Fleming, Williamina Paton. "A Photographic Study Of Variable Stars..." First And Only Edition, 1907

Fleming, Williamina Paton

"A photographic study of variable stars . . . . Prepared by Williamina P. Fleming, curator of astronomical photographs, under the direction of Edward C. Pickering, director of the Observatory." Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1907.

Quarto (300 × 248 mm, 11¾ × 9¾ inches). [i–vi], [1]–113, [1] pp., complete as issued. With numerous tables. Original printed wrappers, somewhat worn. 

FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of this "contribution of fundamental importance." (NAW ii 629). Series: Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, volume 47, part 1.

Fleming was a Scottish astronomer whose numerous contributions to the field cannot be overestimated. Abandoned along with her young son by her husband after following him to the US when she was only 21, she found work as a maid in the home of the director of the Harvard College Observatory, Professor Edward Charles Pickering. At the urging of his wife, who quickly recognized that Fleming's intellectual talents were not being put to use, Pickering hired Fleming in 1879 to do administrative work part-time in the observatory. Just two years later he formally invited her to join the Observatory, and from him Fleming learned how to analyze stellar spectra. She went on to pioneer the classification of stellar spectra, developing a common designation system, and went on to catalogue thousands of stars. She discovered the Horsehead Nebula in 1888, and was one of the founding members of the Harvard Computers, an all-women crew hired by Pickering to compute mathematical classifications.

  “Many astronomers are deservedly proud to have discovered one variable, and content to leave the arrangements for its observation to others: the discovery of 222 [variable stars], and the care for their future on this scale, is an achievement bordering on the marvellous." (H. H. Turner, in Royal Astronomical Society Monthly notices [London, 1827–    ] volume 72, no. 4 [February 1912], pages 261–64, at 262.)