I've only read 1/3 of the 1998 book "Through a Universe Darkly - A cosmic tale of ancient ethers, dark matter and the fate of the universe" by Marcia Bartusiak, but still I have to recommend it as an excellent history of astronomy, atomic physics and how the two came together to create the science of what today we call astrophysics.
As spectroscopists I'm sure we can all appreciate how early observations of emission and absorption lines finally yielded the composition of steller objects, which at one time was summed up by Auguste Comte in his infamous statement: "men will never encompass in their conceptions the whole of the stars".
Possibly because the first evidence for the composition of stars came from woman, such as Cecilia Payne-Goposchkin who initially reported that although many terrestrial elements appeared to be present in solar emissions, her calculations showed that hydrogen and helium were vastly more abundant that the heavier elements. However, since the prevailing view at that time was that the sun and planets shared a similar composition, no one believed her...
A great read on the history of astronomy and astrophysics!