Fleming, Williamina Paton Stevens (1857-1911)

Scottish-born US astronomer. She was an assistant to Edward Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, with whom she compiled the first general catalogue classifying stellar spectra, the distinctive pattern produced by each star when its light is passed through a prism.

Fleming developed her spectral-classification system by studying photographs of the spectra obtained using prisms placed in front of the objectives of telescopes (the lenses or mirrors that collect the light and produce the image). In the course of her analysis of these spectra, Fleming discovered 59 nebulae, more than 300 variable stars, and 10 novae. The spectra of the stars observed in this manner could be classified into categories. Fleming designed the system adopted in the 1890 Draper Catalogues, in which 10,351 stellar spectra were listed in 17 categories (‘A’ to ‘Q’). This system was to be superseded by the work of Annie Jump Cannon at the same observatory in the early decades of the 20th century.

Fleming was born in Dundee, Scotland, and worked as a schoolteacher before emigrating to the USA in 1878. From 1879 she was employed by Pickering, initially as a ‘computer’ and copy editor. In 1898 she was appointed curator of astronomical photographs.