In researching Columbia’s history in our archives, one meets a number of interesting characters whose stories are often underrepresented in our sources. Florence Ellen Harpham is an excellent example. She has the distinction of being the first woman to receive a Trustee appointment as an Officer of Instruction, or simply, the first woman faculty member in 1896. We have some of her work and some letters but Flora, as she was known, is one of those figures we wish we knew more about.

In 1890, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd donated his astronomical glass plate negatives to Columbia, which were among the earliest celestial photographs taken in the US. (These negatives are part of the Lewis Morris Rutherfurd photographs at the RBML.) With the collection of negatives and Rutherfurd’s own equipment, Columbia became the first university in the United States and Europe to offer a course in astronomical photography in 1893. The plates, however, required some very exacting work consisting of precise measurements and accurate computation. In the 1896 annual report, the head of the Astronomy Department, Prof. John K. Rees, notes that the computations “are unfinished and … are piling up in the department.” He asks for “the appointment at once of a trained computer who shall be attached to the department. Such a person might be obtained at a salary of $1,000 a year.”

To hire a competent computer, Rees secured funds from Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (Lewis Rutherfurd’s son), Frederick A. Schermerhorn, and others. In October 1896, Rees notified President Seth Low that he had found Miss Flora E. Harpham to fill the position (Central Files, Box 663, Folder 7). Harpham was a graduate of Carleton College (BA 1888, MA 1892), where she had worked at the Goodsell Observatory. From 1893-1896, she had been an Assistant teaching astronomy courses at Smith College. Rees asked Low to have Harpham appointed “Computer at the Observatory” for a term to be limited by the Director of the Observatory and at a salary to be paid by the Director from funds raised for that purpose. And so, at the next Trustees meeting, Florence Ellen Harpham became the first woman at Columbia to be appointed to a rank of Officer of Instruction or faculty as a “Computer in the Observatory.” 

In that letter to President Low, Rees states that “If the person we employ as a computer has a recognized position she will be more likely to accept lower wages and work more contentedly.” Harpham had a Trustee-approved appointment but a lower salary than the rank would imply. She was not paid the $1,000 mentioned in the annual report appeal. Harpham instead received $800. Furthermore, unlike her department colleagues, Harpham’s position was not funded by the department budget but by gifts to the Observatory. 

In 1899, the Observatory received $10,000 from Catherine Wolfe Bruce for the measurement and reduction of the Rutherfurd astronomical photographs. With these additional funds, Harpham became the head of the Computing Bureau, which could then hire other computers, including Mary Tarbox, Eudora Magill, and Helen Lee Davis. In a letter from Magill to Jacoby, we learn about their work. All computations were done twice and by using different methods to verify the results: once by a computer and a second time by Harpham herself. But the computers were all temporarily employed. They could only remain at Columbia until either the Rutherfurd calculations were completed or the funding was exhausted, whichever came first. 

In a 1900 article, “Women Computers and Astronomers,” (True Republic, vol. X, no. 6, 1900, 135), we are told that the computers “toil[ed] daily over the calculations of their measurements,” and that “they are mathematicians, pure and simple.” The article explains that “the average computer in the big observatories makes only $500 a year… The computer who maps out work for others and carries on private research of her own, or as assistant to a director, makes $800.” This computer, “a Minnesota woman, now chief Computer at Columbia University,” (that is, Harpham) told the reporter that “science does not pay; dressmaking, millinery, or haberdashery is far more remunerative.” But we also learn that “this woman” (again unnamed) “loves her business and is even now in outside hours engaged upon a determination of the proper motions of certain stars.” The article is here referring to Harpham’s work with Susan J. Cunningham, Director of the Observatory of Swarthmore College, as they collaborated on the proper motions of the 7,646 stars in Piazzi’s Stellarum Positiones Media. In addition to the Rutherfurd calculations and supervising the other computers, Harpham somehow managed to find the time to pursue her own research. 

Because Harpham was interested in teaching, she knew she needed to complete her doctorate. She submitted one of the Rutherfurd calculations as her thesis at her alma mater, Carleton College. After 12 years, in 1908, with her degree in hand (and the Rutherfurd photographs all computed), Harpham left Columbia to join the faculty at the College for Women in Columbia, South Carolina. It would take almost twenty years for Columbia to finally hire a woman as an assistant professor, Mary Leticia Caldwell (Chemistry), in 1927.

Flora Harpham’s letters and the ledgers with her computations can be found in the Department of Astronomy records.