OLLI0134 - The Sky is for Everyone: A History of Women Astronomers

Course Description

Before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry. Their considerable intellectual skills were not enough to leverage their way into graduate degree programs, let alone to receive professional appointments at observatories or universities. Prying open the doors of opportunity took most of the 20th century. Today, after decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before. In this course we will present a history of women in astronomy, discussing how and when women broke into the profession of astronomy. We will also look at their important contributions to astronomy and astrophysics. The foundation for our class will be the stories told by many of these women, as told in their own words in The Sky is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words, a book of chapter-length memoirs by 37 professional astronomers, published in 2022 and co-edited by Weintraub. These memoirs span more than 60 years of social and scientific progress and represent scientists from 20 different countries. During the first part of this class, we will learn about some women astronomers who, as they are no longer with us, were not able to author their own stories in The Sky is for Everyone. In the second part of our class, we will discuss some of the stories told in The Sky is for Everyone. Some of these are elegant pieces of prose that will make you smile; others will anger you or make you cry. Many of these women overcame tremendous challenges to enter the profession. Others stood up to prejudice and changed the institutions in which they worked for the better. This course will be recorded.