ThinkHer

  Did you know the word 'computer' originally referred to a person, not a machine? Before electronic computers existed, a 'computer' was someone whose job was to compute, meaning to perform calculations. Governments, observatories, banks, and scientific institutions hired people specifically to compute mathematical problems by hand. The machine we know as a computer today inherited this name later. So long before desktops, laptops and touchscreens, 'computers' sat in crowded observatories like the Harvard College Observatory, with pencils, rulers, and stacks of star charts. And Henrietta Swan Leavitt was one of them. Henrietta Swan Leavitt ©BBC Born in 1868 in Massachusetts, Henrietta Swan Leavitt was curious and academically brilliant. She studied art, philosophy, language, and mathematics at Radcliffe College. In her final year, she took a course on astronomy. Somewhere between studying stars and solving equations, she found her interest. But astronomy at that...

There is a question that quietly lingers beneath many attempts to celebrate women in science. Does a woman entering a male-dominated institution automatically make her a feminist figure? Does surviving sexism naturally create solidarity with other women? The answer is not always simple. Many women fought their way through hostile systems without necessarily trying to change those systems for others. Some saw their success as personal achievement. Others understood it as responsibility. Rukhmabai Raut , for instance, did not separate her medical career from her critique of child marriage and women’s lack of autonomy. Her professional life itself became part of a larger political struggle around women’s education and consent. Bertha Lutz moved constantly between science and organized feminist activism, arguing that women’s participation in public and intellectual life required structural and legal change. Wangari Maathai similarly understood environmental destruction, democracy, and wo...