Henrietta Leavitt was born in Cambridge ... She worked at the Harvard College Observatory until her death from cancer in 1921.

Henrietta Leavitt joined the Harvard College Observatory as a volunteer in 1895. She was appointed to the permanent staff in 1902, and eventually became chief of the photometry department.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer ahead of her time, discovered the relationship between a star’s brightness and its fluctuation period. This breakthrough allowed Edwin Hubble to measure ...