{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/7s7hq3sk03/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Hoffleit, Dorrit, 2007 February 8"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["Hoffleit, Dorrit, 2007 February 8. Oral Histories Documenting Yale University Women (RU 1051). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.\n\n https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/2559."]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/801837"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["mssa.ru.1051 (EAD ID)","RU 1051 (Call Number)","ru_1051_2007-a-216_hoffleit_dorrit_audiorecording.mp3 (Digital Object ID)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2007 February 8 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["The materials are open for research. (Accessrestrict)","Dr. Dorrit E. Hoffleit was born on March 12, 1907, in Florence, Alabama. Her parents were German immigrants. In her early years she struggled to make her mark in the shadow of her brilliant though loving older brother and her mother's disappointment that her second child was \"only a girl.\" Hoffleit reflects with characteristic optimism that these challenges were \"blessings in disguise\" which taught her both a resolute independence and a capacity for hard work. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1928. Having failed to find employment as a teacher of mathematics she took a job at Harvard College Observatory as one of the \"Harvard Computers,\" earning forty cents an hour to her male colleagues one dollar, but she flourished under the mentorship of the Director Harlow Shapley. Under his direction she earned her PH.D. from Radcliffe in 1938, for which she won the Caroline Wilby Prize for the best original research. Her association with Harvard Observatory, first as an assistant, then research associate and, from 1948, as astronomer, continued until 1956.\n\nAfter war service at the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, Hoffleit returned to Harvard to develop her thesis work on meteors and bright stars. In 1956 she left Harvard when Harlow Shapley retired and joined Yale as a research associate (subsequently, Senior Research Astronomer and Lecturer) at the Yale Observatory, where she authored the Yale Catalog of Bright Stars, the most popular catalog in astronomy. Her prodigious output also included the Yale Parallax Catalog, several volumes of the Yale Zone Catalog and many hundreds of papers on astronomy. Although she officially retired from Yale in 1975, she continued her research on variable stars and in 1988 her Bright Star catalog won the George van Biesbroeck Award for dedication to astronomy. While at Yale, Dr. Hoffleit directed the summer school on Nantucket at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, where she gave many young women scientists their first experience in astronomical research. For this she was awarded the American Astronomical Society-Annenberg Prize for science education in 1993. In 2003 she was made Senior Research Astronomer Emerita at Yale Observatory.  \n\nDr. Hoffleit's many awards include honorary degrees from Smith College (1984) and Central Connecticut State University (1998). She was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. She was a past president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Asteroid Dorrit was named after her, and a Hoffleit Assistantship was established at the Mitchell Observatory to honor her work.\n\nHer interview for the Yale Women's Oral History Project was recorded shortly before her 100th birthday. Dorrit Hoffleit died April 9, 2007. (Bioghist)","In her interview Dorrit Hoffleit talked at length about her early life and influences. Her mother's disappointment at producing \"only\" a daughter left its mark. Dr. Hoffleit reflected, \"And so I was only the girl all my life, even to this day… People didn't expect so much of me, so I could work at my own pace.\" As a young girl during World War I she suffered anti-German bullying which made her something of a loner. Dr. Hoffleit never married, partly because her mother was unhappily married and partly because she feared that might pass on her grandmother's mental illness to subsequent generations.\n\nFor her the most important issue, much more important than status and salary, was the independence she needed to follow her intellectual passions: \"Having as much independence as I did in astronomy … was really something precious, very precious.\" (Scope and Content Note)","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026amp;97330cbc-2346-4107-8f21-9be545ecd5aa (Other Finding Aid Note)","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software. (Processinfo)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["The materials are open for research.","Dr. Dorrit E. Hoffleit was born on March 12, 1907, in Florence, Alabama. Her parents were German immigrants. In her early years she struggled to make her mark in the shadow of her brilliant though loving older brother and her mother's disappointment that her second child was \"only a girl.\" Hoffleit reflects with characteristic optimism that these challenges were \"blessings in disguise\" which taught her both a resolute independence and a capacity for hard work. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1928. Having failed to find employment as a teacher of mathematics she took a job at Harvard College Observatory as one of the \"Harvard Computers,\" earning forty cents an hour to her male colleagues one dollar, but she flourished under the mentorship of the Director Harlow Shapley. Under his direction she earned her PH.D. from Radcliffe in 1938, for which she won the Caroline Wilby Prize for the best original research. Her association with Harvard Observatory, first as an assistant, then research associate and, from 1948, as astronomer, continued until 1956.\n\nAfter war service at the Ballistic Research Laboratories at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, Hoffleit returned to Harvard to develop her thesis work on meteors and bright stars. In 1956 she left Harvard when Harlow Shapley retired and joined Yale as a research associate (subsequently, Senior Research Astronomer and Lecturer) at the Yale Observatory, where she authored the Yale Catalog of Bright Stars, the most popular catalog in astronomy. Her prodigious output also included the Yale Parallax Catalog, several volumes of the Yale Zone Catalog and many hundreds of papers on astronomy. Although she officially retired from Yale in 1975, she continued her research on variable stars and in 1988 her Bright Star catalog won the George van Biesbroeck Award for dedication to astronomy. While at Yale, Dr. Hoffleit directed the summer school on Nantucket at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, where she gave many young women scientists their first experience in astronomical research. For this she was awarded the American Astronomical Society-Annenberg Prize for science education in 1993. In 2003 she was made Senior Research Astronomer Emerita at Yale Observatory.  \n\nDr. Hoffleit's many awards include honorary degrees from Smith College (1984) and Central Connecticut State University (1998). She was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. She was a past president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Asteroid Dorrit was named after her, and a Hoffleit Assistantship was established at the Mitchell Observatory to honor her work.\n\nHer interview for the Yale Women's Oral History Project was recorded shortly before her 100th birthday. Dorrit Hoffleit died April 9, 2007.","In her interview Dorrit Hoffleit talked at length about her early life and influences. Her mother's disappointment at producing \"only\" a daughter left its mark. Dr. Hoffleit reflected, \"And so I was only the girl all my life, even to this day… People didn't expect so much of me, so I could work at my own pace.\" As a young girl during World War I she suffered anti-German bullying which made her something of a loner. Dr. Hoffleit never married, partly because her mother was unhappily married and partly because she feared that might pass on her grandmother's mental illness to subsequent generations.\n\nFor her the most important issue, much more important than status and salary, was the independence she needed to follow her intellectual passions: \"Having as much independence as I did in astronomy … was really something precious, very precious.\"","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u002697330cbc-2346-4107-8f21-9be545ecd5aa","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20210828-32762-1y4n1d9.mpga"]},"duration":6104.47674,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-yalemssa.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/122/282/original/open-uri20210828-32762-1y4n1d9.mpga?1630147650","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":6104.47674,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["ru_1051_2007-a-216_hoffleit_dorrit_edited_transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=0.0,0.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: So I’m just going to start off by saying, this is an interview with Dorrit Hoffleit.  It’s being conducted at her home, at 225 Whitney Avenue and --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: 255.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: 255.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Whitney Avenue in New Haven.  It's the morning of the 8th of February 2007, and the interviewer is Florence Minnis.  OK.  So I'm glad that you've agreed to do this interview Dorrit.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, I hope that you will like what you get.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I'm sure I will.  I hope that you will enjoy doing the interview.  I hope you'll enjoy it very much.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Thank you.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And I also want to say, for the record, it's great that my first interview is also the oldest, and that you're going to be 100 very, very soon.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Very soon.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So this is a great way to kick off a new project.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I'm ah, I'm really planning on my 100th birthday, because the department is having a party for me, and I have to be there.  But after that, I'm not terribly anxious to stay around.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I have heard that you like parties.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That I like?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Parties.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, it depends on the parties.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Somebody told me that when you came to Yale, back in 1956 or '57, you organized the first Christmas party.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I have -- I've practically forgotten it, but what we did was, we'd get refreshments and we would just tell about previous Christmases, parties and so on, just talk and eat.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it -- was it a department that wasn't very, wasn't very impressed with, with socializing?  Was this the first time there had been a party?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think it was the first time that the department had a party, but the department itself wasn't very old.  They -- they taught astronomy, but as, as a whole department, I think they just had an astronomer, and not an astronomy department.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  So was it part of physics, or was it a separate section altogether?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Ah, the astronomy was a separate section, yes.  I'm not sure whether it was a part of the mathematics department at that time or not.  I think it was, but I'm hazy about that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well we can easily check that.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: The biggest part of me now is my forgettery, it's terrific.