About Mary Watson Whitney
Mary Watson Whitney was an American astronomer and was the head of the Vassar College Observatory for 22 years, where 102 scientific papers were published under her guidance. In 1871 Whitney was made the first president of Vassar College's alumnae association. In 1902, she became the first president of the Maria Mitchell Association in Nantucket, Massachusetts. After returning to the United States, Whitney became a teacher at Waltham High School between 1876 and 1881 until she became an assistant of Maria Mitchell at Vassar. Upon Mitchell's retirement in 1888, Whitney became a professor and the director of the observatory there until she retired in 1915 for health reasons.
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