Sky & Telescope August 1986 [antikvár]

The Triumph of Dorothea KlumpkeKenneth Weitzenhoffer, Brooklyn, New YorkThe balloon La Centaure, bathed in the light of the full Moon, rose over Paris into a bitter wind a few minutes after 1:00 a.m. on November 16, 1899. Its task was to carry an astronomer above the autumn ground fog to observe the last great sky show of the 19th century, the Leonid meteor shower.The seven-hour flight was a scientific disappointment: only 15 Leonids were observed. But it was a great milestone for women in science, because the astronomer aboard La Centaure was Dorothea Klumpke. At age 38 she had become the first woman to make astronomical observations above the Earth's surface, augmenting an illustrious career that would continue well into the 20th century.Dorothea Klumpke was born in San Francisco in 1861, one of seven children of a forty-niner who ran out of luck in the gold fields but made a fortune in San Francisco real estate. Each of the five Klumpke sisters was extraordinarily gifted. Their mother believed her daughters should have the same educational advantages as men but could find no suitable schools in post-gold-rush San Francisco, Therefore, she took her talented brood to Europe, placing them in schools in Germany, Switzerland, and France before settling permanently in Paris.Each of the Klumpke sisters forged a distinguished career. Augusta became a neurologist despite intense resistance by physicians of that time to women in their ranks. Mathilda became a concert pianist, Julia a concert violinist and composer, and Anna a painter of landscapes and portraits. Dorothea initially followed her musically inclined siblings but, like Caroline Herschel a century before, switched to astronomy.Soon after she received a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from the Sorbonne in 1886, Klumpke joined the staff of the Paris Observatory. There she assisted pioneer astrophotographers Paul and Prosper Henry. The Henrys had recently completed a new ]3!/2-inch refractor designed to facilitate their asteroid hunting by providing photographic star charts. Klumpke's assignment was to measure and reduce the star-field plates.In April, 1887, an international congress of astronomers from 17 countriesconvened at the Paris Observatory at the invitation of its director, Adm. Ernest Mouchez, to discuss the role that photography would play in mapping the heavens. Dorothea used her talents as a Unguist to translate papers presented at the conference into French for the official record. Out of this first congress was born the Carte du Ciel project for a photographic atlas of stars down to 15th magnitude (ST: September, 1982, page 237).By 1891 the Carte du Ciel program was well under way. So many plates awaited measurement that Mouchez found it necessary to establish a special bureau to clear up the backlog. Klumpke applied for its directorship, competing as a foreigner and a woman against some 50 men. Despite the formidable odds, Klumpke won the post, becoming the first woman to head a department of the Paris Observatory. For the next decade she managed the work of assistants who measured and reduced star positions for the accompanying star catalogues.On December 14, 1893, Dorothea was again at the Sorbonne, standing before an expectant gathering of professors and several hundred spectators. The treatise she read on Saturn's rings won her a doctorate in mathematics that day. "Your thesis," one of the examining professors said during the award ceremony, "is the firstwhich a woman has presented and successfully sustained with our faculty to obtain this degree. You worthily open the way. . . ." The New York Times carried a front-page article under the headline, "An American Woman's Triumph."NEW HEIGHTSNearly a century before the nations of Europe collaborated on a spacecraft mission to Comet Halley, the scientists of Russia, Germany, and France made plans to launch balloons so that astronomers could observe the Leonid meteor shower of mid-November, 1899. "I do not know what good fairy overheard my wish to take a trip in the blue sky," Dorothea wrote of her voyage in La Centaure. "My surprise was great when I learned the French Society of Aerial Navigation had chosen me for the astronomical expedition of the Leonids. After reflection I accepted the unexpected invitation. 1 had the mysterious and alluring anticipation of an ascent in a balloon."The Leonids, magnificent in their displays of 1799, 1833, and 1866, were confidently predicted to fill the skies with shooting stars once again. But these predictions fell far short of reality. By 1:00 a.m. on November 16th, as Klumpke waited to go aloft in La Centaure, she already knew of disappointing reports fromDorothea Klumpke Roberts as she appeared early and late in life. Paris Observatory photographs courtesy Sherwood Harrington./I ligwir,Sky & Telescope 109