Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (; July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. Her discovery of how to effectively measure vast astronomical distances led to a shift in the understanding of the scale and nature of the universe. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a human computer, tasked with measuring photographic plates to catalog the positions and brightness of stars. This work led her to discover the relation between the luminosity and t