Isabel Lewis
| Isabel Martin Lewis | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 11, 1881 Old Orchard Beach, Maine |
| Died | July 31, 1966 (aged 85) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | United States Naval Observatory |
Isabel Martin Lewis (July 11, 1881 – July 31, 1966) was an American astronomer who was the first woman hired by the United States Naval Observatory as assistant astronomer. In 1918, Lewis was elected a member of the American Astronomical Society. She was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Isabel Martin was born in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, on July 11, 1881. Lewis earned her A.B. from Cornell University in 1903 and earned her A.M. there in 1905, specializing in mathematics. From 1905 to 1907 she was an "astronomical computer" for Simon Newcomb. Under Newcomb, Martin worked on eclipse data, an experience that would prove essential to her later work.
Lewis began work as a computer at the Nautical Almanac Office in 1908. Although Lewis was not the first woman to be hired by the Naval Observatory (this was Maria Mitchell, who in 1849 was hired as a computer), Lewis was the first woman to be hired as assistant astronomer. At the NAO, Lewis met her husband, Clifford Spencer Lewis, another astronomer. They were married on December 4, 1912.
With the birth of her son, Robert Winslow Lewis, Lewis worked only part-time at the observatory and began an effort to popularize science.
Writing three books and countless articles, Lewis started in 1916 to reach out to a popular audience about the wonders of astronomy and earth science. Her columns appeared in the New York Evening Sun, the Electrical Experimenter (later known as Science and Invention), Popular Astronomy, The Scientific Monthly, and the Astronomical Journal, among others. For thirty years, Lewis had a monthly column in Nature Magazine (this title was published by the American Nature Association and should not be confused with the journal Nature). Introducing her first article in Electrical Experimenter, editor Hugo Gernsback praised Lewis for her exactitude and learning, saying that she "has the rare faculty of interpreting difficult and dry subjects in a popular manner."
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