Dorrit Hoffleit

Thank you to Pangratios Papacosta, Professor of Physics at Columbia College Chicago, who suggested two women in Astronomy he says contributed much to science, despite gender discrimination. Papacosta say he was very fortunate to have met one of them who at the age of 100 was still doing astronomy at Yale. “She is Dorrit Hoffleit and I had the honor of interviewing her for an article I wrote about her and her contributions as well as the gender battles she had to fight. She inspired hundreds of young ladies who came to an astronomy summer camp that Dorrit was running at the Nantucket’s Maria Mitchell Observatory. Of the 102 girls who spent summer there 20 became professional astronomers.”

Please see his article  Dorrit Hoffliet: From four-leaf clovers to variable stars that was published in the January 2006 issue of STATUS, a report on women in Astronomy.  Papacosta’s other GGSTEM post is about Henrietta Leavitt.