Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born July 4, 1868 in Lancaster Massachusetts, daughter of a Congressional Minister she grew up and attended Radcliffe College. Here she discovered astronomy and after graduating volunteered at Harvard College Observatory as a computer for seven years, eventually being appointed to permanent staff under Edward Pickering. Edward Charles Pickering became the director of the Harvard Observatory in 1876, and for the time was considered a progressive because he opened up the department to use women as “computers”. The story goes that Pickering fired his assistant, deeming him incapable of cataloging all the photos his department was taking of the night sky. He replaced him with his…