Muriel E. Mussells Seyfert

At Harvard, Muriel worked as a "computer," which back then meant someone who did careful calculations by hand. In 1936, she discovered three new planetary nebulae. She also worked closely with Harlow Shapley and Carl Keenan Seyfert to find and study new galaxies.

Muriel’s job was to look at photographs of the night sky and figure out how bright, where, and what kind of galaxies they were. Sometimes, she looked at thousands of galaxies on a single photo! Over her career, she found more than 100,000 galaxies. Muriel was particularly good at identifying faint galaxies that were difficult to see, and her work contributed to the understanding of the density and distribution of galaxies in space.

Muriel was born in Danvers, Massachusetts. Her sister, Sylvia, also worked at the Harvard College Observatory. In 1935, Muriel married Carl Keenan Seyfert, who later helped start the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory in Tennessee. Muriel continued her astronomy research at Dyer Observatory and also enjoyed painting. She and Carl had two children. Muriel passed away in Georgia in 1997 at the age of 88.