August 20, 2024
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Review: How a group of women launched modern cosmology
New biography of astronomer Henrietta Levitt celebrates meaning-making in science
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The Spotlight is on Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Levitt
By Anna von Mertens.
MIT Press, 2024 ($34.95)
fan Hidden Numbers and Glass Universe Readers will appreciate Anna von Mertens’s fascinating portrayal of Henrietta Levitt and the Harvard computers that laid the foundations of modern cosmology in the early 20th century. Blending complex science with a human interest story, von Mertens celebrates a group of women scientists who discovered ways to calculate galactic distances and classify stars by their chemical composition. Though the text occasionally veers into textbook territory, von Mertens enriches with vivid illustrations and archival documents to bring these astronomy legends to life on the page. This meticulously researched book is ultimately a homage to the scientific process of observation and meaning-making.
