This biography is reprinted with permission from Melbourne Observatory’s Astrographic Women: Star Measurers and Computers by Dr Toner Stevenson, published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Volume 26, Issue 2: 325 – 338 in 2023.
Born: 1878, Australia (assumed)
Died: Unknown
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
Lillian Lewis was an astrographic measurer and computer from 1898 to 1903. She was employed in the same group as Charlotte Peel and also was considered by Baracchi as ‘promising’.
Lewis left the Observatory after four years and the next period of her life is, at the time of writing, a mystery. There is evidence that Lillian Lewis was a keen amateur astronomer nineteen years later when the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV) was formed.
As reported in the Melbourne Herald newspaper in a section about women in astronomy (Anonymous, 1949), Lewis was the only woman admitted as a foundation member of the ASV when it was formed in 1922. She owned and regularly used a 3-inch refractor telescope. She was elected as an office bearer and Assistant Secretary. Lewis was highly active attending meetings and she was appointed as the ASV Librarian from 1931 to 1949. This role was fairly demanding as the ASV had regular subscriptions and encouraged members to borrow the books.
Lewis’ membership of an amateur society is not unique. Women were keen members of astronomy societies when they were formed in the late 1800s in Adelaide and Sydney and some of these women were also employed to work on the AC. It is also possible that Lewis, or another female computer, may have been involved in an earlier society formed for a short period in Victoria as a local branch of the British Astronomical Association (for details of early amateur astronomical societies in Australia see Orchiston, 1998, and Orchiston and Perdrix, 2002), but there is no evidence found of this.