She Caught The Light by Kathryn Lasky

Willamina was born more than one hundred years ago in Dundee, Scotland. Called Mina, she was the daughter of a carver and gilder who also had photography as a hobby. Mina was a bright and curious baby who loved to watch her father polish sheets of silver plate.Mina loved to watch photographs emerge onto the plates and she had many questions about this process.

Mina's father died when she was seven years old. As a result everyone in her family had to go to work. Mina began teaching when she was fourteen years old. 

She married James Fleming at the age of twenty and then they set sail to Boston. However, in Boston, James disappeared leaving Mina along and expecting a baby. 

Mina managed to find a job as a maid to Professor Edward Pickering who was director of the Harvard College Observatory.  Elizabeth and Edward Pickering noticed that Mina was smart. Professor Pickering studied the spectra, or the colours of light emitted by stars. His assistants recorded these colours using a telescope's spectroscope. However, Pickering found his assistants were making many mistakes. His wife suggested he get Mina to help.

Mina understood that Pickering was studying not only the position of stars but also what elements they were made of. She also understood that the light from the stars passed through a prism in the spectroscope which then broke the light into its different colours. These were then recorded on glass plates in black and white, as a series of vertical lines. Each star had its own pattern, similar to our finger prints. However, at this time because Mina was a woman, she was not allowed to use the telescope, but only to work with the glass plates. Nevertheless, Mina became accomplished at working with the spectral lines.

With her baby due soon, Mina decided to return to Scotland, where she gave birth to a boy she named Edward. However, Mina could not forget her work in Boston and she returned to work with Professor Pickering who by this time had hired more women to work as "human computers". It was during this work that Mina made an astonishing discovery -The Horsehead Nebula located in the constellation, Orion. 

As she cared for her son, Edward, Mina continued to work with the glass plates, even though she was paid much less than men doing the same work. She also began working on glass plates sent from an observatory in Peru and made many discoveries of stars and other astronomical features in the southern skies. 

Discussion

She Caught The Light highlights the significant contributions made by another woman scientist who is not well known to most readers and has been largely forgotten. Willimina Stevens Fleming, had no formal training as an astronomer, yet despite her lack of education and her significant personal trials, she became an accomplished astronomer, all the while raising her son Edward. She was a member of the Harvard Computers, a group of women that included Annie Jump Cannon and Florence Cushman. These women were responsible for processing the spectral data from the Harvard Observatory in order to create a catalog of stars. You can learn more about the Harvard Computers at ScienceFriday. Willimina discovered fifty-nine nebulae, over three hundred variable stars and ten novae. She also discovered the first white dwarf, which is a star that has depleted its nuclear fuel. She was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1906.

Lasky captures Willimina's story in an engaging way, aided by the beautiful illustrations of Julianna Swaney. The artist used watercolour, gouache, colour pencil and Photoshop to create the lustrous pictures of the sky, and the earthy portrayals of everyday life. Lasky's telling focuses on Williamina's youthful curiosity, her resiliency in overcoming the abandonment of her husband and move to a new country, and her intellectual ability to work with astronomical data and help map the stars.

In her Author's Note at the back, Lasky highlights how women like Willimina Fleming, Henrietta Swan Leavitt and others laid the groundwork for  the future discoveries that would come in the 20th century. There is a short biography as well as a Bibliography included as well. Highly recommended for budding girl scientists and girls everywhere!

Book Details:

She Caught The Light by Kathryn Lasky
New York: HarperCollins Publishers    2021