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)  Well I hope I'll ask the right questions, so that you can remember more than you think you remember.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well sometimes questions bring things back, but sometimes they just embarrass the poor forgetter.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well I hope I won't embarrass you today.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I'll do my best not to.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, I'll not tell you if I'm embarrassed or not, but I'll tell you whether I remember or not.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Good, good, that's a deal.  Well, given that you're almost 100 years old, you're going to be 100 on the 12th of March, I understand.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What I'd like to do is to make your memory work very hard, and go right back to the beginning.  So I want you -- I want to go back to when you were very, very little, and I'd like you to tell me about the circumstances of your birth.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, my mother liked boys.  She didn't want any girls, because girls can't achieve as boys do.  And so fortunately, her first child was not only a son, but a rather brilliant son, who got all the honors in college and everywhere.  And then she had a second child, which was myself, and as she told everybody, \"It's only a girl.\"  And so I was only the girl all my life, even to this day, but as time went on, my brother majored in the classics, which were practically a dead language already.  And ah, the last year that he taught -- he taught first at Harvard and then at Yale [UCLA].  The last year that he taught, he had one student, one student.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=0.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I’m awfully curious why Yale [UCLA] allowed him to teach one student.   But anyway, he did, one student.  And then, as time went on, since I was in -- he was in the classics, which was practically a dead language, and after him it was a real dead language officially, whereas of course, my getting into meteors and astronomy in general, that was a very alive subject.  It al -- you almost neglected the history, because there was so much to do right now.  So my mother, who was so proud of her bright son, she was chastising him in his old age.  He died at 75 but, you know, after you retire a 60 you’re old.  She was chastising him that his dumb daughter, because he had read a story about Dumme Lisa in German, which was Dumb Lizzie, and so from the time that he read that story, I was always Dumme Lisa, we being German.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were called dumb Dorrit?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were dumb Dorrit or dumb?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I was Dumme Lisa.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Dumme Lisa.  Well that's --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, and, and who, his dying day, he always gave me the diminutive, Dumme Lischen and that's OK by me.  Because I was supposed to be dumb and he was supposed to be bright, nobody cared much about my progress, so it was my choice as to how I got educated.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So right from the beginning, there was this sense that you were second best, because you were only a girl.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Exactly.  And then in her old age, mother died at 75, she was chastising me that the Dumme Lisa had surpassed him, because I had gotten a lot of honors.  Well he was teaching the classics, and there's nothing new about it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What lesson did that teach you, this sense of being second best?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh, well that was fine.  People didn't expect so much of me, so I could work at my own pace.  There's always some benefit to something that seems bad, because the bad is the preparation for the future, how to cope with things.  The bright young people, who had gotten everything they wanted scholastically and gotten it easily, then when they had jobs, they weren't prepared for doing original work, whereas in astronomy, well, the history is fine and you want to know a good bit about it, but it's more important to see what -- to advance the subject, not how to preserve it.  In classics it's preservation and not, not original work in the other sense, so that my brother wrote his PhD thesis about the classics, and that was a well received document, but that was the only original work that he ever published.  He published little things but not real papers, whereas my life was, you know, whatever you did, you wrote it up and published it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because it hadn't been done before.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.  Yeah.  So anyway, in his old age, he was praising his sister, the way I used to praise my brother.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So obviously, you had a very close relationship, you and your brother, but was it a good relationship?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, I adored my brother.  I thought nobody could be better than he was, and of course, when it came to the classics, that was true, to a large extent, because it was after all, a dying subject and by the time he had his very last student, it was actually formally declared a dead language.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You told me -- the last time we met, you told me a lovely story, which I thought tells an awful lot about the relationship between you and Herbert, about when you were holding his hand and the other girl came.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Will you tell me that story again?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.  That was when we were oh, probably teenager or earlier.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=300.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Yes.  When I started school, a year after he did, I took hold of my brother's hand as we walked to school, and this girl came up behind us, and she pushed me out of -- tried to push me out of the way and says, \"He's my boyfriend.\"  And I said, \"He's my brother.\"  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you won that particular battle?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I won the battle, because my brother didn't let go of my hand.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's lovely.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: He wasn't very fond of girls, in general, I think, not even me, when it came to that, but in his older years, he and mother both agreed that I had surpassed him, which of course, in the classics, what can you do that is really new?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What was your father like?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well ah, he was a bookkeeper in the Pennsylvania Railroad, in Pennsylvania.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was he -- was he a father who encouraged you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.  Well, at any rate, he didn't discourage.  He, he supported us.  I don't think that he actually volunteered encouragement, but he always supported whatever I wanted to do, and that was good.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So he supported you and your brother equally, in terms of your scholarly work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes, he did, yeah.  He didn't -- he didn't discriminate against me because I was a woman.  My mother didn't really, but she was always, you know, referring to me as only a girl.  That was all right, because if you're only a girl, then if you achieve anything at all, that's fine.  But if, like the boy, you're recognized as being superior, then you have a hard time staying superior.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What was your family background?  I understand that you came from Germany.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, my mother's father was a professor of physics in Königsburg.  My father's father was a businessman.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And had your parents come to the U.S.?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were they born --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh wait.  My parents.  I was thinking of his -- their parents.  Yes.  My father came to the States of his own free will.  My mother came also, of her own free will, but while she was thinking of doing it, coming to this country, she was visiting Friedland, where my father grew up, a small town near Königsburg.  So his parents did not discourage him from coming to America.  I don't think they went out of their way to encourage him, but if that's what he wanted, that was OK, as long as he took care of everything by himself, which is what he did.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But your mother wanted to come to America.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: My mother had a stepmother, and she and the stepmother didn't get along at all well together and so, when she discovered an opportunity for a woman to get a certain job in the United States, she applied, and came.  She knew my father's family, because her step-mother was a member of that family and amazingly, known to dislike a step-mother as those two disliked one another, it's just amazing that she married a relative.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, that's what families are.  But it must have been difficult in the run-up to the First World War and during the First World War then, for your whole family, as German immigrants.  Did you experience any kind of hostility?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.  I was the enemy in school and in playgrounds, well you know children have playgrounds with parties.  \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=600.0,900.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so anyway, I was always the enemy in the playground in school.  So all of my primary early education was really a bit hampered by the fact that I had German parents.  They didn't ask why the parents came over here.  The fact that they had been born in Germany was all that mattered, and that meant that you were the enemy.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That must have --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Even though you left Germany because it was unkind to you.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  You must have then, had quite a lonely childhood?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, yes.  I had very few friends, but I had a marvelous brother, and I had all the dogs -- all the neighborhood dogs loved me.  (laughs)  Dog is man's best friend.  I learned that early.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Or woman's best friend.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well man just means person.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Would you have called yourself a strange child?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh I was unusual, yes.  After all, to be of German heritage during World War I, as a child, was not exactly a pleasant experience.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So what did you like to do then, since you spent so much time on your own?  What sort of things did you like to do?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh I liked drawing and I liked gardening, and I liked a lot of things that I could do by myself or with my brother.  You know, I had practically no friends in my early childhood, just because of World War I.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Despite all of that, were you a good student at school?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, I was not a poor student, but I was unlike my brother, who was always the top of his class, but I never flunked anything.  I got -- I got a few As and a lot of Bs, and some Cs.