard who also acted as our moderator.


We must not forget our sponsors who support this online effort: The American Astronomical Society, Novartis, and the Tupancy-Harris Foundation of 1986.


It was an inspiring, emotional and educational three hours and though we were spread across the country and the world (yes, the world), we were able to overcome ZOOM issues that come about with such a gathering and come together.


We hope you can join us in 2021 when we hope to meet in person September 23-25, 2021. And shortly, we will have the recorded meeting available for everyone.


Keep your eyes on the MMWSS website at www.mmwiss.org for the recording and for more information about 2021. Be well!


JNLF

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Dorrit Hoffleit began her tenure at the MMO in 1957. A graduate of Radcliffe, Hoffleit earned a Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1938. During World War Two, she worked for the U. S. government on missile trajectories and joined Yale’s Astronomy Department in 1956. Her directorship of the MMO allowed her to work part of the year on island and the remainder at Yale with the two organizations sharing her salary. She was the principal author of the Yale Bright Star Catalog – work that was continually added to over fifty years – and her work also focused on the study of variable stars. Hoffleit continued in the path of Harwood with research and public outreach, and bringing worldwide recognition to the MMO. Among her many accomplishments on behalf of the MMO, Hoffleit is known for her work with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a grant she received in 1957 to allow for the summer training of female undergraduate students in astronomy. This was the pilot project for the national program of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in various branches of science and technology, launched by the NSF in 1990. The MMA became a permanent REU site in astronomy, which is funded by the NSF based on periodically submitted proposals. Today, the MMO continues to have a lasting effect on its students. More than five percent of all the U.S. women becoming Ph.D.s in astronomy have participated in the MMA REU program. The probability of a current MMA REU student (either female or male) to become a Ph.D. is approximately sixty percent. Approximately fifty current professors of astronomy in the U. S. have participated in the REU program at the MMA. Hoffleit who retired from the MMO in 1978, continued her connections to the MMA up until the last weeks of her life. She passed away in 2007 at the age of one hundred. JNLF
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August 17{1857} Today we have been to the far-famed British museum. I carried as “open sesame” a paper given to me by Prof. Henry asking for me special attention from all societies with which the Smithsonian {is} connected . . . . The art of printing has brought us incalculable blessings, but as I looked at a neat manuscript book by Queen Elizabeth copied from another, as a present to her Father I could not help thinking that it was better than worsted work! On August 2, 1857, Maria Mitchell and the young woman she was accompanying as a chaperone, Prudence Smith, arrived in Liverpool England for their European tour. Maria Mitchell’s “open sesame” was a letter of introduction – she went with several. She would find that the doors were thrown open for America’s first woman astronomer – she was that well known in America and abroad. She would become quite close to Sir George Airy, the British Astronomer Royal, and his wife Richarda, as well as the astronomical Herschel family. JNLF
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