Lis Carey's Library
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Larry at Number 10, by E.C. Radcliffe (author), Dave Hill (illustrator)
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 1 (Liaden Universe #stories), by Sharon Lee (author), Steve Miler (author), Kevin T. Collins (narrator)
Monday, June 27, 2022
Star Surgeon, by Alan E. Nourse (author), Scott D. Farquhar (narrator)
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki
Friday, June 24, 2022
My Evil Mother: A Short Story, by Margaret Atwood
Thursday, June 23, 2022
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (author), Wil Wheaton (narrator)
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Adult Assembly Required, by Abbi Waxman
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Crosstime (Crosstime/Blake Walker #1 & 2) by Andre Norton (author), Graham Rowat (narrator)
Monday, June 20, 2022
Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe (Great Discoveries), by George Johnson (author), Stephen Bowlby (narrator)
In the early years of the 20th century, a "computer" was a person, an actual flesh and blood human being, who was good at math. These computers were often women, because women were so much cheaper to hire. You could perfectly legally and openly offer much lower wages to women than to men, for the same work.
One of these women was Henrietta Swan Leavitt, employed by the Harvard Observatory to calculate the positions and luminosities of stars in astronomical photographs.
There were two competing theories about the size of the universe at the time. One held that the Milky Way, our galaxy, was the entire universe, and the nebulae seen outside it were just wispy gas clouds. The other held that those nebulae were, in fact, other "island universes"--other galaxies like our own. It was Henrietta Leavitt who did the calculations that made it possible to answer the question.