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you enjoy school or did you enjoy learning?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, especially the drawing classes.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Would you like to have been an artist?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: In my early childhood, that's what I was hoping to be, but then I found out that I wasn't quite as good as most other students.  I was good enough for, you know, making valentines and things like that, but not as being an artist.  But, but anyway, I liked drawing and I generally made sketches of things when oh, Christmas cards and things like that.  Christmas cards and valentines.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So when did you discover the stars?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When did you discover the stars, the heavens?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I think about as early as I can remember back, because my mother and my brother were pointing out the stars to us when we were children.  Five years or so, something like that.  I wouldn't remember exactly what, going back.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you ever recall seeing anything extraordinary in the sky when you were a child?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.  We saw a comet, and the comets then, interested me a whole lot.  I think seeing a comet.  I've forgotten what the name of the comet was, but anyway, it was one of the big comets.  And from there on, I think -- oh, well the thing that got me started being interested in astronomy was I guess I was probably a young teenager at the time.  My mother and I were watching the Perseid meteors in August and we both observed this was one stray shooting star coming this way, and another shooting star, Perseid, coming the other way, and the two collided, and that's what got me started in astronomy, to find out how come.  Was this something customary or was this an unusual thing, and so on.  So I got a pretty early start in getting interested in astronomy, just on my own.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you get any encouragement in physics when you were at high school?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I had a good -- I had a good physics teacher --\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=900.0,1200.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"in high school, who was not only a physics teacher, but she was the faculty advisor for college prep students.  And so, she was -- and she became a good friend of mine too.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What's her name?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Can you recall her name?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Phillips.  (sp?)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Phillips?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think that was her name.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: One name that came up in my research was a woman called Ethel Thompson -- Ethel Sampson.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Ethel?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Sampson.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Sampson.  Ah, that's the one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Is that her?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That's the one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That's the one, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So she was very encouraging?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: She was, very much.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How did she encourage you, can you recall?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well she was supposed to be advisor for the students who were preparing for college.  I don't know exactly why she took a personal interest in me, but she seemed to feel that maybe I had some troubles other than in the college as such.  And so she came to get acquainted with my mother, and from there on, she became one of my life friends.  She was my friend the rest of my -- the rest of her life.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think that she felt that your mother was discouraging?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  I think she just wanted to see what the family surroundings were, and how we lived.  Well, we lived in the -- in a small college that was attached to a larger residence building, rented this small property.  I think she could tell by the size of the apartment that we were living in and the fact that it was a backyard apartment, that we were not too well off.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And so -- because I think in the '20s, it would have been unusual for somebody -- a woman of your class to go to university, to go to college.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, Radcliffe was pretty well populated.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it?  Were they not --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: The Harvard for women.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's interesting that you chose Radcliffe, because if you had not been a particularly distinguished student in high school --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: The reason for choosing Radcliffe is that my brother -- we moved from Pennsylvania to Cambridge, because my brother, at age 14, was ready for college.  So anyway, it was natural that I should take the college preparation course.  I didn't expect to go to Radcliffe particularly, because I didn't think I was bright enough, but I took all the College Board exams and I got admitted.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you surprised yourself, not just other people.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right, right, right.  I was surprised about it.  After all, I'm a person who grew up in poverty and less opportunities than the well to do, and plenty of time to study.  So, so anyway, the amazing thing about the lives of my brother and me is that all the expectations were for him to become a great scholar, and so he picked a field that was dying, whereas I was the dumb sister, and I picked a field that kept on growing.  You could forget a whole lot of astronomy, because you couldn't cope with both the old and the new.  (laughs)  Whereas in Latin, there's only the old to cope with, and you can imagine that plenty had been written about what there was to write about.  So he wrote a pretty good PhD thesis, but he wrote practically nothing after that, only trivial little things.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When you were at Radcliffe, were you able to take courses in astronomy as an undergraduate?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh sure, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So, did you major in astronomy or did you major --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  I majored in math.  No, there was only one course offered in astronomy, and a second course was to be given only in case at least four students applied for it.  Well, I took the astronomy my second year.  \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=1200.0,1500.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We collected four people for my senior year; a graduate student and three undergraduates.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Your teacher in astronomy, was that a man or a woman?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Man.  Oh yes.  In my day, all the Radcliffe teachers were, excepting section heads, all the professors were men.  They were all -- Radcliffe was really a part of Harvard, but it wasn't accepted as such, but it loaned Radcliffe its professors.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what were their attitudes to you women?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, some of them just came and lectured, and that was that, and then gave you the course, but in astronomy, the section men were very kind working with us.  The section work was really even more important than the lectures, because you were doing things.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Descri -- I'm not a scientist.  Can you describe to me what section work is?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, the sections were for different branches of, of a subject or, in the case of Harvard versus Radcliffe, in my day, the girls did not attend Harvard classes.  They did for the graduate school but not for undergraduates, so that the Harvard professors repeated their courses for the women at Radcliffe.  So we -- and it was verified that the women got a Harvard education, but at Radcliffe.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, I understand.  So the women graduating from Radcliffe had as equally a good degree?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well yes.  They had exactly the same professors.  Radcliffe was a little, one might say pin money for the professors.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was there -- ah, the astronomy professor who taught you, was he personally encouraging to you to carry on?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think so.  He didn't encourage me as much as one graduate student that he had, because the graduate student, he appropriated to do research for him, whereas they didn't do that to the undergraduates.  But after I graduated, why then he also gave me projects to work on.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What was his name?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Stetson.  [Harland Stetson, Harvard Observatory 1916-29]\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Stetson.  Good name.  In all of this, most women of your generation would expect to get married and have children.  Was this ever part of your plan?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I never wanted to get married.  For one thing, I had some physical ailments that I thought should not be propagated.  All in all, I really wasn't too much interested in getting married.  My mother was not happily married and that, of course, would have influenced me too, but since I wasn't really very bright, I just felt that I should do the best I can in the world and not inflict my maladies on another generation.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's a very sad thing to say.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: After all, if you've got some ailments, you don't want to pass them along.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Of course in those days, if you got married, it was inevitable you would have children wasn't it?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Sure.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Nowadays this -- it's not inevitable.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  Nowadays, the young people do what they please.  If they want children, fine.  If they don't want them, fine also.  And a few of course, accidentally had them when they didn't want them.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I think that's always happened.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So was there some sort of hereditary illness in your family?\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=1500.0,1800.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, yes.  My mother's mother died in the insane asylum.  That's the only, only major malady.  The other died natural, more natural deaths.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Is it an understandable anxiety then,that you had?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think it was partly for that, when I read that young people can inherit, skip a generation.  And when I found out that it was my grandmother who died in the insane asylum, that it was not unlikely that that might hit me too, because of course, the woman wasn't -- didn't have any signs of insanity before the malady showed up, so that it was very unexpected and very tragic.  