Dorothea Klumpke Roberts

Letts 1

Olivia Letts

Mr. Percival

Astronomy, Per. 3

7 Mar. 2013

Dorothea Klumpke Roberts: Life and Contributions

            Dorothea Klumpke Roberts was born in San Francisco in 1861, where her German immigrant father John Klumpke arrived and attempted to strike it rich in gold.  While his gold prospecting efforts were a flop, he became a wealthy real estate broker instead, and fathered five daughters and two sons with his new wife.  One son died in infancy and the other became a businessman, though Dorothea, the third born, and her four sisters all became renown for their artistic, musical, and scientific pursuits.  The girls were all educated in elite schools in Germany, Switzerland, and France; Dorothea ended up enrolling at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), where she switched from studying music to studying her true passion, astronomy.  After attaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1886, she received a post at the eminent Paris Observatory.  Here, she worked on a 34 cm refractor with which to photograph the minor planets, or asteroids.  Her skill set was mathematical in nature, and she also measured star positions, and studied meteorites and stellar spectra.  That same year, Scottish astronomer Sir David Gill and Director of the Paris Observatory Admiral Amédée Mouchez initiated a “Carte du Ciel” project to create an atlas of the entire sky, including all stars even down to the 14^th magnitude and a list of those down to the 11^th magnitude.  As the Paris Observatory was to handle a major portion of the sky, there was fierce competition for Director of the Bureau of Measurements, who would head the bureau in handling plate measurements and reductions.  Dorothea Klumpke won this position and held it until 1901; the project was a success.  Her doctoral thesis, “L’étude des Anneaux de Saturne,” a mathematical insight into Saturn’s rings, was highly acclaimed and well-defended,

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thus Klumpke became the first woman ever to attain the Docteur-és-Sciences degree.  In 1896 she traveled to Norway for a solar eclipse that ended up being obscured by clouds, yet she met her future husband Dr. Isaac Roberts, a pioneer astronomer who produced the first good pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy.  In 1899, the Meudon Observatory chose Dorothea Klumpke to ride in a hot air balloon called La Centaure above Paris to observe a Leonid Meteor Storm.  The numerous Leonids are from the comet Temple-Tuttle and seem to come from the constellation Leo, after which they were named.  In 1799, 1833, and 1866 the Leonids filled the skies with magnificent shooting stars, but only 15 of them were observed during Klumpke’s seven-hour balloon flight.  Still, her ride only made her more popular and was a milestone for women in the male-dominated field of astronomy.  In 1901, when Dorothea married Dr. Roberts, she left the Paris Observatory for her husband’s observatory and home in Sussex, which he called “Starfield.”  She assisted him in his project to take pictures of all 52 Herschel Areas of Nebulosity, although he died three years later, and all his money and astronomical equipment went to her.  She completed the remainder of the work and brought all the photographic plates with her back to Paris, where she went back to work for the Paris Observatory and spent years measuring, reducing, and printing she and Isaac’s work.  It was not until 1929 that she published "The Isaac Roberts Atlas of 52 Regions, a Guide to William Herschel's Fields of Nebulosity,” to which she added a supplement in 1932.  Dorothea Klumpke Roberts published two photographic atlases and deep sky object catalogues for which she attained the Hèléne-Paul Helbronner prize from the French Academy of Sciences.  In 1934, for 50 years of astronomical study, the president of France awarded her highest honor as she was elected a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.  She spent the rest of her days in San Francisco with her sister Anna, who was a famous painter and protégé/companion/heir to Rosa Bonheur.  Two minor planets were named in honor of Dorothea Klumpke Roberts, along with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Klumpke-Roberts Award.