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The Scientific Odyssey

The Scientific Odyssey is a podcast exploration of scientific inquiry through it's history and philosophy.  New episodes weekly.

Jul 30, 2017

In our final episode of this mini-series on the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory, we dive into the life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin from her time at Cambridge University to her life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Jul 24, 2017

In this episode we take a look at the history of the development of the metric system out of the French Revolution.


Jul 16, 2017

Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt would form the core of the calculation staff at the Harvard College Observatory for nearly two decades.  They oversaw the transition of the Observatory from the directorship of Edward Charles Pickering to Harlow Shapley and established the dominant classification systems and...


Jul 9, 2017

In the first part of a multi episode series, we look at the lives of two very different women.  Williamina Fleming and Antonia Maury both made significant contributions to the field of stellar spectroscopy by developing classification systems to better understand the light from stars but their different backgrounds...


Jul 2, 2017

This week we take an in-depth look at the work done at the Harvard College Observatory on cataloging and classifying variable stars under the direction of Charles Edward Pickering.  We examine the contributions of Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt that resulted in the the period luminosity...