Kristine Larsen on Caroline Furness

“Mary Whitney … established a student-based research program at Vassar, focusing on observations of comets, asteroids, and, after Nova Persei 1901, on variable stars. … In 1906 she developed an undergraduate course on variable stars, probably the first in the world, on which Caroline Furness based her 1915 textbook.”

“After completing her A.B. and A.M. degrees as a student of astronomer Mary Whitney at Vassar College, Caroline Furness became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy at Columbia (1900). She collaborated with Whitney as her assistant between 1909 and 1911, each sending their variable star observations to Harvard College Observatory. A member of the AAVSO from 1911, Furness succeeded Whitney in 1913, and prepared for publication a volume of variable star observations made at Vassar from 1901 to 1912. In 1915 she authored the well-received An Introduction to the Study of Variable Stars.”