Giant leap for women: early ‘lady’ astronomers have asteroids named in their honour
19th-century trailblazers Annie Maunder and Alice Everett finally earn due recognition for decades of largely unattributed work
I cheered, but of course the women’s story is enraging:
Maunder and Everett, who became friends while studying mathematics at Girton College in Cambridge in the 1880s, were early members of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), which put their names forward to the Catalina Sky Survey for the honour.
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Like all female students at Cambridge until 1948, the pair were not awarded degrees despite passing their examinations with honours. After graduating, they both took jobs as “lady computers” at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. “Lady computers would measure the positions of stars and convert them into astronomical tables,” said [Mike] Frost [head of BAA’s historical section].
“The Astronomer Royal realised there was this pool of women coming out of Oxbridge, highly talented in mathematics, who could be hired cheaply.”
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Refused fellowship of the male-only Royal Astronomical Society until 1916, Maunder could not present scientific papers, relying on her husband to communicate her controversial discoveries about the asymmetrical nature of sunspots.
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Working with the inventor of the television, John Logie Baird, Everett successfully applied for joint patents relating to television optics, and it is likely she was present at the first demonstration of a television image in 1926.
“She was a pioneer of early television technology and a founding fellow of the Royal Television Society,” said Frost.
Sounds like their stories would make great movies, together or separately.
What are some great movies about underappreciated women in history? And why aren’t there more of them? (Rhetorical question; we know why.) Do you know of a historical woman most of us have never heard of whom you’d love to see a movie about? (I’d never heard of Maunder or Everett.)
Now, I’m not sure that Marie Curie is exactly underappreciated, though she’s certainly less represented in pop culture than male scientists of her stature and importance. So my pick is the 2020 film Radioactive, starring the brilliant Rosamund Pike as the scientist who is still the only person — male or female — to win two Nobel Prizes in two different disciplines.
I am basing my recommendation not on something I have seen, but something I recently had recommended to me that I want to see, and that is 1983’s SILKWOOD. The Letterboxd podcast featured this in their list of workers’ rights films not too long ago, and just hearing the plot summary makes me fascinated to learn more about the bravery of nuclear and labour activist Karen Silkwood.
I am frustrated both at myself, and at the film landscape at large, that I can’t easily come up with an answer to this question with a film I have actually seen. I was going to say THE WOMAN KING but then I learned Viola Davis’ character is fictional. I like that THE IMITATION GAME included Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke, highlighting her importance to Bletchley Park, but the film certainly was not about her (and it’s been a while since I have seen it, but it may have even downplayed her contribution? unsure).
On the whole, we need more of these films! And we need to appreciate the contributions of the countless unsung women a helluva lot more.
THE WOMAN KING is a good one, though, because even if the story is fictionalized, those warriors were real, and their story hasn't been told, at least not in a way that Western audiences will have been familiar with.
a great point! When I saw it in the theater, I was thrilled to see a period film that not only was centering a non-white, non-Western culture, but was also centering the women of that culture. It matters beyond the specifics of the individual character Viola Davis plays, you're absolutely right.
I am basing my recommendation not on something I have seen, but something I recently had recommended to me that I want to see, and that is 1983’s SILKWOOD. The Letterboxd podcast featured this in their list of workers’ rights films not too long ago, and just hearing the plot summary makes me fascinated to learn more about the bravery of nuclear and labour activist Karen Silkwood.
I am frustrated both at myself, and at the film landscape at large, that I can’t easily come up with an answer to this question with a film I have actually seen. I was going to say THE WOMAN KING but then I learned Viola Davis’ character is fictional. I like that THE IMITATION GAME included Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke, highlighting her importance to Bletchley Park, but the film certainly was not about her (and it’s been a while since I have seen it, but it may have even downplayed her contribution? unsure).
On the whole, we need more of these films! And we need to appreciate the contributions of the countless unsung women a helluva lot more.
THE WOMAN KING is a good one, though, because even if the story is fictionalized, those warriors were real, and their story hasn't been told, at least not in a way that Western audiences will have been familiar with.
a great point! When I saw it in the theater, I was thrilled to see a period film that not only was centering a non-white, non-Western culture, but was also centering the women of that culture. It matters beyond the specifics of the individual character Viola Davis plays, you're absolutely right.