Astronomer, 99, still shoots for stars

Dorrit Hoffleit sits near the window of her New Haven apartment, feeling every bit of her 99 years, 10 months, and five days.

She is weak. She can no longer make the short walk to the Yale University astronomy department. She can't hear very well, and she now needs a caretaker with her day and night.

"Most of the time I sleep," Hoffleit says, sitting at her kitchen table. "And every time I go to sleep, I hope I'll not wake up. And before you know it, I'm up again."

She smiles.

"But anyway," she adds, "I think I'll make 100."

The milestone, set to be celebrated March 12, won't mean much to her career. Hoffleit, a senior research astronomer emeritus at Yale, is already considered the oldest active female astronomer and perhaps the oldest active astronomer of any gender.

But Hoffleit -- who spent a lifetime overcoming barriers, first as the daughter of German immigrants during World War I and later as a woman in a field dominated by men -- has come too far to quit just now.

"I want to make it to 100," she says. "When you're as close as I am now, why give up?"

That may as well be a mantra for Hoffleit's life. Picture her, as a young girl raised in Pennsylvania, told by her own mother she wasn't very clever or at least not as bright as her brother.

Picture her, taunted by other children during World War I, unwilling to play with the German girl.

Then picture this: two meteors colliding.

"Both mother and I saw it," she recalls. "That's what started me in astronomy. Because how could this happen? And why?"

Hoffleit was accepted at Radcliffe College, Harvard's college for women at the time, and graduated in 1928. She went to work as a research assistant in Harvard's astronomy department, getting paid 40 cents an hour next to men who got paid a dollar.

Undeterred, Hoffleit stuck with it, earning a PhD in astronomy in 1938, working for the government computing missile trajectories during World War II, and joining Yale's astronomy department in 1956. There, for the next five decades, she would become known to astronomers as the author of the Yale Bright Star Catalogue and one of the hardest-working astronomers around.

"She was the most dedicated person I've ever met, probably in my life," says Yale astronomer Richard Larson . "One way to put it: I think she spent more hours in her office at the age of 80 or 90 than a lot of younger people at the age of 30 or 40."

Hoffleit tracked stars across the sky for the catalogue. But what she truly loved was studying variable stars -- stars that vary in brightness with time -- as well as writing and teaching.

She wrote books, and from 1957 to 1978, she worked summers as the director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket, teaching young astronomers, mostly women, the science of stars.

"There were other directors there who let the students do the work and then the director presented the paper," says Wayne Warren , an assistant adjunct professor of astronomy at Towson University. "Dorrit gave them full rein and let them do their thing the way they wanted to do it, and then gave them full credit."

Her students are gone now, as are most of her colleagues. But Hoffleit is not forgotten. There was a party for her 99th birthday last year and there's a party in the works this year as well.

Hoffleit says she will be there, and no one contradicts her. They know better than that. She is more than just a female astronomer and more than just an old female astronomer. She is a woman who has always done things her way.

"I did whatever I was asked to do and then I did whatever I pleased," she says. "And I got more honors for doing what I pleased than what I was asked to do. Because what I was asked to do was women's work."

FACT SHEET

Home: Born in Florence, Ala., raised in New Castle, Pa., and now living in New Haven.

Family: Never married, Hoffleit's parents and brother have long since passed away.

Education: Received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Radcliffe College at Harvard in 1928. In 1938, she earned her PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe.

Her books: In addition to the Bright Star Catalogs, Hoffleit also wrote a history book, "Astronomy at Yale: 1701-1968," and a memoir, "Misfortunes as Blessings in Disguise."