Discoverer of the period-luminosity law in stellar distance measurement, she was the giant the likes of Hertzsprung, Russell, Shapley, and then eventually, Hubble, shoulders they stood on. For once the idea and natural observation matched with some numerical entity, the competitive numbers people built it out. I'd like more data - if available - relative to her personal life.
Steven, I will not give details about Henrietta Leavitt's personal life here, but will refer to publications about her. You surely have already consulted the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt . The popular book "Miss Leavitt's stars" (2005) by George Johnson was reviewed rather critically, see http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2007JHA....38..244W and https://www.aavso.org/apps/jaavso/article/2476/ . You will find some obituaries and biographies by ADS when copying "Henrietta Leavitt" (without the quoting marks) into the Title field at https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/classic-form . Some of these are available online. Even more obituaries are indicated in https://astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/persons/obit/obit_l.html (entries extracted from the bibliography "Astronomischer Jahresbericht"). You may also consult: Freitag, Ruth S.: Women in Astronomy: A Comprehensive Bibliography, http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/womenastro/womenastro-intro.html for more sources. There are, of course, several entries in biographical encyclopedias, e.g. in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, and in the American National Biography ( https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1300973). And here is the list of references for her from our "Biographical Index of Astronomy" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320130779): Monogr.; DSB 8/105f; Wiki EN, DE; BEA 1286ff; ANB 13/337f; DAB 11/83°; AmSc 220f; Abbott 96f; KKR 191°; EncBrit; LexNat 263; Asimov 752; Tassoul 61f (P), pass.; SuW 5(1966)90, 21(1982)10/414° (P); ONA; ADS; Freitag; BioIdx 31, 32, 33; MP (5383); PN (for the list of abbreviations see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320152207 ; the above list was slightly expanded here compared to the printed 2nd edition).
Best regards, Wolfgang
Wolfgang: THANK you for doing some background for me! I will certainly get to this. II tried to reach a researcher here in the US who was an expert on her, but he died without a trace. //Very best regards - Steven
She received an A- in Astronomy at Harvard, Radcliffe College. She was not allowed to operate a telescope because she was a woman. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1924 but had died 3 years earlier from cancer. Shapely tried to claim her work as his own but was turned down by the academy. She was a genius.