Women hold up half the sky: An online investigation and discussion about the role of
Women in Astronomy, Past, Present, and Future.

Scott Hildreth
Chabot College

Part 2: Contributions of Women to the Science of Astronomy

Websites with Biographical Profiles

Women in Science at http://library.thinkquest.org/20117/ Created and maintained by Nicole Hassold, Kyle Thomas and Arne Frerichs. Historical and Current Entries.

This is an amazing site. In Biographies you'll find links to astronomers of the past and present, but don't miss the chance to check out some online interviews as well. In the upper right-hand corner, go to the QUICKFINDER and select online interviews. Select the "Earth & Space" category. Kim Dow, Dr. Helen M. Hart, Maria Roussou, Dr. Joan T. Schmelz, Meg Urry, or Dr. Ann Viano have provided interesting reflections about what they do, how they became interested in Astronomy, and what they think about women in Astronomy.


4000 Years of Women in Science at http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/ compiled by Dr. Deborah Crocker and Dr. Sethanne Howard. Current and Historical Entries. Search on "Astronomy". The biographies of many entries are still very thin, but the historical sketches are more useful.

The links page at http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/links.html is quite rich!  You can read about Dr. Howard and her reasons for created the site in the January 2000 issue of STATUS: A report on Women, in the article "Science has no Gender", available at: http://www.aas.org/~cswa/status/status_jan00.pdf


Contributions of 20th century women to physics. (UCLA)
http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/ Current (to 1976) and Historical Entries.

Check out the biographies of women in astrophysics:
Burbridge, Margaret                            Burnell, Jocelyn Bell                            Faber, Sandra
Leavitt, Henrietta                                Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia                 Rubin, Vera

And in Space physics:
Herzenberg, Caroline                          Kivelson, Margaret                              Neugebauer, Marcia


Women at NASA at http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/intro.html
Current Entries. This is an outstanding site, with detailed profiles of women currently working for NASA. The site includes archives of online chats with women in engineering, science, and management at the forefront of our country's efforts to explore the planet, the solar system, and the universe.


Distinguished Women of Past and Present, compiled by Danuta Bois, with an astronomy listing at:
http://www.DistinguishedWomen.com/subject/astrono.html Current and Historical Entries.
This site has an extremely vast set of weblinks . Check out her reasons for creating this site.



Women in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors written by Merry Maisel and Laura Smart.

Historical Entries (2) for Astronomy: Helen Sawyer Hogg at http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hogg.html
and Annie Jump Cannon at: http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/cannon.html


Jill Tarter, the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence at http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=318


Women in Astronomy from Lake Afton Public Observatory at http://webs.wichita.edu/lapo/wia.html Historical Entries

Check out the biographies of: Carolyn Herschel: Singer/Astronomer, Celilia Payne-Gaposchkin: In Her Own Words, and Vera Rubin's Dark Universe


History of Women in Astronomy at http://astron.berkeley.edu/~gmarcy/women/history.html Current and Historical Entries. This site reprints biographical portraits from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Issue of Mercury Magazine, Women in Astronomy, Sally Stephens, ed., 1992.


The Contributions of Women to the United States Naval Observatory: The Early Years at http://maia.usno.navy.mil/women_history/history.html (Historical)

Biographical sketches of: Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, Hannah Fancher Mace Hedrick, Eleanor Annie Lamson, Etta Maine Eaton, Elizabeth Brown Davis, Alice Mabel Gray (Wilson), Isabel Martin Lewis, Charlotte Cynthia Barnum, Vera Marie Gushee



The following website does not contain biographical sketches. It does have contact information for many women currently working in Astronomy.

The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy Database Created by Lisa Frattare of the Space Telescope Science Institute at http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/service/cswa/women/

 
 

 


 Introduction & Assignment Overview 

Part 1: Picture an Astronomer

 Part 2: Contributions to Astronomy

 Part 3: The Current Status

 Online Resources

 Online Discussion

 

Copyright 2006

Scott Hildreth

Chabot College Astronomy