Williamina Paton Fleming had a choice. She could let the laughter die down and allow herself to be the butt of the joke, or she could stand up, turning the joke on its head and using the moment to her advantage.
Her employer, Edward Charles Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, had become so exasperated with the sloppy work of his male assistants — “computers,” as they were called in those days — he’d quipped that his “Scotch maid” could do a better job. Williamina Fleming at the Harvard College Observatory plate stacks, circa 1900.
It was true: Fleming was his housemaid. It was also true that she had come to America from Scotland, where she’d been an excellent math student and then, beginning at 14, a student teacher. And it was true, she believed: She could do a better job. While the personal circumstances that had led her to take on domestic work had been less than ideal, she had been thrilled to be working in the house of the Observatory director, in proximity to the most productive and groundbreaking astronomy research lab in the country. During the past two years of Mina’s employment, Pickering, noting her aptitude for numbers and her quick mind, had even allowed her to do a little clerical work at the Observatory, outside of the housecleaning and other domestic work she performed. But she was ready for something more.
We don’t know what the 24-year-old single mother’s actual response was in that moment after the laughter subsided, whether it was a serious and bold, “Yes, I can do a better job,” whether she met his frustrated, sarcastic suggestion with wit, whether she waited until later and approached him privately, quietly, after the workday was over; we don’t even know for sure whether the “so easy my maid could do it” story of Pickering’s reported pique is a faithful account or mere Harvard legend. What we do know is that in 1881, Mina Fleming took the opening her boss offered. It may have been suggested as a joke, but to her it was the opportunity of a lifetime, and in taking it she helped Pickering change the history of astronomy in America — and the opportunities available for women in that discipline — forever.
