Maud Worcester Makemson

Maud Worcester Makemson (née Maud Lavon Worcester; September 16, 1891 – December 25, 1977) was an American astronomer, an expert in archaeoastronomy, and director of Vassar Observatory. She received in 1941 a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Maya astronomy and in 1953–1954 was a Fulbright Scholar in Japan and India.

Quotes

The Polynesians of old conceived of the sky as a dome or inverted bowl resting upon the rim of the hemispherical earth. One legend compares the universe with a calabash, the cover of which formed the sky, while the bowl was earth, land, and sea, the juice became rain, and the seeds were metamorphosed into sun, moon, and stars. Several writers divide into three zones the space between the earth—paa ilalo, the "solid below"—and the heavens—paa iluna, the "solid above." Kepelino's ... work contains several allusions to the triple heavens, lani kaukolu ...
- (July/September 1938) "Hawaiian Astronomical Concepts". American Anthropologist 40 (3): 370–383. DOI:10.1525/aa.1938.40.3.02a00030.

In Mexican cosmology the sky fell down as a result of profound rainy spell. Two gods changed themselves into trees with which it was then supported. Rain also caused the collapse of the sky in a story told by the Kato of the northwestern United States. Naga-itcho, Great Traveler, saw that the old sky which was made of sandstone and badly cracked in places was about to fall, so he and Thunder constructed a new sky.
- The Morning Star Rises: An Account of Polynesian Astronomy. Yale University Press. 1941. p. 72. (301 pages; 1st part of quote; last part of quote)

The Marquesans and the Gilbert Islanders divided the year into intervals which had no connection with the lunar month and were governed solely by the stars.
- p. 105

She was a mentor to Vera Rubin, Vassar class of 1948, who became an eminent astronomer and made critical discoveries about dark matter. Rubin said of her professor, “She was a very thorough teacher, demanding high quality in return.” With her students, Makemson computed the orbits of twelve minor planets, and named one “Maria Mitchell” and another “Vassar.”
- Sheila Morrin Humphreys, "Maud Worcester (Makemson) (1891–1977)". Celestial Observers: Sixteen Berkeley Women Doctoral Graudates in Astronomy 1913-1952. The 150 Women Project – Holding Series. U.C. Berkeley. 18 December 2023. pdf for Celestial Observers: Sixteen Berkeley Women Doctoral Graudates in Astronomy 1913-1952