SERVE OTHERS
The stars that taught us how to measure the universe
Her job consisted, apparently, of counting stars. One after another, Henrietta Swan Leavitt examined glass plates taken on different nights and compared tiny points of light. Some stars appeared brighter in one image and fainter in another. She had to observe, classify, record their changes and start again. It was patient, meticulous work. Yet among those thousands of points, she would find a pattern that allowed others to measure enormous distances in the universe.
Nothing in her childhood suggested this would necessarily be her destiny. Born in Massachusetts in 1868, she received an extraordinarily broad education. She studied subjects as different as classical Greek, philosophy, fine arts, analytical geometry and calculus. Astronomy appeared relatively late, during her final year at university, and something awakened in her. We know of no telescope she received as a child or night when she decided to devote her life to the stars. Her story is perhaps more interesting precisely because of this. A vocation does not always appear as an early revelation. Sometimes it emerges while we explore.
After graduating in 1892, she began working as a volunteer at the Harvard College Observatory. There she became part of the group of women known as computers, who examined and classified the vast amount of information contained in photographic plates. When personal circumstances and health problems later took her away temporarily, she wrote to the observatory’s director, Edward Pickering, expressing her desire to return. In her correspondence, she spoke of the work with genuine enthusiasm and intellectual pleasure. She had found something she wanted to continue doing.
Her speciality became the study of variable stars. She identified thousands of them and focused part of her attention on the Magellanic Clouds. While studying certain stars known as Cepheids, she discovered an extraordinary regularity: the longer their period of variation, the greater their intrinsic luminosity. In 1912, she clearly published that relationship. An apparently small task had produced a new tool for exploring the cosmos.
Other scientists would develop the implications of the discovery. Once calibrated, the period-luminosity relationship of Cepheids made it possible to estimate distances that had previously been extraordinarily difficult to determine. Years later, Edwin Hubble would use Cepheids to establish that Andromeda lay far beyond what were then thought to be the limits of our galaxy. Leavitt did not personally take that journey to its ultimate consequences. She did something different: she built a ruler that others could use to go further.
Her story reveals a dimension of service that often goes unnoticed. Serving others does not necessarily mean abandoning our interests to solve other people’s problems. We can find something we are passionate about, develop an ability and make what we know how to do increase other people’s possibilities. Vocation begins by asking what we are passionate about. Service adds another question: who could benefit from what we know how to do?
There are many ways to answer it. Louis Braille transformed a personal need into a reading and writing system that gave others greater autonomy. Anne Sullivan helped Helen Keller gain access to a shared language and new possibilities for communication and learning. Fred Rogers used television for decades as an educational and emotional tool. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth studied movements at work to reduce unnecessary effort and improve processes, with Lillian bringing particular attention to psychology and the human factor. Very different stories sharing the same logic: serving can mean increasing another person’s possibilities.
Science fiction allows us to take this idea to extremes. Not because talking about stars necessarily means talking about space travel, but because the enormous distances of the cosmos raise a fascinating question: how do we help someone when we cannot simply reach them? In Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, scientific knowledge, observation and problem-solving gradually become forms of cooperation. Without revealing the novel’s major twists, one of its most interesting ideas is that understanding something can cease to be an individual advantage and become a shared tool. Physics, biology or engineering matter even more when that knowledge enables someone else to move forward.
Something similar, from a different perspective, happens in The Martian, also by Andy Weir. Mark Watney is isolated on Mars and must rely on his knowledge to survive, but his story never depends solely on him. Millions of kilometres away, scientists, engineers and specialists work on very specific problems. Each contributes a small piece of knowledge to an enormous challenge. The novel makes a simple idea extraordinarily visible: we do not need to be beside someone to put our abilities at their service. Sometimes helping means calculating a trajectory correctly, designing a solution or solving part of a problem someone else cannot solve alone.
Psychology has spent decades trying to understand what drives us to behave this way. C. Daniel Batson extensively studied the relationship between empathy and altruism. His empathy-altruism hypothesis proposes that empathic concern can generate motivation genuinely directed towards improving another person’s well-being. The fact that helping can make us feel good does not necessarily mean that feeling good is the real objective. We can feel good about helping and genuinely want things to go well for someone else.
But the explanation does not end with the individual. Michael Tomasello has studied our extraordinary ability to cooperate, share intentions, coordinate actions and transmit knowledge. A fundamental part of who we are depends on learning from those who came before us and allowing those who follow to build on what we have learned. No generation begins entirely from scratch. Human culture functions, to a large extent, as an immense chain of shared knowledge.
That same logic extends into professional life. Adam Grant has studied prosocial motivation: the desire for our work to benefit others. His research shows that perceiving the impact of our efforts on other people can influence our motivation and persistence. This greatly broadens the concept of service. We do not need to work in a caring profession or devote our lives to a great cause. A scientist, teacher, engineer, designer, executive or someone improving a small process can help others do what they need to do better.
Serving others does not require endless personal sacrifice or making ourselves indispensable. Poorly conceived help can create dependency or prevent someone from developing their own abilities. Braille did not need to be present every time someone used his system. Sullivan could not live Keller’s life for her. Leavitt did not need to make every discovery her work made possible. One of the most powerful forms of service is to leave something that can continue working when we are no longer there.
Perhaps that is why Henrietta Leavitt’s story is so inspiring. She did not lead a great expedition or begin life convinced she would change our understanding of the universe. She explored different subjects, discovered relatively late something that awakened her curiosity and devoted countless hours to a task that might have seemed routine. Among thousands of tiny points of light, she found a relationship that eventually allowed others to look much further.
Not all of us can measure the universe, invent a language or solve an emergency millions of kilometres from Earth. But we all accumulate knowledge, experiences and abilities that may seem ordinary to us and extraordinarily useful to someone else. We can teach something, connect two people, share an experience, improve a process, listen, design a solution or open a door we have already learned to cross.
Perhaps the question is not only what we want to achieve with what we know how to do. There is another equally important one: who could go further if we decided to share it? Henrietta Leavitt spent much of her life observing stars. Without knowing how far her contribution would reach, she left others a tool with which to measure them. Sometimes serving does not mean accompanying someone to their destination. It means giving them something that allows them to go further than we did.
