Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born in Lancaster, a small town in Massachusetts, on July 4, 1868. Leavitt graduated from Radcliffe College. She worked at Harvard University in the 1890’s as a human “computer.” Her job was to perform mathematical calculations in a time before digital computers could perform the same tasks. At this job she merely received 10 dollars and fifty cents a week, a pitiful amount given her great contributions to astronomy. She actually hadn’t started studying astronomy until her senior year of college, having studied other disciplines during most of her time at her college, such as fine arts and calculus. Leavitt was actually deaf, having lost her hearing in her mid-twenties. She died from cancer in 1921 when she was only
