Born in Wyoming, New York

Sarah Frances Whiting was born on August 23, 1847, in the small town of Wyoming, New York. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Comstock Whiting and Joel Whiting, a schoolteacher and principal who taught mathematics and natural philosophy at the local academy.

Her father's profession gave her early and unusual access to scientific instruction, at a time when girls and women were largely excluded from serious study of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Sarah often assisted her father in preparing lecture demonstrations, and this early exposure to laboratory apparatus and scientific reasoning proved formative.

This upbringing in an academic household, unusual for the era, planted the seeds for what would become a pioneering career. Whiting would go on to become one of the first women in the United States to teach physics and astronomy at the collegiate level, founding physics and astronomy programs at Wellesley College and mentoring generations of women scientists.

Her birth in a rural New York town, far from the elite scientific institutions of the era, underscores how personal circumstance—here, a supportive and intellectually engaged father—could open doors otherwise closed to women of her generation.