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Time of India
11-08-2025
- Science
- Time of India
She worked with Edwin Hubble at Harvard for 30 cents an hour and shaped the view of universe as we know it, yet never won a Nobel Prize
A Human Computer with a Cosmic Vision — Harvard (@Harvard) The Law That Measured the Cosmos The Men Who Built Upon Her Work Legacy Among the Stars More than a century ago, in a quiet corner of the Harvard College Observatory , a woman sat for hours examining tiny specks on glass photographic plates. These dots, captured from the night sky, would reveal a secret so profound that it would transform our understanding of the cosmos. Her name was Henrietta Swan Leavitt , and she uncovered a way to measure the universe despite her groundbreaking discovery, the Nobel Prize she deserved slipped away—not because her work went unnoticed, but because she was no longer alive when the world was ready to honor a Radcliffe College graduate, joined the Harvard Observatory in the late 19th century as a 'human computer,' part of an all-female team tasked with cataloging stars. At the time, women were rarely given credit for their scientific contributions. Leavitt earned just 30 cents an hour, equivalent to about $10 today, and her role was considered clerical rather than she was more than a diligent measurer of star brightness. While studying thousands of images from the Small Magellanic Cloud, she spotted a pattern in a type of pulsating star known as a Cepheid 1912 paper in the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College revealed what would later be called Leavitt's Law—a precise relationship between a Cepheid star's brightness and the length of time it took to complete a cycle of dimming and 'period-luminosity relationship' became the first reliable cosmic yardstick, allowing astronomers to determine distances to faraway galaxies. As science writer Jeremy Bernstein noted in his review of her work, Leavitt's insight shifted astronomy from a flat, two-dimensional map to a vast, three-dimensional method was soon used by astronomer Edwin Hubble , who applied it to prove that the Andromeda Nebula was, in fact, another galaxy far beyond the Milky Way. This breakthrough ended astronomy's long-standing 'Great Debate' over the scale of the universe and laid the foundation for Hubble's later proof that the cosmos is himself admitted that his achievements were made possible by Leavitt's earlier findings. Mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler even tried to nominate her for a Nobel Prize in 1925—only to learn she had died of cancer three years earlier. The Nobel Committee does not award posthumous influence reaches far beyond her lifetime. Cepheid variables remain a critical tool for measuring cosmic distances, and her work underpins much of modern astronomy's understanding of the universe's is honored today with a lunar crater, an asteroid, and even a telescope bearing her name. Yet her story is also a reminder of how history often delays recognition for trailblazing women in science Henrietta Swan Leavitt once calculated the distance to the stars. Now, a century later, the world is still calculating the distance to the recognition she deserved.
Boston Globe
10-08-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Razia Jan, who reached out from the South Shore to build a school for Afghan girls, dies at 81
'We have educated thousands of girls who are now teaching their siblings and children to read and write,' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Ms. Jan, who became a US citizen after moving to Boston in 1970 to further her own studies, died of congestive heart failure July 20 at home in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Advertisement She was 81 and formerly lived for many years in Marshfield, where more than two decades ago she conceived the idea of returning to Afghanistan to create a better future for girls and women. Advertisement 'Building a foundation of lasting change for a country — that's the big picture for all of us,' said Ms. Jan greeted students outside their school in Kabul. Beth Murphy In pursuing her goals, Alberto said, Ms. Jan never gave up, whether she was raising money, seeking support from Afghan village elders, or persuading fathers to let their daughters attend school, which had been forbidden in the late-1990s, when the Taliban controlled the country. 'She just was relentless,' said Alberto, who added that it seemed as if Ms. Jan was incapable of hearing anything other than 'yes.' If a village official refused an initial request, 'she would say, 'I will bide my time and ask again,' ' Alberto said. 'She did not take no for an answer.' And when Ms. Jan faced obstacles building a school and expanding its student population, she remained endlessly optimistic. 'I saw her say 'yes' so many times when maybe another person would say 'no,' ' said Rather than set aside plans, Quigley added, Ms. Jan would say: ' 'This is going to be hard to do — we can do this.' Any kind of roadblock that came along would not deter her at all. She would find a way around it.' 'She was really a powerhouse,' said Advertisement In Afghanistan, where those who oppose letting girls be educated have burned other girls' schools and poisoned students, Ms. Jan and the institution she founded were beacons for a better future, her friends said. 'Razia was hope personified, and I think that's her biggest legacy,' said 'She cared so much about the girls and their futures, and about the teachers and their families,' Murphy said. 