Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Early Years and Education

Early Years and Education

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the daughter of Congregational church minister George Roswell Leavitt and his wife Henrietta Swan (Kendrick), was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, a descendant of Deacon John Leavitt, an English Puritan tailor, who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early seventeenth century. (The family name was spelled Levett in early Massachusetts records.) She attended Oberlin College, and graduated from Radcliffe College, then called the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women, with a bachelor's degree in 1892. It wasn't until her fourth year of college that Leavitt took a course in astronomy, in which she earned an A–.

Read more about this topic:  Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Famous quotes containing the words early, years and/or education:

    “Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.”
    —Andre Maurois (1885–1967)

    “We watched her jug a hare, once, on television, years ago.... The hare had been half rotted, then cremated, then consumed. If there is a god and she is of the rabbit family, then Saskia will be in deep doo- doo on Judgment Day.”
    —Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    “Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)