For nearly a month, from February 11, marking the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, to March 8, the date on which International Women’s Rights Day is celebrated, eight portraits of women astronomers who have worked "for" or "with" the Paris Observatory over the last three centuries will be published on the wire.
Find out the portrait of the fourth woman in this collection:
Dorothea Klumpke (1861-1942)
First woman doctor of science, she directed the Bureau des mesures at the Paris Observatory between 1892 and 1901. She actively participated in the Carte du Ciel project and was interested in the morphological study of nebulae
Born in San Francisco, Dorothéa Klumpke obtained a degree in mathematics and astronomy at the Sorbonne in 1886 and became in 1893 the first woman doctor of science, with a thesis on the rings of Saturn. In 1887, she joined the Carte du Ciel project at the Paris Observatory, where she was in charge of measuring star coordinates on photographic plates. A few years later, she became the director of the Bureau des Mesures (1892-1901), at the head of a team of women "calculators". She was the author of numerous reviews, covering all the fields of astronomy, and of articles on the history of science, notably on the place of women. Extending the work of Isaac Roberts, she studied the faint nebulosities in the outer regions of Messier 57 (1913) and the internal structure of the HI 79 Ursae Majoris nebula (1914); she also published the catalog of nebulae observed with Kennesee’s 20" telescope (1922) and "Isaac Roberts’ Atlas of 52 Regions as a Guide to Herschel’s Fields" (1929).
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The Women Astronomers project at the Paris Observatory
At the initiative of the working group on equality between women and men, and with the support of the presidency of the Observatoire de Paris-PSL, a committee of female and male researchers, students and doctoral students has been formed to highlight the work of women astronomers who, as much as their male colleagues, have contributed to the scientific history of the institution. These women often remained in the shadow of the private sphere, rarely co-signing the publication of their own results, or confined to the role of assistant or scientific secretary, before finally obtaining the recognized status of astronomer at the beginning of the 20th century.
In addition to a first event in the form of a few web and Twitter publications on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2023, the project plans to build up a documentary fund, to write wikipedia content to describe the work of the many women astronomers who have worked with the institution, and eventually to create an installation in the form of a portrait gallery, to be exhibited in the buildings of the institution.
Participating in this project are Romane Cologni, Lucie Cros, Léa Griton, Mathilde Malin, Rhita-Maria Ouazzani and Gilles Theureau.