In the century since Henrietta Leavitt died, the observation that she first published in 1908, then elaborated in 1912, has achieved the status of an astrophysical law. Her quiet life has become the subject of books, stage plays, art exhibitions, poems, a doll, and at least one song. It was Leavitt who discovered a yardstick for gauging distances across space, enabling the first realistic appreciation of the size of the Milky Way, and, soon afterward, the breadth of the chasm separating our home galaxy from other island universes.
I first encountered Henrietta Leavitt at a meeting with astronomer Wendy Freedman, who is now the John and Marion Sullivan Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. At the time of our interview in the early 1990s, Freedman headed…
