The Second Director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • March 31, 2021

Most people work for a living. I live in order to work. It is what I love to do.

– Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit


In March 2007, Dorrit Hoffleit turned 100. She was a legend not only at the Maria Mitchell Association, but also at Yale University. Despite her retirement in 1975, Hoffleit continued to work well into her 90s, maintaining her office at the Yale Astronomy Department just across the street from her home and coming to Nantucket in 2005 to observe a transit of Venus – an event that Maria Mitchell witnessed in the 1880s at Vassar College. Dorrit Hoffleit attended Radcliffe College despite the fact that when she was eleven years old her teacher told her mother: "Dorrit is not as clever as her brother." And her mother replied: "What do you expect? She's only a girl."


Hoffleit’s career in astronomy began in 1928 as a research assistant at Harvard College Observatory, where she earned forty cents an hour to her male counterparts’ dollar an hour. She worked on photographic variables and spectral classification and took classes part-time in order to obtain her master’s degree. Encouraged by the Harvard Observatory director and her mentor, Dr. Harlow Shapley, Dorrit found herself again enrolled at Radcliffe in order to earn her Ph. D. In 1938, she was one of fourteen women to earn a Ph. D. from Radcliffe – the only one in astronomy that year. At commencement, she was awarded Radcliffe’s Carolyn Wilby Prize for the best original work in any department. Her thesis concerned the determination of stellar absolute magnitudes from an analysis of their spectra. She continued to work for Harvard Observatory until 1956, when she was appointed the director at the Maria Mitchell Association Observatory. The same year, she was offered a position in the Yale University Astronomy Department where she continued her work on variable stars, authored several books, wrote many papers, and made important contributions to the Yale Bright Star Catalogue. As director of the Maria Mitchell Association Observatory until 1978, Dorrit Hoffleit taught and mentored some one hundred young women who went on to careers in astronomy, mathematics, and the sciences. She was the oldest active woman astronomer and perhaps the oldest active astronomer.

Sadly, on April 9, 2007, Dr. Hoffleit passed away in her home after a brief illness. She leaves a tremendous legacy of over seventy years of astronomical work and the fact that her work continues on in the hundreds of people she has mentored in astronomy and in life over the years.


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 6, 2026
July 15. {1863} My dear Sally . . . I think Mitchell is all right in his algebra. He can’t stand an examination in Trig but I don’t believe he will have a rigorous one. Father has seen the Prof. and will give him a letter to them.  If you can’t be honest with your sibling, who can you be honest with? Apparently, Sally Mitchell Barney’s son, William Mitchell Barney – known as Mitchell as his cousin William Mitchell Barney was known as Willie (how is that for honoring your father?!) – was visiting his aunt Maria and his grandfather, William Mitchell, at their home in Lynn, MA. Sally still lived on Nantucket and I suspect Mitchell was not only visiting but getting some much needed help with his mathematics by his aunt Maria. As always, she is brutally honest – he won’t pass a test in trigonometry (but, neither would I!). JNLF

Top O’ the Ridge!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 29, 2026
In April and early May, at long last, the Mitchell House roof was replaced. (I noted this in an earlier blog.) I had also noted that the roofwalk, given the condition it was in and its location – sitting on the ridge – had to be replaced. They had thought they could jack it up – as they have done with other walks – but the Blizzard of February 2026 that was ALL wind (83 MPH winds – read Category 1 Hurricane) and no real snow, made the walk impossible to treat in such a manner (read: crumble). So, after much discussion, review by our preservation easement holder, and permits, as well as some fundraising, we are replacing the roofwalk. The prior walk was not the original. The original blew off in a gale in the late nineteenth century, replaced at some point in the 1930s, and likely replaced again in the 1960s or 1970s. Then, since that time, it was heavily repaired. Its framing members were notched to accept the ridge boards (read: peak) of the roof and I think that may have been an original way to construct a walk. Makes perfect sense – and gives the walk more support and a lower profile. It was after all about putting out chimney fires and preventing roof fires. People copied what worked – and there have been a few others noted to be built in this manner still. It presents an issue though – because if you need to work on the ridge board or close to it – you cannot get to it easily – I guess you may be able to access it to some extent by lifting the deck boards of the walk. The new Mitchell House roofwalk will sit about six inches above the ridge – which will also allow air to circulate better over the ridge and the shakes in that area. That is the only thing that will really be different. It is protected by a preservation easement – as part of the Mitchell House’s easement – and frankly, even if we did not have an easement, we would not want it to look any different. So keep your eyes to the skies at 1 Vestal as we work to re-build the walk. With a special thank you to Barber and Sons and Lydon and Sons. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 22, 2026
1875, June 20. A meeting of the Officers of Congress was called at the house of Mrs. Hanaford, 5 Summit Ave., Jersey City. The weather was intensely cold. I went to New York on the 19 th and stopped with my friend Mrs. Clapp, 100 W. 54 St . . . .It was a question who should preside. Mrs. Hanaford thought the Chairman of the Executive Committee should and I had been told that I should, etc. The question was decided by the non-arrival of the Chairman of Ex.Com. I called them to order at an hour after the time appointed. Of course I made many blunders, as I have never presided before, but I continued for 4 hours. We did a few good things . . . The thing most weighing on Maria’s mind at this meeting was the looseness of membership for the Congress. She felt people were not being vetted properly in some areas of the country and thus they may allow in “undesirables.” I would take this to mean women who were not entirely behind the cause of the Congress and the Association for the Advancement of Women. I am not surprised by her suspicions and likely she was correct – one could see naysayers gaining access to this group and trying to destroy it from the inside. The women’s rights movement would have many schisms within it as people disagreed and broke into smaller factions.  Another important thing to point out is that Mrs. Hanaford is Nantucket-born Phebe Coffin Hanaford. Raised a Quaker, like Maria, Coffin Hanaford would become the first woman Universalist minister in New England – among many other firsts. She grew up with Maria, attended and taught at the Coffin School here on Nantucket, and was a founding member of another women’s organization, Sorosis, which Maria was also a founding member of. It’s nice to see two sister Nantucketers continuing to work together as adults – far from home! JNLF
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