Sarah Frances Whiting

Sarah Frances Whiting

American Physicist & Astronomer

Aug. 23, 1847 - Sept. 12, 1927

Portrait of Sarah Frances Whiting, an American physicist and astronomer.

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Whiting graduated from Ingham university in 1865. She was appointed the first professor of physics at Wellesley College, a new institution of higher education for women, in 1876. She established its physics department and the undergraduate experimental physics lab, and later taught a course on Practical Astronomy.

Whiting created the first x-ray photographs in the United States. According to Annie Jump Cannon, she “obtained some of the very first photographs taken in this country of coins within a purse and bones within the flesh.”

Whiting became the first director of the Whitin Observatory in 1900, and her work involved the teaching and use of refracting and transit telescopes as well as spectroscopes.

She wrote the textbook “Daytime and evening exercises in astronomy, for schools and colleges” as well as several articles in Popular Astronomy. Her work paved the way for generations of female physicists and astronomers to follow in her footsteps.

Whitin Observatory, where Whiting became director in 1900.