Mary Watson Whitney was an American astronomer and for 22 years the head of the Vassar Observatory where 102 scientific papers were published under her guidance.
Background
Whitney was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1847. Her mother was Mary Watson Crehore and her father was Samuel Buttrick Whitney. Her father was successful in real estate and wealthy enough to provide her with a good education for a woman at the time.
Education
She went to school in Waltham where she excelled in mathematics and graduated from the public high school in 1863.
Career
She was privately tutored for one year before she entered Vassar College in 1865, where she met the astronomer Maria Mitchell. She obtained her degree in 1868. In the years 1869 to 1870 she took some courses about quaternions and celestial mechanics by Benjamin Peirce (at Harvard).
At the time, women could not be admitted to Harvard so she attended as a guest.
She obtained her masters degree from Vassar in 1872, afterwards she went to Zürich for 3 years where she studied mathematics and celestial mechanics. In 1888 upon the retirement of Mitchell she became a professor and the director of the observatory there until she retired in 1915 for health reasons.
During her career she concentrated on teaching and research related to double stars, variable stars, asteroids, comets, and measurements by photographic plates. Under her direction, 102 articles were published at the Vassar Observatory.
When they died two years later, she resumed full-time work.
Mary Whitney died in Waltham on January 20, 1921 of pneumonia.
Membership
Whitney was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a charter member of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society.