Dorothea Klumpke
Encyclopedia
Dorothea Klumpke Roberts (August 9, 1861 San Francisco - October 5, 1942 San Francisco) was an astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
.
Biography
Her father, John Gerard Klumpke (1825–1917), was a German immigrant who had come to California in 1850 with the Gold RushCalifornia Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
and had later become a successful realtor in San Francisco. He married Dorothea Mathilda Tolle in 1855 and they produced a family of five daughters and two sons. In 1877 she moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
while her four sisters were placed in schools in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. The sisters all went on to distinguished careers: Anna Elizabeth Klumpke
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke , was American portrait and genre painter born in San Francisco, California, United States....
, painter and companion to the great French animal painter Rosa Bonheur
Rosa Bonheur
Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, was a French animalière, realist artist, and sculptor. As a painter she became famous primarily for two chief works: Ploughing in the Nivernais , which was first exhibited at the Salon of 1848, and is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris depicts a team...
; Julia, the violinist; Mathilda, an accomplished pianist and pupil of Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel was a French pianist, teacher and musicographer.Marmontel entered the Paris Conservatory in 1827. His teachers were Pierre Zimmerman in pianoforte, Victor Dourlen in harmony, Jacques Fromental Halévy in fugue and Jean-François Le Sueur in composition...
and the neurologist
Neurologist
A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...
Augusta, who, with her physician husband, Joseph Jules Dejerine
Joseph Jules Dejerine
Joseph Jules Dejerine , was a French neurologist.Joseph Jules Dejerine was born to French parents in Geneva, Switzerland, where his father was a carriage proprietor. During the Franco-Prussian War Dejerine worked as a volunteer in a Geneva Hospital and in the spring of 1871 decided to pursue his...
, established a clinic and wrote numerous papers.
Dorothea studied at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
and started out also studying music, but later turned to astronomy. She received her bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in 1886 and took up a post at the Paris Observatory
Paris Observatory
The Paris Observatory is the foremost astronomical observatory of France, and one of the largest astronomical centres in the world...
. Here she worked with Guillaume Bigourdan
Guillaume Bigourdan
Camille Guillaume Bigourdan was a French astronomer.Bigourdan was born at Sistels, Tarn-et-Garonne. In 1877 he was appointed by Félix Tisserand as assistant astronomer at the Toulouse Observatory, and in 1879 followed Tisserand to the Paris Observatory when the latter became director there.He...
and Lipót Schulhof
Lipót Schulhof
Lipót Schulhof was a Hungarian astronomer . He was more commonly known as Leopold Schulhof , since German was the dominant language of Austria-Hungary at the time.He studied comets and asteroids...
, and later with the pioneer astrophotographers Paul and Prosper Henry
Paul Henry and Prosper Henry
Paul-Pierre Henry and his brother Mathieu-Prosper Henry were French opticians and astronomers....
, who were working with a 34 cm refractor and photographing the minor planets (asteroids). Her work consisted of measuring star positions, processing astrophotographs, studying stellar spectra and meteorites.
Work
In 1886 Sir David GillDavid Gill (astronomer)
Sir David Gill FRS was a Scottish astronomer who is known for measuring astronomical distances, for astrophotography, and for geodesy. He spent much of his career in South Africa.- Life and work :...
proposed an atlas of the heavens. The idea received enthusiastic support, especially from the Director of the Paris Observatory, Admiral Amédée Mouchez
Amédée Mouchez
Amédée Ernest Barthélemy Mouchez was a French naval officer who became director of the Paris Observatory and launched the ill-fated Carte du Ciel project in 1887.-Life:...
, who suggested an international meeting in Paris. This led to the Carte du Ciel
Carte du Ciel
The Carte du Ciel and the Astrographic Catalogue were two distinct but connected components of a massive international astronomical project, initiated in the late 19th century, to catalogue and map the positions of millions of stars as faint as 11th or 12th magnitude...
project which required photographing the entire sky and showing stars as faint as the 14th magnitude. The Paris Observatory was to do a major portion of the sky as its contribution. It was also envisioned that a catalogue of all the stars to the 11th magnitude be drawn up.
Despite being a woman, and in the face of fierce competition from 50 men, she secured the post of Director of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory.
In 1896 she sailed to Norway on the Norwegian vessel Norse King, to observe the solar eclipse of August 9, 1896
Solar eclipse of August 9, 1896
A total solar eclipse occurred on August 9, 1896. It was visible across Europe, Asia, and Japan.-References:* ** ** * , by Mabel Loomis Todd, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, publishers, 1898...
