Caroline Furness, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetCaroline Furness
American astronomer
Date of Birth: 24-Jun-1869
Place of Birth: Cleveland, Ohio, United States
Date of Death: 09-Feb-1936
Profession: astronomer
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Cancer 
About Caroline Furness
- Caroline Ellen Furness (June 24, 1869 – February 9, 1936) was an American astronomer who taught at Vassar College in the early twentieth century.
- She studied under Mary Watson Whitney at Vassar and was the first woman to earn a PhD in astronomy from Columbia. Furness was born on 24 June 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio.
- Her father was a high school science teacher and encouraged her early interest in science.
- She graduated from Vassar in 1887 and followed in her fathers footsteps becoming a high school science teacher, her true interest was in research though and after three years she returned to Vassar as a research assistant for Mary Watson Whitney.
- Under Whitney she took part in a nearly decade long program of comet and planet observations.
- In 1896 she began working at Columbia University under Harold Jacoby and would publish her Ph.D.
- dissertation "Catalogue of stars within one degree of the North pole and optical distortion of the Helsingfors astro-photographic telescope deduced from photographic measures" there in 1900.
- In 1903 she returned to Vassar as an instructor.She collaborated on variable star observations with Whitney from 1909 to 1911.
- In 1915, she authored the authoritative textbook Introduction to the Study of Variable Stars.She became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1922.She died on 9 February 1936 in New York City.She was an advocate for women's education, particularly in other countries; she wrote a number of articles about the situation of women's higher education in Japan; she was an important member of the local branch of the National Alliance of Unitarian Women.
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