Woman of the Week – Ida Barney

Ida Barney was an American astronomer, best known for her 22 volumes of astrometric measurements on 150,000 stars.

She was born in 1886 in New Haven, Connecticut. Her mother was Ida Bushnell Barney and her father was Samuel Eben Barney. She was an avid birder and the New Haven Bird Club President.

She was educated at Smith College and Yale University and spent most of her career at the Yale University Observatory.

From 1911–1912, just after receiving her Ph.D., Barney became a mathematics professor for Rollins College.

For the next few years, she had teaching gigs at various somen’s colleges (Rollins, Smith, Lake Erie, and Meredith Colleges).

In 1920, she returned to Smith College as an assistant professor. In 1922, Yale University Observatory appointed Barney as a Research Assistant, a title she held until 1949, when she was promoted to Research Associate.

The Observatory, like many other university observatories at the time, was allocating significant resources to astrometry, thanks to the development of telescope-mounted cameras.

Early in her astronomy career, under Frank Schlesinger, the Director at the Yale Observatory, her main task was plotting the position of stars from photographic plates and working on the calculations of their celestial coordinates from their positions. The work was very tedious, which Schlesinger felt was appropriate for a woman to do because it wasn’t theoretical research.

After coming to Yale, Schlesinger started a group called The Neighbors, which was for astronomers from the New England area. They met informally a few times a year to discuss ideas. Eventually professional women hailing from New England wanted to join, on which he commented, "Oh, the opening wedge!" expressing the opinion that admitting women would constitute "imposing a burden on hosts.”

Despite her boss’s feelings toward women’s success, she developed several methods that increased both the accuracy and speed of her measurements, including the use of a machine that automatically centered the photographic plates.

She continued the project, which eventually became her life’s work and most notable accomplishments.

Over 23 years, she contributed to the Yale Observatory Zone Catalog, a series of star catalogs published by the Yale Observatory for 1939 to 1983, containing around 400,000 stars, and influenced the Bright Star Catalogue.

In 1941, when Schlesinger retired, Barney took over full supervision of the cataloguing. Under her direction, the measurements of the photographic plates were completed at the IBM Watson Scientific Laboratory using a new electronic device that further reduced eye strain and increased accuracy.

Her individual contribution to these star catalogues recorded the position, magnitude, and proper motion of approximately 150,000 stars. Due to its high accuracy, the catalogue is still used today in proper motion studies. After her retirement from Yale, she continued to live in New Haven, where she died in 1982 at 95.

Source: https://cswa.aas.org/status/status_june1990.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Barney

https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Ida%20Barney&item_type=topic