1/ THREAD/Proposal: NASA, the ESA, and the CSA should change name of the James Webb Space Telescope — and rename this incredible instrument of discovery after Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
2/ Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868 – 1921) was a brilliant, creative, prolific, and largely unacknowledged astronomer. She discovered the relationship between the periods of Cepheid variables and their Luminosity.
3/ Her discovery became the first "Standard Candle" enabling other astronomers to measure the distance to other galaxies and other objects. This astronomical relationship was thereafter known as "Leavitt's Law" and facilitated other major discoveries.
4/ Incredibly, Edward Charles Pickering, who was Leavitt's supervisor at the Harvard College Observatory, took credit for her work.
5/ Gösta Mittag-Leffler, a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, tried to nominate her for the Nobel prize in 1925 — but she had died of cancer in 1921 (The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously).
6/ James Webb was a NASA administrator — he was not an astronomer. Before this monumental space telescope gathers its 'First Light', let's rename it in honor of Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
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