So I just thought that if a young person like myself could inherit, from a grandparent, I had better not try to pass that on and that -- that was all right with me because I wouldn't want to get married and then fear that the same thing might happen to me.  And so it all worked out fine.  My brother had no such qualms at all.  He was always self-possessed.  Fortunately, because he turned out all right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Coming back to Radcliffe, you've explained how you got to Radcliffe.  How did you pay for your education?  Did you have to have jobs as well?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well for one thing, my brother was getting pretty high scholarships and fellowships, and he shared his with me.  I had a good brother.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You did.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh, I worshipped my brother.  It was always the emphasis on the my.  My brother.  Nobody had a brother like my brother.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So there was no financial assistance for you as yourself?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  Very little.  There was some, but not -- most of the financial aid I got was in graduate school, rather than undergraduate.  But anyway, between my mother and my brother, I managed to get through not only college, but graduate school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What -- when you were thinking about what you were going to do after your undergraduate degree, what made you think about a graduate degree?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I -- what I thought I was going to do after graduation was teach mathematics in the high school, but I didn't succeed in getting any job there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, did you try?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I applied for it yes, but I didn't get any job.  I think I got one summer school job in math one time, but not a permanent position.  But then, when I took the astronomy course, I got a job at Harvard Observatory after I graduated, an assistantship.  I noticed that they're working on variable stars, and I noticed a number of the Harvard photographs had meteors photographed on them.  And so I dug all the plates out of the plate stacks that had shooting stars on them, and I then measured all of those meteors and drew their light curves, and classified them by whatever shower they belonged to or whether they were sporadic, and so on, and just did that on Saturdays and Sundays for my own pleasure.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You must have been pretty good, to get a job at Harvard, even if it was a low one.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: So anyway, when I had finished what I wanted to do with all those shooting stars on the plates, I wrote my paper and put it on Shapley's desk.  [Howard Shapley, Dir. Harvard Observatory, 1920-1952]\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=1800.0,2100.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He called me into the office, another professor who was there too, and he says, \"What's this?\"  Here I was being paid to work on variable stars, and I submit a paper on shooting stars.  I says, \"Well that's what I came in Saturdays and Sundays for.\"  And he knew I was around Saturdays and Sundays, so he sent the paper out to be refereed and it got a good referee, and from there on, life at Harvard was just perfect for me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you -- you did that first paper then, before you had even got a PhD?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Wow.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  I did that for the fun of it.  I liked shooting stars.  I think I told you, when my mother and I both saw the same two shooting stars colliding, and so -- and when I found out that there were photographs of a lot of shooting stars in the Harvard collection, why I just came back on Sundays, pulled them all out of there, had a lot of fun, and then put it on Shapley's desk, and he thought I'd been cheating.  But when I said, that's what I did on Sundays, he knew I was there on Sundays.  He had just misinterpreted why I was there and from there on, life at Harvard was just perfect for me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So he -- you got very well with Shapley?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: He was the one that hired you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, yeah, but his successor was different.  His successor. During the world war ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=2100.0,2.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I worked at Aberdeen, and one of the professors at Harvard Observatory happened to visit Aberdeen, to consult with somebody there, and he told me that he deplored the small salary I was getting at Harvard.  Now, \"If you would work for me, under one of my large government contracts...\"  He could pay me a lot more.  So I thanked him and I said I'd think it over.  And so when I got back to Harvard, after the war, I found out that Shapley had asked the Superintendent of the Harvard Southern Station in Bloemfontein, South Africa to take a lot of photographs on the region I was working on.  And so I went back to Mr. Menzel [Donald H. Menzel, Dir. Harvard Observatory 1954-66] and I said that I felt obligated to examine all of those plates, since they were taken especially for me, but if an when I finish that project, I'd be glad to reconsider his offer.  Well he was miffed.  He thought he was the God of Gods in astronomy and so, when he became Director, he did his darnedest to get rid of me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What did he do?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: He did.  Well, just he told me to put all my plates back in the stacks, and he told me to put all my books back into the library, and then I was to take charge of the library.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were relegated to the library?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: To take care of the observatory library.  So anyway, Dr. Shapley and Dr. Bok [Bart J. Bok] noticed what was going on, so they recommended that I accept this job at Yale instead.  Well, the first few weeks I was at Yale, it was just as though I was substituting Yale for Harvard, because the then director was starting me out exactly the way Harvard was doing there, and I thought, Gee, I've come to the wrong place.  This is just like the bad part of Harvard for me.  Fortunately for me -- this is a horrible thing to state but it's true.  The then director of the Yale Observatory got sick and he died within about a couple of weeks after I came here, and his successor happened to be a person who had known me at Harvard, and liked what I was doing at Harvard, and resurrected my old project here at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Wow.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That is the greatest fortune of my whole life, because if it hadn't been that that particular professor knew me before he came to Yale, I probably just would have been forced to do what other people wanted done, and not my own project.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=2.0,2400.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Whereas this person immediately resurrected my Harvard project.  He thought that was a project worth proceeding and from there on, life at Yale was fine for me.  Those were a couple of weeks of pretty dreadful, when you think that you leave one place because of a certain reason and then go right into the very same thing in the next institution, that was pretty awful, but fortunately, it didn't last too long.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, that's good.  Somebody told me that at Harvard -- well there were two things that I'd been told.  First of all, that the women there were being paid forty cents an hour and the men were being paid a dollar an hour.  Is that right?  For doing the same work.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: The same type of work, yes.  That was true, but they had more -- they were given more responsibility in the work, that is they had more choice of what they wanted to do, whereas we women were simply employed to be somebody's assistant.  Fortunately, when Dr. Bok [?Dirk Brouwer Dir. Yale Observatory 1941-66]became the Director here, everything turned out the way it had been at the best times at Harvard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The other thing that was mentioned to me was that there was a whole group of women at the Harvard Observatory.  I don't know how many there were, and maybe you can remember that, but you were called the Harvard Computers.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Can you tell me what that was all about?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, there is a lot of routine work to be done in astronomy, both measuring plates and computing periods of variable stars.  Both men and women were employed in that but actually, more women were employed for doing the computing, because they were getting less salary; forty cents instead of what was reputed to have been a dollar for the men, because they were supposed to continue to become professional, whereas the women were supposed to be assistants.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were just seen as calculating machines?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  But fortunately, when that director died, within a few weeks of the time I came to Yale, why then, the person who became the director was a person who had known me at Harvard, and resurrected my Harvard project here at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So were the plates that you had had at Harvard, were they shipped down to Yale?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think I did borrow plates from Harvard too, but the project in general became my project, regardless of where I was.  So, so I worked on it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When you were at Harvard, did you actually complete a PhD while you were working for the observatory?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.  I have a Radcliffe PhD.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what was it on?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Astronomy.  It was on shooting stars.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Your favorite subject.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did your -- by that time, did your mother think well actually, number two is doing pretty darn well?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did she come to your graduation?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No, because I got my degree in the east and she didn't come to the east, my brother did.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because your mother was living out west with your -- near your --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: My mother lived with my brother in the west, but at that time, he was not married, so she and he lived together.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did she ever say she was proud of you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did she ever say she was proud of you, when you got your PhD?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.  She was -- well, one of her neighbors telephoned me recently, a person whom I really didn't know but she -- \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=2400.0,2700.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I think she was the next-door neighbor.  So I think I met her on one occasion, when I was there for only a short time, and she said my mother was always talking about me.  Of course, her earlier days, she was always talking about the precious son because, you know, only the boys could get good jobs and so on.  And so, having a daughter who was doing well was something to brag about.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But did she think that this was appropriate work for a woman?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I don't think she thought of it one way or another that way.  