The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars Paperback – Illustrated, 1 Jan. 2017

This book is very well researched and very informative. For anyone with connections to any of the people mentioned or for people interested in the history of astronomy and the contributions of brilliant women, this book is for you,

I had high expectations of this book and it didn't disappoint. This is a very readable account of how a group of women, encouraged by enlightened directors, performed ground-breaking work in the new discipline of astrophysics. Nerdy as it may appear, I found this book to be a page turner.

I don't usually bother reviewing books that disappoint me but I'm making an exception to that rule. This is one of those books where I am so glad I picked it up at the local library and didn't even spend the 45p it costs to have it reserved from another branch, so that will tell you something.I mean, it's not actively awful and I suppose if you didn't know anything about the subject matter, it would be a reasonable introduction, but it just doesn't do what it sets out to do if you're looking for more than that (and I was!). For a book about the women who worked in the Harvard astronomy department in the late 19th and early 20th century, it sure talks a lot more about the men who work there than actually tell us much about the women. I got to the point about halfway through that I was skimming paragraphs to see if they were about the women or not and moving on if they weren't. More time at one stage is spent on the women whose money supported the department than the ones doing the work, so we know more about how they felt about it than how the actual women astronomers did.In the end, I didn't feel like I came away from this book with any more idea of who these pioneering women were and what it was like to do what they did, both personally and professionally, than I had when the book started. There's no sense, for example, of the frustration many (all?) of them must have experienced at the restrictions set on what they could do while less talented men passed them by on the academic ladder. Surely, somewhere, there must be some more candid account of what it was like to be them than has been drawn on in this book?All of this was then capped for me by the way the author refers to everyone - men get referred to routinely by their surname, women as Miss or Mrs. Which is fine, except that while most of the men have a PhD and possession of that or otherwise is glossed over, so do some of the women and I felt as though that should have been recognised - not doing so is doubly ignoring the difficulty for a woman of that time to get a doctoral degree in a science subject. It also plays into the idea that these women, the first 'computers' were uneducated grunt workers and not the scientific pioneers they actually were, most of them middle class or above, most of them with postgraduate education or above.Anyway, disappointing coming from the woman who wrote the excellent 'Longitude' (which I recommend, regardless of this book) and I guess the book I really wanted to read about these women is (hopefully) still out there...

Fascinating story (just as Longitude…) very well told. Ms Sobel is a fine storyteller.

These ladies weren't men's equals, they were superior, pioneering scientific advances into the realm of the new astronomical knowledge of the Universe. Great and easy read.

I've been teaching general education astronomy classes for several years and had brought up the Harvard "Calculators" in lecture, so I was eager to get a more in-depth understanding of that era in astronomy. I had expected to read about how poorly the women were treated, kept from telescope work and relegated to menial tasks of looking at photographic plates, etc. Instead, we see strong and brilliant women changing the course of astronomy by their hard work, scientific acumen and strokes of genius. The expected resistance to women in leadership roles is there, to be sure, but not so much within the Harvard observatory community as from the university higher-ups. Several of these "calculator" women were internationally recognized as leaders in the field. Even the wealthy benefactors (such as Henry Draper's widow, Anna Draper), who helped the observatory's work to greatly expand, were women.Whether you're specifically interested in the subject of women in science or not, this book is just a great snapshot of science history, period. From the late 1800's, when next to nothing was known about what stars were made of, their lifecycle, whether there were other galaxies or not, etc., to the work of Edwin Hubble in the 1920's and 30's, with the discovery of an expanding universe populated by untold numbers of galaxies, a scientific road runs through the work of the ladies of the Harvard Observatory. The "big names" (like Hubble, Hertzsprung, Russell) were indebted to their work.In short, another great book from Dava Sobel. Previous books (Longitude and Galileo's Daughter) are also well worth reading. She is thorough but never plodding in her retelling of history. It feels alive, moving at times, and always interesting.

The Glass Universe tells the thrilling (yes, I'm using that term advisedly) story of how women drove some of the major advances in the science of astronomy. Today, we believe we know the age of the universe (13.7 billion years, plus or minus 100 million), the size of the universe, and the contents and theory of how the stars shine. The women of the Harvard Observatory, among others, helped us find these answers.In a time where science was dominated by men, and women had no place, astronomy was different. Women worked as computers, a name for people who computed rather than the machine we use today, though a better description of their work may have been analysts. They examined photographic plates produced by the large telescopes operated by Harvard and measured position, brightness, and variability. Henrietta Swan Leavitt deduced during her examination of plates of the Magellanic Clouds that a variable star's (a star that vary their brightness over time) intrinsic brightness is related to its period (the time it takes for the star to come to full brightness, fade, and return to full brightness). This one insight allowed astronomers to measure distances to the stars, and thereby begin the process of measuring the whole of the observable universe.Anyone interested in the history of women in science would enjoy this thoroughly researched, and lyrical work by Dava Sobel. Any young woman interested in a career in science would be inspired by it. For the rest of us, this is an upbeat, insightful, and hopeful work that shows the work of exploration is not just for the boys anymore.

I found this book to be slow reading.Nowhere near as good as her book "Longitude".