'She has genuinely altered the lives of generations of people in Afghanistan. It's so remarkable.' Ms. Jan was born on June 5, 1944, in Quetta, which has since then become part of Pakistan, and grew up there and in Kabul. She was the youngest of five siblings, including a half-brother from the first marriage of her mother, Zainab Sardar. Her father, Sardar Ali Asghar Mohammed Zai, was from a prosperous extended family that owned agricultural lands and lived together in a compound. After graduating from a women's college with bachelor's and master's degrees in early childhood education, Ms. Jan followed one of her brothers to the United States. He was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studied at Radcliffe College and what is now Lesley University before moving to Marshfield, where she raised her son, Lars, as a single mother. With Jan's Original Designs, she made clothes that she sold along the Eastern seaboard. Then she opened Razia's Tailors and Cleaners in Duxbury. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she made hundreds of fleece quilts with American flags and other designs and donated them to relief efforts. She also made large quilts bearing images and descriptions of those killed in the attacks. Advertisement A few years later, 'My mom's vision was, 'If I can educate a girl for a day, I'll educate a girl for a day,' ' said her son, Lars, who lives in Los Angeles. 'She believed in the cycle of education: the more that you can educate a girl, the more likely that she's going to be able to transmit that to her own children, and to her sisters and brothers.' Ms. Jan spoke several languages, a legacy of her youth, which helped her negotiate with all the people whose approvals she needed for her school. Her effort to create the school was inspired partly by her mother, whose generation didn't have the educational opportunities Ms. Jan enjoyed. She also drew inspiration from time she spent in Los Angeles with her only grandchild, Esme, when she was the same age as girls who attend the Zabuli Education Center. 'She poured such depth of love and attention and care on Esme,' said Mia Barron, Ms. Jan's daughter-in-law. 'They just loved being beside each other.' A celebration of life will be announced for Ms. Jan, who in addition to her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, leaves two brothers, Ashraf of Alexandra, Va., and Assif of Islamabad, Pakistan. Advertisement Ms. Jan, 'The tenacity of Afghan girls is the reason I remain optimistic,' she wrote near the end of her Globe essay, published just after the Taliban seized power. 'Now is not the time to surrender to despair. I will continue to educate girls, even if we are presented with new obstacles; we will make concessions in exchange for safety in education. We are resolute in the belief that education is the key to peaceful change, even when progress feels slow.' Additional challenges would surely appear, she added, but 'what is easy and what is worthy are often not the same. I believe in the power of girls, just as I believe in the future of Afghanistan.' Bryan Marquard can be reached at
Pink Villa
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Who Was Pippa Scott? Actress Behind The Searchers and Auntie Mame Passes Away at 90
Trigger Warning: This article contains references to an individual's death. Veteran actress Pippa Scott, who appeared in classic films like The Searchers (1956) and Auntie Mame (1958), has died at the age of 90. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Scott died on May 22 at her home in Santa Monica. Her daughter, Miranda Tollman, confirmed the cause of death as congenital heart failure. Scott had a career spanning over five decades, working in both film and television. She made her film debut in The Searchers, directed by John Ford, where she played Lucy Edwards, the niece of John Wayne's character. Two years later, she starred in Auntie Mame, which was nominated for six Academy Awards. Born on November 10, 1934, in Los Angeles, Scott came from a family deeply rooted in the entertainment industry. Her mother, Laura Straub, was a stage actress, and her father, Allan Scott, was an Oscar-nominated screenwriter best known for So Proudly We Hail! (1943). Her uncle, Adrian Scott, was part of the Hollywood Ten and was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Scott studied at Radcliffe College and UCLA before moving to London to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). She made her Broadway debut in 1956 in Child of Fortune, directed by Jed Harris. Scott's other film credits include As Young as We Are (1958), My Six Loves (1963), Petulia (1968), Cold Turkey (1971), and The Sound of Murder (1980). On television, she appeared in many popular shows over the decades. Her credits include The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Dr. Kildare, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mission: Impossible, The Waltons, Columbo, and The Streets of San Francisco. She also had a recurring role in Jigsaw John. Here's what you might not know about Pippa Scott In 1964, she married Lee Rich, co-founder of Lorimar Productions, which produced hit series like The Waltons and Dallas. Though they later divorced, they remained close until he died in 2012. Outside of acting, Scott was deeply involved in human rights activism. In the 1990s, she founded the International Monitor Institute, a nonprofit that helped collect evidence for war crimes trials, including those related to the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides. To raise awareness about global injustices, Scott also founded Linden Productions. She collaborated with the United Nations and Human Rights Watch on several projects. One of her notable works was for PBS' Frontline, where she produced an episode titled The World's Most Wanted Man about the hunt for Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić. In 2006, she produced King Leopold's Ghost, a documentary that highlighted the atrocities committed during the colonization of the Congo by Belgium's King Leopold II. Scott's work in film, television, and human rights has left behind a legacy that extends beyond Hollywood. Her contributions, both on and off the screen, earned her recognition and respect across industries.
