She was born 125 years ago today in Wilmington, Delaware and studied astronomy at the University of Berkeley.
During the observations for her doctoral thesis, she discovered that the element sodium occurs in the gas clouds between the stars.
She found many more absorption lines in the spectra of celestial objects – the diffuse interstellar bands that appear to be due to more complex molecules.
After marrying her colleague Donald Shane, Mary Lea Shane gave up her astronomical career to raise their two children. After her husband became director of Lick Observatory, she was a valued hostess, meeting scientists from around the world in the remote astronomer’s settlement on Mount Hamilton south of San Francisco.
When a historian asked for material for a biography of an astronomer, Mary Lea Shane came up with the idea of making a scientific archive out of the horrid hodgepodge of letters, files and photographs in the observatory.
The Lick Archive contains countless documents on the history of astronomy in the USA and Europe.
Mary Lea Shane, one of the great but almost forgotten astronomers, died in 1983 – on her 86th birthday.
