Ida E. Woods

Ida Elizabeth Woods was born in Natick, Massachusetts, the daughter of Oliver Powers Woods and Martha Wright Woods. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1893.^[1][2]

Woods began working As a human computer at Harvard College Observatory immediately after graduating from college in 1893,^[3] where she worked alongside Harlow Shapley and Annie Jump Cannon. She studied photographic plates to discover dozens of variable stars during her career.^[1][4][5][6] She attended the meeting of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) in 1916, when it was held at Harvard.^[7]

Publications by Woods included "Light Curve and Orbit of a New Eclipsing Binary H. V. 3622" (1922),^[8] "Fifty New Variable Stars in the Southern Milky Way" (1926),^[9] "The Southern Station of the Harvard Observatory" (1927),^[10] and "Forty New Variable Stars in Sagitarrius" (1928).^[11]

Woods held the Sarah F. Whitin Fellowship from Wellesley College in 1912, to fund her research at Harvard.^[12][13] She was a member of the Sagamore Sociological Conference.^[14]

Woods died in 1940, at her home in Natick. She was 70 years old.^[15]

• Ida E. Woods at Find a Grave
• Dava Sobel (2016). The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Viking. ISBN 978-0670016952.