This biography of Mabel A. Gill was sourced from the Harvard Plate Stacks website on January 14, 2024. It was written by Samantha Notick, Curatorial Assistant at the Harvard Plate Stacks, in 2023. Please note that this information may have been updated since it was added to our database; for the most current information, check their website at https://platestacks.cfa.harvard.edu.
Born: 29 September 1873, United States
Died: 19 May 1961
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Mabel Abbie Gill (September 29, 1873 – May 19, 1961) worked as one of the Women Astronomical Computers at the Harvard College Observatory from 1892 until 1927.
While at the Observatory, Gill was one of the assistants to Annie Jump Cannon’s work on the Henry Draper Catalogue. Her work included proofreading the remarks and text of the Catalogue, as well as ascertaining or confirming stellar positions and magnitudes and classifying stars.1 In the classification work, specifically for the Southern Sky-section of the Catalogue and variable stars, involved examining plates from Observatories in the southern hemisphere. Gill worked with her sister, Edith Gill, as well as Williamina Fleming, Louisa Wells, Sarah Breslin, and Evelyn Leland, among many others.2
Described by Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin in her memoir, Mabel and her sister Edith both would “…hover in the background” and were “quiet, self-effacing, always busy.”3 They both feature in some of the most famous photographs taken of the Women Astronomical Computers; ones taken of the group in 1911 and 1925, respectively.
Mabel Abbie Gill was born in 1873, in Cambridge,4 to John and Harriet F Gill (neé Miner). John Gill worked as a Jeweler and Watchmaker.5 Mabel would be the second of four children. She began working at the Harvard College Observatory in 1892 at the age of about 19. The Gill family resided in Cambridge until at least 1900, when they moved to Belmont.6 Mabel Gill resided in Belmont for the rest of her life, living with family until she passed away May 19th, 1961. She is buried in the Gill family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery.7
Works cited
1-Dava Sobel, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took Measure of the Stars (New York: Viking, 2016), 91, 171
2-Solon I. Bailey, The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839-1927. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931), 181. ; Sobel, 91.
3-Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections, ed. Katherine Haramundanis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 141.
4-Massachusetts, U.S., Birth Records, 1840-1915. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. Accessed via Ancestry.com. May 2023.
5-Ibid. ; 1900 United States Census, Characteristics of Population. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. digital images. Ancestrylibrary.com. Accessed 2022.
6-1900 United States Census, Characteristics of Population.
7-“MABEL F. GILL,” The Life of Mabel F Gill, remembermyjourney, WebCemeteries. Accessed May 2023