She merely thought of it as what I wanted to do.  I think she was always amazed.  Here my brother was always the brains in the family and then, in his old age, both she and he were bragging about me, because I was doing a modern subject and his subject was, after all, the dead languages.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Let's take a break, because I think you're getting a little bit tired.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: OK, please.\r\n[BREAK] \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=2700.0,2784.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: OK.  This is the second part of the interview now.  You've been talking, you know, for almost an hour.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Going back to when you first started to do astronomy seriously, which was as an undergraduate at Radcliffe, can you recall the first time you ever used a telescope?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, we did have a small hand telescope ourselves, you know, one about this long, a field telescope, but -- and we looked at stars with it, but that wasn't too exciting.  The stars looked a little brighter in the telescope, but they didn't -- most of them were not double or something like that.  We had some sessions at one of the Harvard telescopes in the beginner's astronomy course.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And they were much bigger and more powerful telescopes?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  They're -- I think the one that we mainly used was a five-inch.  I forget a lot of things, but it wasn't a -- it was not a big telescope.  It belonged to Radcliffe, not to Harvard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it was just a routine thing, it wasn't -- it didn't -- it wasn't a revelation to you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Not really.  That is, it -- they were better telescopes than the ones we -- hand telescopes, which were generally surveyor’s instruments, rather than astronomer’s instruments, but used for looking at the planets and what have you, but not for deep sky objects.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Of course, we take for granted now, the kind of instruments we have today.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I know it, yeah.  Oh, times have changed a lot.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were there many other women in the field, when you started off as a young researcher?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, the class at Radcliffe was the women's class only, and I think that we had something like eight or ten students in that class.  It was just barely more than the minimum that was allowed.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what would have been the size of the men's classes at Harvard, in the subject?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh, they would probably have had 30 or 40, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it really was a minority subject?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: And -- oh yes.  And also, I think in those days, more high school boys than girls were interested in astronomy.  Of course, it wasn't taught in high school, but just knowing the students that went on from math courses, a higher percentage of boys than girls.  Well that was true for almost all sciences.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Yes, that's true.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Girls went in more for literature than the -- a lot of men were in literature also, but the percentage of scientists was bigger among the men than among the women.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=2784.0,3000.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Then of course, I think the majority of women who went to university went on to become teachers.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You said earlier on, that you had actually applied for teaching jobs in high school, but you failed to get a job.  Do you know why that might have been?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, I think that probably the men who applied, probably had a wider education in the field than the Radcliffe girls did.  And of course, the men's colleges did not employ a woman.  They employed Cecilia Payne [C. Payne-Gaposchkin, 1st tenured woman professor at Harvard] because she was extremely brilliant a person.  But in general, there were only men professors at Harvard than women professors.  The classes in astronomy were generally the minimum that was allowed.  They rarely exceeded the half dozen, or whatever it was, of students.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Which of course, if the course was given it was fine, because if there were just a half a dozen students, why then you got more personal attention.  If you were in a class of 40, why then you just listened to the professor.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But you say that a -- that being the underdog actually turns out to be a good -- a blessing in disguise?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Now, I also understand that when you got your PhD from Radcliffe, that you actually won a prize for your work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, the prize was a surprise.  In other words, I got good grades, and so this was a Radcliffe prize and I was the woman taking the courses.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So was it -- can you recall what the prize was?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think it was -- I think it was only $100, but $100 then meant a lot.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I mean the name of the prize.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Is it the Caroline Wilby Prize?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Caroline Wilby, does that make --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Is that it?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what was it specifically for?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: For good grades in astronomy.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It wasn't for original work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  It wasn't for a project, it was in general.  At least that's the way I recall it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Somebody that again, has come up in the research, is a Turkish astronomer, Paris --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Paris Pişmiş.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about her.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, I went to a meeting in Istanbul, I think it was, and there I met this girl, who asked me about the possibility of going to Harvard.  I gave her the information; whom to contact, what -- so she came and got her PhD here at Harvard or Radcliffe, that is.  I think she already had a PhD in Turkey, but she got another one here in the States.  And then she -- a Mexican astronomer, who came to some meetings that we had in Nantucket, was entranced by Pişmiş and so, so, he succeeded in marrying her.  And so, she became a Mexican astronomer.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And she carried on being an astronomer?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=3000.0,3300.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  She was a good, good friend of mine.  We had good times together.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Coming back to the other thing about being a woman in the Harvard Observatory, this issue of salary and whether or not you were professional women.  Did you just accept that, or did you, did you --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh, I accepted anything at Harvard, just for the purpose of staying there, and it worked out fine.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you -- did you feel that you were discriminated against because you were a woman?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh I think it was rather common in those days, that women got paid less than the men did, but that didn't bother me.  What was important to me was to be there.  Having as much independence as I did in astronomy, at such an early stage of my career, was really something precious, very precious.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were prepared to put up with, with actually not a very good salary, for the kinds of work that you were doing?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh, I know -- having grown up a pauper, any salary is good enough for me, provided that the job was good enough for me to want.  If I had a job that I really liked and wanted, then I came back evenings and Sundays and so, to do not what I was told to do, but the other things that I thought I wanted to do in the plate collection.  In other words, I got employed to work on variable stars, and so I came back evenings and Sundays and so on, to work on shooting stars.  I certainly got a puzzled and disapproving look from the Director, when I put that paper on his desk, but when I told him it was what I was doing on Sundays, why then, he was pleased he was getting the equivalent of two jobs for the price of one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)  I think he was pleased.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: So from there on, life at Harvard for me was practically perfect.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And he encouraged you then, to carry on with your own work after that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh sure, sure.  From there on, he let me do what I pleased.  Well, he kept track of what I was doing, but he didn't make me do something else instead.  He may have given me something else to do for, you know, a current short project somebody had to do but nobody was yet employed to do, you know, something that would take at most a week to do.  Why then, give it to me, because I'd be around.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it -- so really this thing about being independent, being able to do your own work as opposed to being somebody else's research assistant was absolutely central to --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That was the most important thing, and it worked out beautifully, because if you could have seen how disapproving he looked when he got that paper on the shooting stars, but when he found out he was getting it for free, two jobs for the price of one.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So no wonder you felt very pressured when Menzel became the Director.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because you were essentially being asked to be somebody else's research assistant again.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, he was going to pay me more, because he was going to make me work specifically for him, on his projects.  Well, that way, I would have been paid better and I would have been treated pretty well, but I wouldn't be allowed to do the things that I chose, whereas Shapley, as long as I did what he asked me to do, he didn't mind what else I was doing, once he found out that I was doing it on Saturdays and Sundays.  Well this man wanted me to be his stooge, not an independent worker, but simply a helper.  So anyway, I think my life turned out happier than his, even though I did leave Harvard.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=3300.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"After all, if the wrong man is in charge, you'd better not stay around.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Your work at Harvard was, I understand, in two sections, because there was the pre war and then there was a period after the war, but in between, you did --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I did -- I was at Aberdeen Proving Ground during the war.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what work was that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: It was computing firing tables for cannons.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: For missiles?