Dava Sobel’s latest book The Glass Universe is the hidden history of a group of remarkable women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

In the 19th-century Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators or ‘human computers’ to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. These women changed the history of astronomy, making extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim – they helped discern what stars are made of and how to categorize them as well as finding a way to measure distances across space by starlight.