Glass Universe (Sobel) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, feel free to use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Glass Universe...and then take off on your own:

1. Sobel is known for her ability as a writer to take hard science, reduce it into manageable bits of information, and then combine it with human interest stories. Does she achieve that goal here? Or was the pace of your reading bogged down with scientific minutae?

2. Talk about the women at the observatory? Consider, say, Williamina Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, What were they like and how did they fit—or not fit—within the confines or expectations of their times?

3.Consider, too, the two directors for whom the women worked—Edward Pickering and Harlow Shapley. How supportive were they to the women under them?

4. What was Williamina Flemming's response when she found that, even when appointed as the Curator of Astronomical Photographs, her salary fell far short of a man's?

5. How would you cast Harvard's track record concerning women in science over the years? Consider, in particular, Annie Jump Cannon and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

6. Can you point to one achievement that especially stunned you? Perhaps Nettie Farrar's calculation (to two decimal places) of the relative-brightness values of stars?

7. Perhaps you might talk about Anna Palmer Draper, who realized the value of telescopic photography with respect to the telescopic view.

8. Talk about the way in which the women worked in collaboration with one another—how their cooperative relationships furthered scientific understanding.

9. How would you describe the women's relationships with their male colleagues? Would you consider them maternal or nurturing or intellectually dominant? What about Annie Jump Cannon's oatmeal cookies?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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