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: War work.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And were you happy to do that work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.  Yes, I enjoyed it.  I did write some independent papers there too, which were received just as my first independent papers, you know, what's this?  Well, that's what I did on Saturdays and Sundays.  And then when people found out that they were getting two jobs for the price of one out of me, why that was fine.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So salary was an issue as well, with the war work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well yes, but I could do what I pleased in addition to what I was paid for.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What happened though, when the director came from D.C.?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: When?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Wasn't there -- wasn't there a story.  I think you mentioned me, the last time we met, that, that the director came from D.C. and discovered that your salary was very poor.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about that again.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh well, he just thought that since I was being paid a low salary, that if I worked for him under that government job, why then I would you know, I'd drop everything in order to be paid more, whereas I fooled him, because I took the job I liked rather than the salary that was being paid.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I'm talking about your war work, here at Aberdeen.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, yeah.  Well, at Aberdeen well, that, that war work I did was simply because I felt it was my duty to support the war, and that was all right.  I was allowed to do a good bit of original research there too, because as usual, I did what I was told during working hours, and then I went back Saturdays and Sundays to do what else that I thought I wanted to do.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Didn't the --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: And that worked out fine, because the Associate Director there at the time, well he wanted to know -- he had a paper that I had written.  He called me in and he looked very stern and asked, \"What's this?\"  And I told him, well that's what I came in Saturdays and Sundays to do, and from there on everything was fine, because then he realized that he was getting something for free.  Not that I was -- he thought I was cheating on time and doing what I pleased, instead of what I was supposed to do, and what I told him was that I was doing that on the days when I was not being paid.  And so from there on, I was a welcome employee.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: At the --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: At a man's institution.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, yes.  At the Aberdeen Proving Ground, didn't the colonel say, why should women be paid the same as men, because they only go off and get married.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right, yeah, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about that, because you -- I think you took him to task, didn't you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I did.  I've forgotten just how I put it but anyway, I had told him, they go off and do independent work in the same field.  In other words, he realized he was not being cheated out of time because I was doing my own project, but that he was getting the equivalent of two jobs for the price of one.  Giving your boss double the time that he's paid for, generally makes you more welcome than you had been before.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was there a general attitude that women in science just weren't really very serious about it?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well yes.  Well what the colonel told me the reason that he discriminated against -- \r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=3600.0,3900.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"-- women is that they no longer, no sooner learned the job and started to do it well, then they went off and got married.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Now what did you say to that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I said, \"Not if that is the work that they wanted to do.\"  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And so what did he say to that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, he asked around how I was doing and so, I had no problems.  I stayed at Aberdeen until it was time for me to leave and get back to astronomy, and then I was given a consultant appointment.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you -- so you, despite sometimes, difficulties with the salary and the number of hours that you put in, you really -- you did see it --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I won out most of the time.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You won out most of the time.  You stood up for yourself?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, after all, if I thought the work was worth well and I liked it, and especially if I had chosen it myself, why they weren't paying for the extra time.  That was my business.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Of course they could have prevented me from using it, if they thought so, but they were smart enough to know they were getting something for free.  And they probably couldn't have paid me any more because there were limitations to how much salary you get.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think that when, when Menzel came to direct the observatory at Harvard, would you say that you were fired, or you were pushed out, or you were eased out?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think the world war had something to do with the decrease in my employment there, but I've forgotten the exact reasons why I left Yale, but I think it was because of --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You mean Harvard?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think it was because of the person who became the Director, who was going to prevent me from doing the work that I was already doing and work only for him.  Well that might have been good if I'd not been working on a project that I and others thought should continue.  So anyway, my not working for that person was my decision and of course, when he became Director, why then I was not wanted any more.  And in the long run, so what?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I'm just going to turn this off because --\r\n\r\n[BREAK]\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=3900.0,4099.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DORRIT HOFFLEIT: That job was primarily --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I just want to ask the question again, so that we can find it on the tape.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: OK.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When I got up to that part of your story, when you took on the position at Maria Mitchell [Observatory], and I'd like to hear more about that and its relationship to your job at Yale.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, it was an independent job, so that I spent half a year at Yale and roughly half time, a little less than half time on Nantucket.  So those, they were two separate jobs, but each institution was agreeable with my working at the other institution.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it not very difficult to split your life like that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Not really.  The jobs were quite different in the two places, so there was no real contact between them, except in that for footnotes for the catalogs that I was working on for Yale, I could -- if the catalog happened to be on a field of the sky in which I was also working on, on Nantucket, then I could provide footnotes for the Yale catalogs from the Nantucket work.  But I also published independently in the Nantucket publications.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=4099.0,4800.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[Telephone Rings]\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I am sorry.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I don't think I'll ever run out of things to do.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No.  So what was your position at Maria Mitchell?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Director.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You were the Director.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it was up to you to define --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: It was really a summer job.  What I did then there was I generally employed about four or five girls every summer, to work on variable stars, taking photographs and measuring the photographs, and determining the periods of the stars.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And did you deliberately employ women?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you deliberately choose to employ women?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.  After all, Maria Mitchell was the first women astronomer in America, and women in general have somewhat more difficulty getting jobs than the men do.  The dormitory space I had was well, a big room with four beds in it, and I wasn't going to make that co-educational.  (laughs)  So anyway, what is it that I've been kicking?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think it's that.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh no, it's my -- there, that's -- I've been kicking the outside of that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, right.  So you thought that was an opportunity to, to bring forward women.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Young women in the profession.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: If you're running a small observatory that's a memorial to a woman astronomer, then I think knowing that women have harder times getting jobs than men do, for summer jobs, because that was summer jobs only.  So I had a number of girls.  I had a couple of boys, who really wanted to work there, but I just made them special the last year I was there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you ever criticized for just taking on women?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you ever criticized for just taking on women?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Not really.  After all, the Maria Mitchell Observatory is a memorial to the first woman astronomer.  So since women have harder times getting jobs, and this is a woman's observatory, why not limit it to the women?  The couple of boys that I had, they had some special interests of their own, so that I really didn't employ them for my work but employed them so that they could do their own work there.  But that was only the last year or two that I was there.  In general, it was exclusively for women.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How many women do you think you helped train?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think the largest number I had living space for was five.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But over the years, you must have -- there must have been quite a number of women altogether.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, yes.  Having four or five a year, and I was there for, I think it was 20 years, something like that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So about 100 women?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what happened to them all?  Did they all --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well they, they were -- they were all astronomy majors, so they went on in astronomy.  I haven't kept up with most of them any more, but because after all, it's a long time since I was there.  So, many of the ones that I had as students are now retired themselves, so I've lost track of most of them.