. The eclipse was not a success because of obscuring clouds, but romance was about to enter her life. She met up with Dr. Isaac Roberts
Isaac Roberts
Isaac Roberts was a Welsh engineer and business man best known for his work as an amateur astronomer, pioneering the field of astrophotography of nebulae. He was a member of the Liverpool Astronomical Society in England and was a fellow of the Royal Geological Society...
, a 67-year old Welsh widower and entrepreneur turned astronomer, who had become a pioneer in astrophotography. He had attended the Paris Carte du Ciel Congress. Roberts had equipped his private observatory with a 50 cm reflector and camera, and a 13 cm Cooke refractor.
In 1899, astronomers had predicted a great meteor shower now known as the Leonids
Leonids
The Leonids is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. They tend to peak in November.Earth moves through the meteoroid...
. The French chose a female astronomer - Dorothea Klumpke - to be the one to ride in a balloon to observe the shower - the shower turned out a complete failure.
Five years after meeting, Dorothea and Isaac were married in 1901 and stayed at his Sussex home. Dorothea left her job at the Paris Observatory in order to be with Isaac, whom she assisted in a project to photograph all 52 of the Herschel "areas of nebulosity." Their marriage ended after only a short while with Isaac's death in 1904. Dorothea inherited all his astronomical effects and a considerable fortune.
Dorothea remained at the Sussex home and completed photography of the 52 areas, after which she went to stay with her mother and sister, Anna, at Chateau Rosa Bonheur, taking along the entire set of photographic plates. She returned to Paris Observatory and spent 25 years processing the plates and Isaac's notes, periodically publishing papers on the results. In 1929 she published a comprehensive catalogue of the survey "The Isaac Roberts Atlas of 52 Regions, a Guide to William Herschel's Fields of Nebulosity". She was awarded the Hèléne-Paul Helbronner prize in 1932 from the French Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
for this publication.
Dorothea Klumpke died on October 5, 1942, having been in poor health for a number of years.
Honors
She was the first recipient of the "Prix de Dames" from the Sociétié des Astronomique de France in 1889, and in 1893 was made an Officier d'Académe of the French Academy of SciencesFrench Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
- up to that time, these honours had not been awarded to a woman. On December 14, 1893 she read her doctoral thesis, "L'étude des Anneaux de Saturne" to a large audience of academics at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
, and was awarded the degree of Docteur-és-Sciences. Her main subjects were mathematics and mathematical astronomy. The examining committee, composed of Dr. Jean Gaston Darboux
Jean Gaston Darboux
Jean-Gaston Darboux was a French mathematician.-Life:Darboux made several important contributions to geometry and mathematical analysis . He was a biographer of Henri Poincaré and he edited the Selected Works of Joseph Fourier.Darboux received his Ph.D...
and Drs. Félix Tisserand
Félix Tisserand
François Félix Tisserand was a French astronomer.Tisserand was born at Nuits-Saint-Georges, Côte-d'Or. In 1863 he entered the École Normale Supérieure, and on leaving he went for a month as professor at the lycée at Metz. Urbain Le Verrier offered him a post in the Paris Observatory, which he...
and Marie Henri Andoyer
Marie Henri Andoyer
Marie Henri Andoyer was a French astronomer and mathematician.-Biography:Andoyer was elected member of the French Académie des sciences on June 30, 1919 in the astronomy section....
were unanimous in their praise. By way of contrast, Harvard awarded its first doctorate in astronomy to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
-Further reading:*Rubin, Vera , "Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin" in OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics, Nina Byers and Gary Williams, ed., Cambridge University Press ....
in 1925.
On February 22, 1934, she was elected a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
with the French President himself presenting the Cross. Shortly after the award, she and Anna moved to San Francisco where she spent the rest of her days. She made endowments to the Paris Observatory, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...
, and the University of California to be granted to aspiring astronomers. Minor planets 339 Dorothea
339 Dorothea
339 Dorothea is a typical Main belt asteroid.It was discovered by Max Wolf on September 25, 1892 in Heidelberg, Germany....
and 1040 Klumpkea
1040 Klumpkea
1040 Klumpkea is an asteroid. It was discovered by Benjamin Jekhowsky on January 20, 1925. Its provisional designation was 1925 BD. It was named after Dorothea Klumpke Roberts....
were named in her honor, as is the Klumpke-Roberts Award
Klumpke-Roberts Award
The Klumpke-Roberts Award was established from a bequest by astronomer Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts and recognizes outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy...
of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...
.
External links
- Bibliography from the Astronomical Society of the PacificAstronomical Society of the PacificThe Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...