LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - JUNE 26, 2022 by Lynne Belluscio The exhibit at the Woodward Library will continue through the summer and features the stories of Ingham University students. One of the most interesting students is Sarah Whiting who was born in Wyoming (N.Y.) on August 23, 1846. Sarah’s father taught her Greek when she was only eight. She was studying Latin when she was ten and was reading Homer when she was twelve. She enrolled in Ingham University and graduated when she was eighteen in 1864. She remained in LeRoy for a while and taught Latin, Greek, and Natural History at the University. She accepted a position teaching classics at Dr. Charles West’s private seminary in Brooklyn. During the summer of 1876, she attended the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia where she observed for the first time a dynamo, a telephone, and an incandescent electric light. The same year, Edward Pickering, Professor of Physics at M.I.T. established the first physics laboratory for students in America and he interceded on Sarah’s behalf with Dr. Durant, founder of Wellesley College. Durant’s vision for Wellesley included an exclusively female faculty. At Pickering’s suggestion, Durant hired Sarah to establish a physics department at Wellesley. At that time, the only source of laboratory apparatus was in Europe, so Sarah visited the laboratories at Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Bowdoin and Pennsylvania to see the instruments before ordering them. In 1879, she began lectures on astronomy, although she had no equipment other than a celestial globe and a portable 4-inch Browning telescope. Sarah traveled to Europe to meet with notable scientists. It was said that Lord Kalvin seemed “neither surprised nor alarmed that a woman should devote herself to physics.” In contrast, Sir William Crookes asked her, “If all the ladies should know so much about spectroscopes, who would attend to the buttons and breakfasts?” Undaunted by male opinion, she entered the University of Berlin, the first woman ever allowed to study at the university. She formed a lasting friendship with Lady Huggins, the gifted collaborator with Sir William in the field of astrophysics. In 1895, Sarah read in the Boston newspaper that the X-ray had been discovered by Professor Wilhelm Roentgen in Wurzburg, Germany. Sarah set up a Crookes’ tube on the fifth floor of College Hall at Wellesley and x-rayed coins in a purse and bones in her hand with her advanced physics students. A l t h o u g h S a r a h ’ s pioneer work in establishing the first physics laboratory in a woman’s college was challenging, she soon became the founder of the astronomy department and in 1898, she enlisted the financial support of Mrs. John C. Whittin who endowed the Whittin Observatory at Wellesley. In 1905, Tufts University conferred the honorary degree of Science on Sarah Whiting in recognition of her pioneer work in physics and astronomy. In 1912, she retired from the physics department to devote her energy to the astronomy department. She attended the international convention of astronomers at Bonn Germany. After forty years of teaching, Sarah Whiting retired in 1916 and moved to Wilbraham, Massachusetts with her sister Elizabeth. Sarah was a member of the American Association and the American Astronomical and Physical Societies as well as the British Astronomical Society. She died in 1927 and was buried in Machpelah Cemetery. One of Sarah’s former students wasAnnie J. Cannon of Harvard University. She was an American astronomer who is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme which organized and classified stars based on temperature and spectral types. Cannon manually classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else. Her stellar classification is still in use today. She was the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Oxford University. Cannon wrote of her former teacher: “The young women of today to whom all doors are ajar can scarcely realize the difficulties or experience the enthusiasm of those who more than a half a century ago pushed open the doors of opportunity in the various departments of learning.” Ingham Exhibit at the Library
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ2MjM=