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, early, years and/or education:

    Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.
    Stella Chess (20th century)

    Early rising is no pleasure; early drinking’s just the measure.
    François Rabelais (1494–1553)

    Thirty years now I have labored
    To dredge the silt from your throat.
    I am none the wiser.
    Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)

    Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)