das ist eine tolle geschichte: nyt > "miss leavitt's stars": the female computer erzählt von henrietta leavitt, der die astronomie reichlich kenntnisse über die entfernung zwischen sternen verdankt, obwohl sie doch nur eine art ein-euro-job für pickering's harem erledigen sollte.

The Harvard College Observatory, at the forefront of exploiting photography, accumulated half a million plates during the early years of the 20th century. To analyze the images, Edward Pickering, the observatory's director, employed a company of women, mostly students or graduates of Radcliffe College, to measure the brightness, color and position of each star. They were paid a minimal wage to carry out the drudgery, freeing up the male astronomers to spend their nights staring into space.

These female computers -- the word originally meant a person who did the monotonous, repetitive, tedious work, not the modern machines that do all that for us -- were able to find moments in between the drudgery to speculate about their data. And since some of them were brilliant, they made serious changes in astronomy.

Und der Artikel stammt von Simon Singh, der so fabelhaft erklären kann. A Short History of Nearly Everything von Bill Bryson ist voll solcher Geschichten (bis jetzt allerdings nur von Männern).