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Readers and writers: Haunting tale set in Lake Superior lighthouse is must-read
One of the season's most anticipated novels by Peter Geye, adventures on the Mississippi, a cold-case mystery and memoirs of a gay veteran are on today's varied reading menu made up of books by Minnesota authors launching this month. 'A Lesser Light': by Peter Geye (University of Minnesota Press, $27.95) 'I am not a preacher. No ma'am. It's just a beautiful sentiment, this line I am recalling. It seems right for the moment.' He waited for her approval. When she nodded, he said 'I believe it says, regarding the creation of the world, that God created two lights. A greater one to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night.' — from 'A Lesser Light' In his luminous new novel, Peter Geye gives us love and lust, God and science, heavens and deep water, light and dark, and a cast of characters so vividly drawn you are in their minds, hearts, souls. It's set in a lighthouse on Lake Superior, where the great inland sea has its own moods and is the apparent dwelling place of an omniscient narrator whose comments begin every chapter. It's 1910 and Willa, who majored in astronomy at Radcliffe College, is urged by her calculating mother to marry Theodulf Sauer after Willa's father dies, leaving wife and daughter destitute. Willa and Theo are an odd match in their unconsummated marriage, this young, educated woman and emotionally shut-down Sauer, scion of a prominent, wealthy Duluth Catholic family. The couple doesn't realize they met years earlier when Willa donned men's clothing to play the piano at the all-male Mason's lodge. Theo, an egotist, has just been made master lighthouse keeper at the new Gininwabiko lighthouse. He expects his wife to attend to domestic life, cooking and keeping their home tidy. But Willa is more interested in the heavens, especially the coming of Halley's comet. Theo is afraid of this fiery phenomenon, writing to a spiritual mentor to ask if the comet's tail is poisonous to humans and what scripture says about it. Willa and Theo sometimes try to understand one another but more often are tense and sometimes hostile. Willa, a careless homemaker, is lonely. From her window she can see the dock of fisherman Matt and his orphaned niece, Silje, whose parents have just drowned. Silje, who has 'summoning powers,' delights Willa and they form a friendship as Willa becomes attracted to Matt. Theo, meanwhile, spends nights tending the big light, brooding about religion and recalling with shame and desire a brief affair he had with a man in Paris. Geye's writing is lush, from evoking the sounds, smells and moods of Lake Superior to the mechanics of keeping the lighthouse light functioning to Willa's amusement at the pomposity of her husband's uniformed visiting bosses. Secondary characters are as carefully drawn as the protagonists. Willa makes friends with the wives of her husband's two junior lighthouse keepers and one of them, a wise older woman, helps Willa understand the duty of lighthouse tenders' wives, whether she likes it or not. Willa's mother, who is not there when her daughter needs her, cares only for herself, and Theo's deceased father still haunts his son, whom he saw as worthless. Residents in towns from Two Harbors, Grand Marais and Gunflint show us the variety of people who lived along the North Shore at the turn of the 20th century. Geye, who lives in his native Minneapolis, is the author of the Eide Family trilogy 'The Lighthouse Road,' 'Wintering' (Minnesota Book Award), and 'Northernmost.' His most recent was 'The Ski Jumpers,' published in 2023, now available in paperback. With each book Geye has gained more fans. He's surely cemented his place as a leading author with 'A Lesser Light,' which is getting glowing advance reviews. What no critic seems able to articulate is the mystery and wonder inherent in this story. Geye will launch his novel at 7 p.m. April 15 with a party at Norway House, 913 E. Franklin Ave., Mpls., presented by Valley Bookseller of Stillwater and Literature Lovers' Night Out. $20. For information, go to Other metro-area events in Geye's statewide publicity tour include a 7 p.m. reading April 28 at the University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul; April 29, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior; May 3, Roseville Public Library and Cream & Amber, Hopkins,;and May 10, Big Hill Books, Mpls. 