THE HARVARD COMPUTERS

Written and Created by Graham Sack
Executive Produced by Jennifer Lee
Supported by the Sundance Institute and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Pioneer Works, and the Simons Foundation
Science Advising by Janna Levin (Tow Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University, Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works)

The Harvard Computers (Recipient of the 2021 Sundance Institute / Sloan Foundation Episodic Fellowship) tells the true story of a group of extraordinary women who braved gender and class discrimination to become America’s first female astronomers, shattering the glass ceiling in science and higher education.

The series centers around Williamina Fleming, a twenty-one-year-old Scottish immigrant abandoned by her husband while pregnant after arriving in Boston. With nowhere to turn, Williamina takes a job as a maid in the home of brothers Edward and Henry Pickering, a pair of Harvard professors obsessed with discovering the secrets of the night sky—one through hard facts, the other through fanciful theories. Recognizing Williamina’s intelligence and frustrated by the complacency of his male graduate students, Edward hires her into the Harvard Observatory, where she assembles a group of unlikely scientists—working class women from Boston’s immigrant ghettos and the first graduates of America’s newly formed women’s colleges (e.g., Henrietta Swan Levitt, Antonia Maury, and Annie Jump Cannon).

At a time when many believed women lacked intellect and had no place in either education or science, the group’s labor over the successive years (1878-1919) established a beachhead for women in science and laid the foundation for the most important astronomical breakthroughs of the 20th century.

A live performance of the pilot episode was held at Pioneer Works starring Annabelle Dexter-Jones (SUCCESSION, THE DEUCE, WHITE GIRL), Javier Muñoz (HAMILTON, IN THE HEIGHTS), Max Jenkins (SPECIAL, DEAD TO ME, HIGH MAINTENANCE), Daphne Rubin-Vega (RENT), and Damian Young (OZARK, HOUSE OF CARDS), amongst others.

Press: Pioneer Works: Staged Reading, Graham Sack: The Harvard Computers, Harvard Magazine: Bringing the Stars to Light, Sundance: 2021 Sundance Institute / Sloan Episodic Fellowship, Harvard Crimson: Graham Sack Receives Sloan Sundance Grant