The Director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket, Massachusetts for forty-one years, Margaret Harwood (1885-1979) was the first, and for a long time, the only woman to serve as director of an independent astronomical observatory.

Born in Littleton, Massachusetts, Harwood attended Radcliffe College where she studied astronomy. A frequent visitor to the Harvard College Observatory, she learned to use the telescopes and became acquainted with staff members, including Edward Pickering and Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Upon graduation she was hired as an assistant at the Observatory, supplementing her modest income by teaching science in local schools.

A six-month astronomical fellowship from the Maria Mitchell Association in 1912 brought Harwood to the Maria Mitchell Observatory, built as a memorial to the first female astronomer in the United States. While residing at the Mitchell homestead, she curated a small museum and library, used the telescope to research asteroids and lectured on astronomy. After receiving the fellowship for several years, she was offered, at age thirty, the directorship of the Observatory.

Harwood studied photometry, the measuring of variation in the light of stars and asteroids. Widely acknowledged for her work, she was the first woman to have access to the Mount Wilson Observatory, the world’s largest at the time.

Despite her recognition, Harwood was denied credit for the discovery of asteroid 886 Washingtonia because, “it was inappropriate that a woman should be thrust into the limelight with such a claim.” In 1960, a minor planet was named in her honor.