'Pushing the River': by Frank Bures (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $24.95) My limbs felt heavy. Water came over my chin, into my mouth. Everything felt hard now. Then, in a moment of clarity, a thought came into my head. It was not a question. It was not a possibility. It was not panic. It was just a fact, solid as a stone: I am not going to make it to that shore. — from 'Pushing the River' Part history of canoes and canoe races, part river adventures, part personal memories, Frank Bures shows his love for the Mississippi in this multi-genre paperback. Bures, an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in national publications such as Outside magazine, subtitles his tribute to the river 'An Epic Battle, a Lost History, a Near Death, and Other True Canoeing Stories.' The author is a child of the river, growing up in Winona with his friend JD Fratzke, who would go on to be a celebrated chef and restauranteur. His 2024 debut poetry collection, 'River Language', is also an ode to the Mississippi. The first half of 'Pushing the River ' is made up of detailed descriptions of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an exhausting annual 450-mile race associated with the Minneapolis Aquatennial that ran on the Mississippi in the 1940s into the 1960s. The author introduces people such as canoe-racing legend Gene Jensen and members of the Native American Tibbetts family from the Leech Lake reservation, as well as telling the history of how canoes were built by the Ojibwe and used for centuries by fur traders and others. He explains how Jim and Bernie Smith's design features are now part of contemporary canoe racing and early discussions about just what is a 'canoe.' Real-life stories depict dangers on the river, including how a couple survived being surrounded by the 2011 Pagami Creek fire in the Boundary Waters and the author's near-death from hypothermia when his canoe tipped and threw him into icy water. Bures will launch his book with a free program at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with nature writer Cary Griffith. 'The Murder Show': by Matt Goldman (Forge, $18.99) They are the easiest of targets. Ethan feels a fear he's never known, far above the modern-day angst he normally experiences. Faux problems that fester in the bubble of his insulated world. But canoeing over open water, defenseless in an aluminum craft that couldn't stop a bullet any better than a sheet of paper, Ethan's fear gets white hot. — from 'The Murder Show' Ethan Harris is not in a good place in this fast-paced mystery that also involves the river. His hit TV production, 'The Murder Show,' might not see a fourth season if he doesn't come up with a good idea, and he doesn't have one. When a writers' strike gives him free time, he heads home to Minnesota looking for inspiration and is welcomed by his childhood pal Ro Greeman, who was literally the girl next door. Ro, now a police officer, needs help investigating the death 22 years earlier of their classmate, Ricky, killed in a hit-and-run on a lonely county road. Ethan has nothing else to do so he joins her, thinking some sleuthing might unlock his imagination in writing the TV script. As the partners dig more deeply into Ricky's death, they discover other teenage boys have disappeared on lonely country roads far from their homes in the Twin Cities. When they get too close to solving the cold case, they are in danger, beginning with gunfire aimed at their vehicle. What part does one of Ro's police colleagues play in this venture and why doesn't Ethan trust him? Goldman is a playwright and Emmy Award-winning television writer for 'Seinfeld,' 'Ellen' and other shows, as well as the author of four novels featuring lawyer Nils Shapiro, who makes a cameo appearance in this new stand-alone novel. He will host a free meet-and-greet to launch his book from noon to 2 p.m. April 19 at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls. 'The Lonely Veteran's Guide to Companionship': by Bronson Lemer (University of Wisconsin Press, $19.95) I picture a character like X-Men's Nightcrawler, a creature I emulated in my twenties with my constant moving, my nonstop wanderlust. Job to Job. Place to Place. Boyfriend to Boyfriend. I never stayed with anything for longer than two years. I morphed, changed, moved on when the camouflage wore off, when I realized I would probably never fit in. — from 'The Lonely Veteran's Guide to Companionship' St. Paul resident Lemer's book of interconnected essays is not about warfare. Yes, the author served in South Korea and twice in Iraq. But this is really the story of a gay man trying desperately to be seen, which is difficult because he always holds back a part of himself, instead forging new personas of a confident, outgoing man. In memories that drift between past and present, he recalls trying to fit in, as when he goes with members of his platoon to meet 'juicy girls' in Korea. When one woman tries to make contact, he nearly freezes with embarrassment. And so he becomes rootless, spending two years teaching in China, then teaching on a Navy cruiser carrying missiles, always striving for what seems to be an unreachable goal of becoming a different person. Happily, he does find love and marriage in the end as he settles into the man he was meant to be. Lemer, a fine writer, is the author of 'The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq.' He will introduce 'The Veteran's Guide …' at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with author Chris Stedman, religion and philosophy professor at Augsburg University. Literary calendar for week of April 6 Literary picks for week of April 6: 'Great Gatsby' readings Live reading of 'Great Gatsby' kicks off events marking 100th anniversary The truth About F. Scott Fitzgerald's drunken brawl in Rome Literary calendar for week of March 30
