Williamina Fleming’s journey to totality: The Dundonian astronomer who crossed America for the 1900 solar eclipse
- Andrew Batchelor
- 9 hours ago
- 6 min read
More than 126 years ago, one of Dundee’s most remarkable daughters set out on a journey across the United States in pursuit of darkness.
On 28 May 1900, a total solar eclipse swept across parts of North America, briefly turning daylight into darkness as the Moon passed directly between the Earth and the Sun.
Among those waiting in the path of totality was Williamina Fleming, the Dundee-born astronomer whose extraordinary career at Harvard College Observatory helped transform our understanding of the stars.
Fleming had travelled from Boston, Massachusetts, south to Washington, Georgia, as part of a Harvard expedition to observe the eclipse.
It was a considerable journey in 1900, undertaken not simply for the spectacle, but for science.
And 126 years later, her journey has a rather special resonance for me.
On 12 August 2026, I will be watching another total solar eclipse from Menorca, having travelled from Dundee to the Mediterranean island to experience totality.
The circumstances could hardly be more different. But the reason for looking upwards remains remarkably familiar.
From Dundee to Harvard
Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming was born in Dundee in 1857 and attended school in the city before becoming a pupil-teacher.
Her life would eventually take her thousands of miles from Scotland.
After marrying James Orr Fleming, she emigrated to the United States as a young woman and settled in Boston. Her marriage broke down and Fleming, pregnant with her first child, found herself having to support herself.
Her path eventually brought her into the household of Edward Charles Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory, initially as a maid.
It was the beginning of an extraordinary transformation.
Fleming joined the observatory and became one of the pioneering women involved in analysing and classifying the enormous quantities of astronomical data being produced at Harvard.
She would classify thousands of stars, discover hundreds of variable stars and numerous novae, and is credited with identifying the Horsehead Nebula on a photographic plate.
Her work contributed to the development of stellar classification and helped lay foundations for astronomers who followed.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the former Dundee schoolteacher had become an established figure in astronomical research.
Then came the eclipse of 1900.
The journey from Boston to Georgia
The total solar eclipse of 28 May 1900 offered astronomers across the United States an invaluable opportunity.
Its path of totality crossed the southeastern United States, and scientific teams travelled to locations where they hoped clear skies and favourable conditions would allow them to study the Sun during the fleeting moments when its brilliant surface was completely obscured.
Harvard College Observatory established an observing station at Washington, Georgia.
For Fleming, that meant leaving Boston and travelling hundreds of miles south, a substantial undertaking at the dawn of the 20th century.
There were no commercial flights, smartphones, satellite weather forecasts or live maps showing the Moon’s shadow racing across the Earth.
The expedition instead involved transporting people and delicate astronomical equipment by rail and establishing an observing site ahead of an event whose most important phase would last only a matter of minutes.
Totality provided astronomers with a precious opportunity to observe the Sun’s outer atmosphere, particularly its corona, which is normally overwhelmed by the brightness of the solar surface.
Eclipse expeditions were therefore important scientific undertakings.
And Fleming was there in Georgia when the Moon’s shadow arrived.
America’s continuing fascination with totality
The United States would experience many more eclipses after Fleming’s expedition, but totality over any particular location remains a rare event.
More than a century after Fleming’s journey, the total solar eclipse of 21 August 2017 captured enormous public attention as the path of totality crossed the United States from Oregon to South Carolina.
Millions travelled to place themselves within the narrow path of the Moon’s shadow, while many millions more watched a partial eclipse from elsewhere in the country.
Just seven years later, North America experienced another extraordinary total solar eclipse.
On 8 April 2024, the path of totality entered the United States through Texas before travelling northeast across the country towards Maine and continuing into Canada.
Its path was wider than that of the 2017 eclipse and crossed more densely populated areas, placing tens of millions of people within the path of totality.
The 2017 and 2024 eclipses demonstrated something that Fleming would surely have recognised from 1900.
More than a century of technological progress has not diminished our fascination with standing beneath the Moon’s shadow.
People still travel enormous distances for a few minutes of darkness.
Two journeys, 126 years apart
There is something quite moving about thinking of Fleming making that journey from Boston to Georgia as I make a much smaller journey of my own.
