Jennie Belle Lasby Tessmann (August 23, 1882 – December 9, 1959) was an American spectroscopist and college educator. She was a "human computer" at Mount Wilson Observatory from 1906 to 1913, the first woman research assistant at the observatory. She taught astronomy and history at Santa Ana College from 1919 to 1946.
Early life
Jennie Belle Lasby was born in Castle Rock, Minnesota, the daughter of Walter Lasby and Lavinia C. Freeman Lasby. Her father was born in Ontario, Canada, and her mother was from Wisconsin. She attended Carleton College, completing a bachelor's degree in 1904.[1] She earned a master's degree in astronomy at Mount Holyoke College in 1906.[2]
In 1914, Lasby went to work on a spectroscopy project in Germany, but she returned the following year with the start of World War I. She worked briefly at Goodsell Observatory in Minnesota,[6] and was a librarian at Northfield, Minnesota.[7]
Jennie Lasby married German scientist Heinrich Arnold Johannes (John) Tessmann in 1927, in Travemünde, Germany.[15] She died in 1959, in Santa Ana, aged 77 years. In 1967, Tessmann Planetarium at Santa Ana College was named in her memory,[16][17] and the Jennie Lasby Tessmann House is on the Santa Ana Register of Historic Properties.[18]