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But most of them actually did stay in the profession.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: They didn't go off and get married?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And have children?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think most of them actually did get married.  I don't know about too many children, but they didn't give up the astronomy.  Some of them just kept it up as amateurs and others got jobs.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's a remarkable achievement, to bring so many women forward in a science.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, it was a nice opportunity and certainly, a nice place for anybody to spend the summer.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I can imagine.  I've never been to Nantucket yet.  It's one of the places on my list.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Tell me about Margaret Harwood.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, she was of course, the first Director.  Well, she wanted me to become her director, but when I became her director, she was terribly annoyed --\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=4800.0,4500.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"-- that I wasn't just going to let her direct me.  She became really, almost malicious about that only she knew how to run the observatory, whereas she didn't -- she had mainly boys work for her, and specifically for her, not for them to publish papers themselves, but to do her work for her.  She thought I should exactly what she told me to do, and not do any thinking of my own, whereas I was being praised for doing something different from what she had been doing.  So she made life rather a little bitter, because she and I had been very close friends together, when I first came to Harvard.  She just resented the fact that I wasn't only obeying her in taking on this job, whereas I was employed because I had told the employers what I was going -- planning to do, and they had other candidates than me.  So I felt really obligated to do my own work instead of just following hers, especially since she had spent so many years, 20 or more, doing one project that a Harvard student would do in two summers.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it's a recurring theme in your life, this refusal on your part, to be somebody else's assistant.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's very interesting.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: So anyway.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Man or a woman.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  Well anyway, Margaret spent a whole lifetime writing one good, big, long paper.  One paper in over 20 years of being Director, and that paper was the same equivalent as most of the Harvard employees did in a year or two.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's interesting.  So you were working in Nantucket in the summer, and you were then spending the rest of the year at Yale.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How did you get the job at Yale?  What were they -- what was the background to that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That the Director, when Dr. -- what's his name?  Anyway, when one of the professors at Harvard, for whom I had worked, knew I had to leave Harvard, he recommended me for the Yale job, which I then got.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what sort of job?  What was the -- what was your title at Yale?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Research Associate.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it wasn't a teaching job?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  Oh, I did some teaching, but more or less informally.  I didn't have a class of my own, but I helped the others.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it a tenured position?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It was tenured?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you couldn't be fired?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh sure, I could be fired.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You could be fired.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: If you have tenure, if you do anything wrong, you can always be fired.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  But you did have job security.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think that's what I'm trying to say.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, I had job security, not right away but eventually.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What sort of status did your job have within the department?  I know it was a very small department, but what sort of status?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well it was Research Associate.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Not teaching, but research.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So does that have equal status to teaching positions?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, I wouldn't say so.  I wouldn't say it was better or worse, it's just different.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What was the culture of the department like when you came?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well it was most -- they -- Dr. Brouwer was working primarily in celestial mechanics, and that was well, one might say, an old fashioned subject.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=4500.0,4800.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"After he retired, I think, I think he taught only a few months after I came down there, and then he retired completely.  I think what he was probably doing was finishing projects that had already been started under him, so that he finished supporting those, and then quit, and he died very shortly after that.  I think that he lived only a matter of weeks or months after I came here.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And was he the person that you were fearful that you wouldn’t be allowed to do your own work with?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you fearful -- was that the person that gave you some concerns as to whether you'd be able to carry on doing your own work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: He was --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: That was not that one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That was not him?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I understand.  Did you like teaching when you did it?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes, but my feeling the first year that I taught here at Yale, was I enjoyed teaching this course, but then at the end, after the last lecture and after I'd finished the course, I thought, as a professor or a teacher, you do the same thing over and over again, whereas if you're a research person, you keep on doing more and more.  You may be doing the same type of thing, but on a different set of data.  Research was more fun than -- teaching is fun the first year you do it, but if you have to repeat the same thing, I noticed that many of my professors, well they always sounded as though they were just reciting rather than teaching, initially.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So research held a lot more excitement for you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Research is -- well, research is -- teaching is rewarding too, depending on how well you teach, but research is rewarding if you accomplish anything at all.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were there other women in the department when you came to Yale?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were there other women in the department when you came to Yale, or were you --\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes, oh yes.  Ms. Barney [Ida Barney] was my processor and Ms. Jenkins [Louise F. Jenkins] was my predecessor.  Two women were here at Yale before me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But when you were here, were you -- there weren't any other women here at the same time as you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.  Don't ask me who but anyway, the department kept growing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Now in 1961, you became the President of the American Association of Variable Stars Observers.  Do you remember that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, the AAVSO, as we always call it, was organized initially at Harvard oh, in the early 19-teens.  What was your question about it?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You became President.  I'm interested to know how you became President.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, for a time, yes.  They have elections every year or maybe every two years, so I had my turn as -- \r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you nominated?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.  Yeah.  It's largely an amateur organization, governed by professionals.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you the first woman to hold the presidency?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh no.  Oh no.  There were -- that was an organization open to amateurs of any nation or gender.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And so nobody objected to you holding the position because you were a woman?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh no.  The AAVSO, that was completely up to women and men in it right from its origin.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=4800.0,5100.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: All right.  I understand.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: It started I think, about 1915 or thereabouts.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I also understand, and I read this in Margaret Rossiter's book.  She did a big two-volume book on women in science.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And she mentions you specifically once or twice, mostly in connection to receiving grants, and you got grants really quite early on.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When you were at Harvard.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Now that must have been very unusual for a women.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well not at Harvard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  Women were at Harvard for -- ever since Pickering's time, which was late 1890.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But actually getting grants like you though?  That must have been rather unusual.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think Margaret Harwood had grants at Harvard too -- that was not unusual there.  Harvard was pretty liberal about employing women in the astronomy department.  They had Cecilia Payne, Mrs. Gaposchkin, who is noted as one of the world's most important women astronomers.  So Harvard's been pretty good to women.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you sorry to leave?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Pardon?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you sorry to leave Harvard?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Was I?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you sorry to leave Harvard in the circumstances that you left?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh well yes.  The new director and I didn't get along too well because when he had seen me at Aberdeen, he offered me to work under his large government contract, and because I said that I wanted to finish my project, where Harvard had taken something like 400 plates for me on my project, I thought I was obligated to finish that project, which would take me about a year.  He was miffed.  He thought that he was so important, that I should drop everything and just, you know, bow down to him, which would have been fatal, because I have never been able to do independent work after that at all.