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 seventh woman in this collection:
Jeanne Clavier (1889-1940)
Professional astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, where she worked for more than 20 years, Jeanne Clavier was in charge of the Carte du Ciel measurements office.
Jeanne Clavier is recruited at the Paris Observatory in 1919 for the project of the Carte du Ciel. She started a few years as a trainee, taking photographic pictures of the sky areas entrusted to the Paris Observatory, then she joined a team that made the reduction calculations necessary for the establishment of the stellar catalog. Over the years, she was appointed assistant astronomer, then assistant astronomer in 1938. From 1930, she took over the supervision of the Carte du Ciel Measurement Office from Dorothea Klumpke; she was in charge of the department without ever having the official status of head. In 1924, she published an article under her own name entitled "Influence of Uniformity Defects in Photographic Plates on Photometric Measurements". Jeanne Clavier shared her technical expertise with a double audience: her article was published by the Bulletin astronomique but also by Science et industries photographiques, a supplement to the Revue française de photographie. She was the first and only woman to receive the Valz Prize in 1940 for her work on the sky map.
Source: Colette Le Lay, 2021, Les carrières féminines à l’Observatoire de Paris (1908-1940).
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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.