Henrietta Swan Leavitt was faced with hardship and discrimination, and yet she still painstakingly searched through thousands of photographic glass plates, studying the stars, and made it possible for us to measure the universe. She was a deaf woman in science, and, despite being discouraged and paid less than men less qualified than she was, she persevered and helped us map the universe.

Henrietta was the daughter of a Congregational minister and was born into an upper-middle class family at a time when women were discouraged to pursue science. She was able to go to Oberlin College for art and music, even though women were usually prevented from going to college. She later switched to the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, which was later renamed Radcliffe College. In her senior year she took a class in astronomy and discovered her passion for it. However, she became very ill, possibly with meningitis, and was left severely deaf. After that, she decided to volunteer at Harvard. Edward Pickering, who was known to hire women (because he could pay them less than he could’ve paid less qualified men), hired her. She was given a permanent position, and was paid 30 cents an hour rather than the usual 25 because of her amazing work. 30 cents an hour was a fine but not outstanding wage for the time, about 11 dollars today. With Pickering, Henrietta painstakingly studied thousands of stars and discovered more than 2,400 variable stars, a type of star that varies in brightness, which was about half of those that were known at the time. She also discovered that the longer a Cepheid star, a type of variable star, took to go from light to dark and back again, the brighter they actually were. This allowed astronomers to study the stars and find out how far away stars were.

In my project, I painted the night sky using watered down acrylic paint to make it more see-through to imitate the photographic glass plates that were used at the time and to make the texture feel more real. I splatter-painted white paint onto it to show the stars, and in the center I glued two hands sketched with pencil on paper in the motion and shape of the word “stars” in American Sign Language. My artwork shows that even though she was deaf, she still studied the stars and helped us to understand the cosmos.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s extraordinary work reminds me that no matter who you are, what you’re faced with, or how immense the problem (or the universe) is, you can achieve anything if you want it enough and put in everything you have.