Dorothea Klumpke
| Dorothea Klumpke Roberts | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
August 9, 1861 San Francisco, California |
| Died | October 5, 1942 (aged 81) San Francisco, California |
| Fields | astronomy |
| Institutions | Paris, France; Sussex, England |
| Alma mater | Sorbonne |
| Thesis | L'étude des Anneaux de Saturne (1893) |
| Notable awards | Officier d'Académie of the French Academy of Sciences; Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur |
Dorothea Klumpke Roberts (August 9, 1861 in San Francisco – October 5, 1942 in San Francisco) was an astronomer. She was Director of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory and was elected a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.
Her father, John Gerard Klumpke (1825–1917), was a German immigrant who had come to California in 1850 with the Gold Rush and had later become a successful realtor in San Francisco. He married Dorothea Mathilda Tolle in 1855 and they produced a family of five daughters and two sons. In 1877 she moved to Paris, France while her four sisters were placed in schools in Germany and Switzerland. The sisters all went on to distinguished careers: Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, painter and companion to the great French animal painter Rosa Bonheur; Julia, the violinist; Mathilda, an accomplished pianist and pupil of Marmontel and the neurologist Augusta, who, with her physician husband, Joseph Jules Dejerine, established a clinic and wrote numerous papers.
Dorothea studied at the University of Paris and started out also studying music, but later turned to astronomy. She received her bachelor's degree in 1886 and PhD in 1893. In 1887 she took up a post at the Paris Observatory. Here she worked with Guillaume Bigourdan and Lipót Schulhof, and later with the pioneer astrophotographers Paul and Prosper Henry, who were working with a 34 cm refractor and photographing the minor planets (asteroids). Her work consisted of measuring star positions, processing astrophotographs, studying stellar spectra and meteorites.
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