Maud Worcester Makemson (September 16, 1891—December 25, 1977) was an American astronomer, a specialist on

archaeoastronomy Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultu ...

, and director of Vassar Observatory.

Early life and education

Maud Lavon Worcester was born in 1891 in

Center Harbor, New Hampshire Center Harbor is a town in Belknap County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town had a population of 1,040. It is situated between Lake Winnipesaukee and Squam Lake. History Center Harbor separated from the town of Ne ...

. She attended Girls' Latin School in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

. She briefly attended

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, but left to teach school. In 1911, her family moved to Pasadena, California. She was working as a journalist in

Bisbee, Arizona Bisbee is a city in and the county seat of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, United States. It is southeast of Tucson and north of the Mexican border. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was 4,923, down from 5,575 i ...

when she took an interest in astronomy. She returned to California and taught school while taking correspondence courses and summer classes to qualify for admission to the University of California. She earned a bachelor's degree from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

in 1925, followed by a PhD from

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in 1930. Her doctoral work involved calculating the orbits of

asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

Career

Maud Worcester Makemson joined the

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely fol ...

faculty as an assistant astronomy professor in 1932; she became a full professor in 1944. In 1936, she succeeded Caroline Furness as director of the Vassar Observatory. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941 to study Maya astronomy, and was a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

in Japan and India in 1953-1954. Makemson's interest in non-Western astronomical knowledge resulted in several monographs, ''The Morning Star Rises: An Account of Polynesian Astronomy'' (1941), ''The Astronomical Tables of the Maya'' (1943), ''The Maya Correlation Problem'' (1946), and ''The Book of the Jaguar Priest'' (1951, a translation of a sixteenth-century text). Makemson retired from Vassar in 1957, then taught astronomy at UCLA. She co-authored a textbook, ''Introduction to Astrodynamics'' (1960) with

Robert M. L. Baker, Jr. Robert M. L. Baker Jr. (born September 1, 1930) is an American physicist. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics at UCLA summa cum laude, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned a master's degree in physics and a Ph.D. in engineering at UCLA. ...

In the 1960s, she joined the Applied Research Laboratories of

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the Un ...

, to consult with NASA on lunar exploration. She worked on the problem of

selenography Selenography is the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon (also known as geography of the Moon, or selenodesy). Like geography and areography, selenography is a subdiscipline within the field of planetary science. Historica ...

, developing a way for astronauts standing on the moon to locate themselves precisely. Among her undergraduate students at Vassar was astronomer

Vera Rubin Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (; July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by study ...

, to whom she gave a celestial globe.

Personal life

Maud Worcester married Thomas Emmet Makemson in 1912; they had three children together before their divorce in 1919. Makemson died on Christmas Day in 1977, in

Weatherford, Texas Weatherford ( ) is a city and the county seat of Parker County, Texas, United States. In 2020, its population was 30,854. Weatherford is named after Thomas J. Weatherford, a State senator and advocate for Texas’ secession to the Confederate S ...

. Her son Donald E. Worcester (who used his mother's original surname) was an author and a history professor at Texas Christian University."Donald Emmet Worcester: An Inventory of His Papers"
Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Makemson, Maud Worcester American women astronomers 1891 births 1977 deaths Vassar College faculty 20th-century American women scientists People from Center Harbor, New Hampshire American women academics Boston Latin Academy alumni