Mary Watson Whitney

Mary Watson Whitney
Mary Watson Whitney
Born	September 11, 1847 Waltham, Massachusetts
Died	January 20, 1921 Waltham, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Fields	astronomy
Institutions	Vassar Observatory

Mary Watson Whitney (September 11, 1847 – January 20, 1921) was an American astronomer and for 22 years the head of the Vassar Observatory.

Whitney was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1847. She went to school in Waltham and graduated from the public high school in 1863. Afterwards she entered Vassar College, where she met the astronomer Maria Mitchell. She got her degree in 1868 and returned to Waltham to care for her widowed mother. At that time she worked as a teacher in Auburndale, Massachusetts.

In the years 1869 to 1869 she had some courses about quaternions (at Harvard) and celestial mechanics by Benjamin Peirce. She got her masters degree from Vassar in 1872, afterwards she went to Zürich for 3 years. Returning to the U.S. she became a teacher at her hometown high school until she became an assistant of Maria Mitchell in Vassar. In 1888 she fellowed Mitchell as professor and as director of the observatory there until she retired in 1910 for health reasons. She died in Waltham in 1921.

External links

• Whitneygen.org

Persondata
Name	Whitney, Mary Watson
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	September 11, 1847
Place of birth	Waltham, Massachusetts
Date of death	January 20, 1921
Place of death	Waltham, Massachusetts