Both women stand out as geniuses worthy of a Nobel prize, but neither got one. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In the early 20th ...

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was not famous in her lifetime. She did not win the Nobel Prize, although her name was being considered before her untimely death in 1921. Neither is it vital to this story that ...

The portrait that emerged from her discovery, called Leavitt’s Law, showed that the universe was hundreds of times bigger than astronomers had imagined. By Kirk Johnson This article is part of ...

Hoping to find my way back to Harvard Square from MIT, I ducked around a tarped fence on Main Street per the advice of a roadside sign. Its oversized letters — too imperious for its situation, I ...

The life of astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries wasn't glamorous. Her tedious work and genius observations didn't guarantee fame or equality, at least not in ...