I have travelled from Dundee to Menorca, where the island sits within the path of totality for the solar eclipse of 12 August 2026.
Back home, Dundee will experience an extraordinary partial eclipse, with around 91.6% of the Sun obscured at maximum eclipse.
But there is an enormous difference between seeing almost all of the Sun disappear and witnessing totality.
To experience a total solar eclipse, you have to put yourself inside the comparatively narrow path swept out by the Moon’s shadow.
For Fleming in 1900, that meant travelling from Boston to Georgia.
For me in 2026, it means travelling from Dundee to Menorca.
Of course, the two journeys are very different.
Fleming was travelling as an astronomer on a scientific expedition. I am travelling as someone who has long been fascinated by astronomy and wants to experience one of nature’s most extraordinary spectacles.
I have also had advantages that Fleming could never have imagined. I can fly across Europe in a matter of hours, follow weather forecasts from my phone and know precisely when and where the eclipse will take place.
Yet the fundamental requirement has not changed.
You have to go to the shadow.
Dundee’s centuries-long wait for totality
That journey is made even more significant by just how extraordinarily rare totality is from Dundee itself.
The last total solar eclipse visible from Dundee occurred in 1598, during the reign of James VI of Scotland.
More than four centuries have passed since the Moon completely covered the Sun above the city.
On 12 August 2026, Dundee will come tantalisingly close.
Around 91.6% of the Sun will be obscured at maximum eclipse, creating one of the most significant solar eclipses visible from the city in modern times.
But it will not be total.
Dundee’s next total solar eclipse will not occur until 2135.
That means centuries can separate two occasions when exactly the right combination of the Sun, Moon and a narrow strip of the Earth’s surface align above the city.
For anyone alive in Dundee today who wants to experience totality, travelling into the path of the Moon’s shadow is therefore practically essential.
In that sense, Fleming’s decision to travel to Georgia in 1900 feels remarkably modern.
More than a century later, eclipse chasers still study maps, weather forecasts and transport connections before travelling hundreds or even thousands of miles to put themselves in exactly the right place.
Williamina Fleming and the Moon
There is another wonderful connection between Fleming and the eclipse story.
Today, Williamina Fleming’s name can be found on the Moon itself.
Fleming is the name of a lunar crater on the far side of the Moon, named in honour of both herself and Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming.
It provides an extraordinary permanent reminder of the Dundee astronomer’s contribution to science.
And with another total solar eclipse approaching, there is something particularly fitting about it.
In 1900, Williamina travelled across America to watch the Moon pass directly in front of the Sun.
More than a century after her death, her name is now written across the landscape of the very object responsible for creating the spectacle she travelled so far to study.
Williamina Fleming is my favourite Dundonian because she grew up to become one of the most important figures in the history of astronomy and literally changed the way we see and observe the universe.
She showed that you don’t need qualifications or diplomas to get employment or recognition, something that resonates deeply with me and my working experience.
For a Dundonian whose work was devoted to understanding the universe, it is difficult to imagine a more appropriate memorial than that of having a crater named for you on the Moon.
A Dundonian beneath the shadow of the Moon
Williamina Fleming could scarcely have imagined the world of astronomy in 2026.
We now predict eclipses with extraordinary precision, map their paths years in advance, and watch them unfold in real time from space. Yet none of that removes the need to be in the right place when the moment arrives.
To experience totality, you still have to stand beneath the Moon’s shadow.
For a few brief minutes, daylight collapses into an unfamiliar twilight. The air cools, stars appear, and the Sun’s corona flares into view around the black disc of the Moon. It is a transformation that no simulation can truly replace.
That is what draws people into the path of totality, whether in 1900, 2017, 2024, or 2026. It is what has taken me from Dundee to Menorca.
There is, for me, a final Dundee thread running through it all.
From a personal standpoint, I find it striking that she once crossed America to stand in the Moon’s shadow, and that I am now leaving Dundee in my own time to do something similar, reaching the path of totality in 2026.
One hundred and twenty-six years apart, our journeys begin in the same place and end beneath the same sky.
And for a few extraordinary moments, Dundee, Fleming, and the present all meet in the same darkness.
