Henrietta Hill Swope (1902-1980) in the Harvard Observatory Pinafore, 1929

[Left to right: Peter Millman, Cecilia Payne, Henrietta Swope, Mildred Shapley, Helen Sawyer, Sylvia Mussells, Adelaide Ames, Leon Campbell]

Swope on coming to work at the Harvard College Observatory:

“After I finished college, I went out for a year to Chicago, and lived at Hull House for a year, and went to the School of Social Service Administration, at the University of Chicago, which had at that time Miss Grace Abbot and somebody else who’s famous also. I think it may have been not Miss Grace Abbot. Oh, it’s awful, I haven’t thought of this for years. Well, anyway, I took this course, and I also went out and had a course outside, where you had to go to a place where I was helping old people. And this was just, I think, too much for me. And Margaret Harwood wrote to me while I was out there, March or April, and said that Dr. Shapley was offering some fellowships because he wanted some women to work for him, on special projects. I don’t know if it was my interpretation or it was hers, I guess it was mine, that he wanted some cheap workers! . . . I wrote back to Dr. Shapley or to her, and said I didn’t know much astronomy but I’d like to try, if he wanted it. And he wrote and said, he knew the astronomy, and I could come. So I went there the next year. And I’ve been in astronomy ever since.”

Read the full interview here, and find this photo here in our archives.

Credit: 'Ad Astra Per Aspera, Through Rugged Ways to the Stars,' by Harlow Shapley, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969, courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives, Shapley Collection

Find more oral histories here.

Taken on: October 3, 2012

Tags:

Science

archive

scientist

physics

physicist

esva

AIP

history

interview

oral history

Emilio Segre Visual Archives

American Institute of Physics

Niels Bohr Library and Archives

women in science

Harvard

Harvard College Observatory

Peter Millman

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Henrietta Hill Swope

Mildred Shapley

Helen Sawyer

Sylvia Mussells

Adelaide Ames

Leon Campbell

Harlow Shapley « less

Sets appears in: • Voices from the past: Conversations with physicists

Groups appears in: • ArchivesOnFlickr

Stats: 1,338 views

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder