A former science reporter for The New York Times, Dava Sobel has authored or co-authored several popular books about astronomy and its history, including the bestsellers Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter. 

The widow of astrophotography pioneer Henry Draper generously funded the Harvard College Observatory’s long-running project to photograph and classify the stars by their spectra. 

This photograph, taken from Peru in 1897, is one of half a million glass plates amassed by Harvard astronomers over the course of a century and still stored on site at the observatory for ready reference.
 

Astronomers from all over the United States gathered at the Harvard Observatory in 1898 to share research results and establish a professional organization, later named the American Astronomical Society.