Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868, in Massachusetts. Little is known about her private life. As a college student, she studied a number of subjects and fell in love with astronomy (天文学).

Leavitt never married and was considered a serious woman with little time to waste on unimportant aspects of life. Her co-workers described her as pleasant and friendly, and much focused on the importance of the work she was doing. She began to lose her hearing as a young woman due to a condition that only worsened with time.

In 1893, she began working at Harvard College Observatory under the direction of astronomer E.C. Pickering. He directed a group of women, who were called “computers”. These “computers” conducted important astronomy research by studying photographic plates (照相底片) of the sky and cataloging (编入目录) characteristics of stars. The women were not allowed to operate telescopes, which limited their ability to conduct their own research. They lived at a time when women’s contributions were undervalued or ignored.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt continued her research until just before her death, always thinking of herself as an astronomer, despite her start as a nameless “computer” in Pickering’s department. While Leavitt was not officially recognized during her life for her work, Harlow Shapley, the astronomer who was the Harvard College Observatory director, did recognize her worth and made her head of Stellar Photometry in 1921.

At that time Leavitt was suffering from cancer, and she died at the same year. This prevented her from being recognized as a Nobel Prize owner for her contributions. After her death, her name was placed on a lunar crater (月球陨石坑), and asteroid (小行星) 5383 Leavitt carries her name. At least one book has been published about her and her name is usually mentioned as part of the history of astronomical contributions.

Conventionally butterflies were regarded not as fascinating subjects for close observation but as symbols of shallowness. But Eleanor Granville treated them with scientific seriousness.

In her thirties, though suffering from a marriage where the husband was violent and even turned her family against her, Granville sought comfort by studying moths and butterflies. She travelled around the countryside with local girls, beating bushes to catch falling larvae (幼虫), and recruited her servants as assistants to collect specimens (样本). Because of unusual generosity in paying for a fine specimen, she soon accumulated a substantial collection of butterflies. After bringing larvae home, she meticulously logged their growth, providing some of the earliest detailed accounts of insect life cycles.

However, wandering the countryside with a collecting net was considered weird behavior for anyone back then, let alone a woman, and she was accused of going out dressed like a “gypsy”.

Besides her own extensive research, Granville exchanged letters and butterflies with other collectors. Another enthusiast William Vernon reported that she had owned “the noblest collections of butterflies, all English, which has shamed us”. She sent 100 examples to the Royal Society and also sent James Petiver, England’s most celebrated butterfly expert, boxes of carefully pinned butterflies, including several that had been previously unknown, and notably the one later named the Granville fritillary whose wings carry striking brown and yellow patterns, a species of special concern due to the decline of the total number under the influence of food loss and hotter weather.

Eleanor Granville remains the only British naturalist to have left their name to a native butterfly species. A pioneer in the study of entomology (昆虫学), Cranville helped make it an academic subject. Regretfully, only two moths and a butterfly of Granville’s precious specimens are still preserved in London’s Natural History Museum. Her name lives on the butterflies she loved.

Today we talk about pointless, useless actions. And we have an expression to help us do that. For this expression, let’s go to the beach!

For a beach trip, we bring several things that can make the trip more enjoyable. For example, a beach towel makes sitting on the sand more comfortable. Some people choose to bring a beach chair. And a beach umbrella protects you from the sun’s powerful rays. Swimming in the ocean can really make you hungry. So many people bring a cooler for food and drinks.

Making sandcastles on the beach is a fun activity. So, bringing sand-digging tools — like a shovel (铁铲) — and a bucket is a good idea. But you do not need to bring the sand. Most beaches have a lot of that already! And that brings us to today’s expression: “bringing sand to the beach.”

“Bringing sand to the beach” describes actions that are pointless and unnecessary. The actions are useless. This means serving no purpose.

To bring sand to the beach can also mean overkill. Overkill means to do or have more than what is necessary or useful. Often when using this expression, we say “like”. For example, bringing flowers to the opening of a flower store is like bringing sand to the beach.

We usually use “like bringing sand to the beach” when bringing something to a place is unnecessary. But you can also say the same idea with different objects and places. For example, I could also say it is “like bringing a sandwich to a restaurant.” With this example, the meaning goes one step further. It also means that what you are bringing ( the sandwich) is of poorer quality than what you would find at the place (the restaurant).