"After completing her A.B. and A.M. degrees as a student of astronomer Mary Whitney at Vassar College, Caroline Furness became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy at (1900). She collaborated with Whitney as her assistant between 1909 and 1911, each sending their variable star observations to . A member of the from 1911, Furness succeeded Whitney in 1913, and prepared for publication a volume of variable star observations made at Vassar from 1901 to 1912. In 1915 she authored the well-received An Introduction to the Study of Variable Stars."