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You retired, I think officially, in what, 1978 or thereabouts?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Something like that, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Being retired, did that make any difference?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No.  All it means is you're not being paid a salary any more, and you just exactly what you please, as long as they allow you to keep your office.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And you were able to carry on in your work?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Sure.  Sure, as long as -- as long as Shapley survived, but his successor, he could never forgive me for not dropping everything to be his personal assistant.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But that wasn't a problem once you'd retired.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, if he was director, then it was important to get out of there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I understand.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: You can imagine how much work I could do, when I was told to put all the plates back in the plates decks, all the books back in the library, and then look after the library only.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think that was the worst moment in your professional life?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh yes, yes.  After all, I sacrificed a lot of other jobs that paid more because I liked that job.  But anyway, I think in the long run, I turned out OK.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What's the thing you're most proud of?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think my Radcliffe education.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And why do you say that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well after all, without that, I wouldn't have had my Harvard appointments.  And without my Harvard appointments, I wouldn't have become as independent as I am.  Working under Shapley was wonderful.  If he noticed that you were doing independent work and/or doing it to his liking, why then all was well.  Oh the look on his face when he thought I was cheating, because I wrote a paper on shooting stars.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=5100.0,5400.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And then, how happy he was, he was getting two jobs for the price of one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: And that was OK all around.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What do you think you enjoyed most about your professional career?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Working.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Working.  (laughs)  Gosh there are not many people who can say that.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: (laughs)  Well I picked the right work.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You did, you did.  It's a gift.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: It is.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When you think of so many people in the world who just work because they have to.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, you have -- most everybody has to earn a living, but if you know like me, how to live on a shoestring, because you like the work better than the food.  (laughs)  As long as there's enough of it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You obviously worked very hard all your working life.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  That's what I like doing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you -- you must have made yourself ill from time to time, through overwork.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, yeah.  I became ill occasionally, called overwork, but as soon as you recover, then you gradually get back to that stage, and then it doesn't hurt you any more because you know when to go to sleep.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What's kept you going?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: The love of it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You've got a tremendously optimistic spirit.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well, getting my first job at Harvard was a real blessing, and Shapley was a wonderful person, and his successor was a terrible person.  And I had managed to come to Yale and thought I'd gotten just exactly what I was leaving at Harvard, only to have that poor man die within a few weeks.  The one that followed was doing exactly the things I loved to do.  Boy when I think how terrible life would have been if that person had stayed alive, because then I would have had to do the very things that I had left Harvard to do, and nobody would have -- nobody warned me that that person was like that.  They just knew that he was advertising that he needed an assistant, and they didn't take into consideration that he was a monomaniac.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You called your autobiography, Misfortunes in Disguise.  Why did you use that title?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well you know, you get the lowest salary and you don't always get to do what you want to do, but have to do what you're told to do and so on.  The fact that I was not the best of students turned out to be better than -- see my brother was always getting As in just about everything, and a few Bs, whereas I was getting a few Bs and mostly Cs.  And so I learned how to work, and the bright people don't learn how to work because it comes too easily for them.  So when they get a job, they're not prepared for a good job, whereas a person who is not so bright learns how to work.  It's learning how to work that makes you a good employee.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It makes you a good astronomer, a good calculator I would think.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: So all in all, I call it a blessing in disguise, that I wasn't as bright as my brother, who learned everything so easily that he didn't learn how to work.  So my learning how to work made me learn how to become independent, and you'd never expect that.  You expect only the bright people to be, you know, really successful, but sometimes they're the least successful because even though they're bright, they have to work, and they haven't learned how to work, how to settle down and work.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's very wise.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Life is funny that way.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=5400.0,5700.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DORRIT HOFFLEIT: You can't really predict.  The brightest ones turn out frequently, to be the failures, because they haven't learned how to think for themselves, just do.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And not many people have asteroids named after them.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You've got Asteroid Dorrit.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: My brother was so extremely bright, and his work well, as a classicist, there wasn't much for him to do as original research.  All the literary research, possibly had already been done.  He wrote a nice PhD thesis, and that's about the only good, long paper that he ever wrote.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You have an amazing story.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah.  Life has been amazing.  It certainly was not what people really expected.  Of course, I was always the dumb sister, so nothing -- I think was so good that people didn't expect things of me, so I could work at my own pace.  But whoever is bright has to do things real fast, to prove that they're what they're supposed to be.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So really, you, you did make your own independent way.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Right.  No I've been lucky.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What advice would you offer to women who want to have academic careers?  From your own experience.  What would you -- what advice would you give them?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I think the major advice I'd give them is work all you -- study all you can in the field that you like best, because if you don't do what you like to do, you're not going to be really successful.  So even if the job that you like best pays the least, and that was the case with my astronomy.  I got other jobs in math that would have paid me much more than that, but I just couldn't resist this field.  If there's a field that you really like, make do with whatever salary you get in that.  Otherwise, you won't be happy.  So many Americans, in particular, think that earning a high salary is one of the major projects of life, whereas I feel that living on the least you can, if that's what it takes to do what you can do best and like doing, but doing a job just because it pays more and you don't like it, you'll always be miserable.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But it takes a lot of courage to take that independent line.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yeah, but my success in life has been because I've taken the least paying job, because I just couldn't resist that job.  And I recommend that, because if you do what you like to do, you're going to do a better job than if you take something merely because it's higher pay, and you dread it.  And so many people -- well, in America, it seems that the important thing is to earn as much as you can, not to do the best you can on what you can earn.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And the lack of status never bothered you?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: No, not at all.  No.  I picked the jobs that I liked, when there was a choice.  When there was a choice, I'll naturally look to see whether the job that I like paid enough for me to pay the rent and so on, but except for paying for necessities of life, the greatest necessity is to like what you're doing.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Have you heard the news that Meg Urry is now the head of department?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you hear that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And what do you think of that?\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: I think that's fine.  After all, nowadays it's not a man's world any more, it's a people's world.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I hope you're right.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I think to a certain extent I am.  She's an example.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Women have come a long way in the last 50 years.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Oh I should say.  Most of them have had to make sacrifices in order to do the things that they do best.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=5700.0,6000.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282/transcript/31920/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I turned down better paying jobs because I liked the better job.  I don't think a person can be happy, unless he's working on what he likes to do.  There will be good and bad moments to everything, but by and large, if this is what interests you most, well then that's what you should do, provided that there is some possibility of a job in it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Thank you very much indeed.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well I'm glad to have transmitted it to you, and I hope you really did enjoy it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes I did.  Thank you very much indeed, and it's a very fitting start to the project.\r\n\nDORRIT HOFFLEIT: Well good luck on your project.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Thank you.\r\n\r\n[END OF INTERVIEW]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48977/file/122282#t=6000.0,6104.47674"}]}]}]}