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Henry Norris Russell Lectureship
The Henry Norris Russell Lectureship is awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society in recognition of a lifetime of excellence in astronomical research. The idea for the lectureship came from then society President Harlow Shapley in 1945, who led the fund raising drive to collect $10,000 from the membership. One of the major contributors was the Mexican Ambassador to the United States, as Russell had been an important representative at the dedication ceremony for the Mexican National Observatory. The goal was reached in December 1946, using not a little amount of coercive language by Shapley. The first Russell lecturer was, naturally, fellow American astronomer Henry Norris Russell, for whom the award is named. Russell gave a lecture titled "The Royal Road of Eclipses" concerning eclipsing binary stars. Previous lecturers This list of lecturers is from the American Astronomical Society's website. See also * List of astronomy awards This list of astronomy awards is an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Astronomical Society
The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the advancement of astronomy and closely related branches of science, while the secondary purpose includes enhancing astronomy education and providing a political voice for its members through lobbying and grassroots activities. Its current mission is to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community. History The society was founded in 1899 through the efforts of George Ellery Hale. The constitution of the group was written by Hale, George Comstock, Edward Morley, Simon Newcomb and Edward Charles Pickering. These men, plus four others, were the first Executive Council of the society; Newcomb was the first president. The initial membership was 114. The AAS name of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyman Spitzer
Lyman Spitzer Jr. (June 26, 1914 – March 31, 1997) was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer. As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation, plasma physics, and in 1946, conceived the idea of telescopes operating in outer space. Spitzer invented the stellarator plasma device and is the namesake of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. As a mountaineer, he made the first ascent of Mount Thor, with Donald C. Morton. Early life and education Spitzer was born to a Presbyterian family in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Lyman Spitzer Sr. and Blanche Carey (née Brumback). Through his paternal grandmother, he was related to inventor Eli Whitney. Spitzer graduated from Scott High School. He then attended Phillips Academy in 1929 and went on to Yale College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1935 and was a member of Skull and Bones. During a year of study at Cambridge University, he was influenced by Arthur Eddington and the young Subrahmanyan C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Schwarzschild
Martin Schwarzschild (May 31, 1912 – April 10, 1997) was a German-American astrophysicist. Biography Schwarzschild was born in Potsdam into a distinguished German Jewish academic family. His father was the physicist Karl Schwarzschild and his uncle the astrophysicist Robert Emden. His sister, Agathe Thornton, became a classics scholar in New Zealand. In line with a request in his father's will, his family moved to Göttingen in 1916. Schwarzschild studied at the University of Göttingen and took his doctoral examination in December 1936. He left Germany in 1936 for Norway and then the United States. Schwarzschild served in the US army intelligence. He was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star for his wartime service. After returning to the US, he married fellow astronomer Barbara Cherry. In 1947, Martin Schwarzschild joined his lifelong friend, Lyman Spitzer at Princeton University. Spitzer died 10 days before Schwarzschild. Schwarzschild's work in the fields o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1960 In Science
The year 1960 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. Astronomy and space exploration * April 8 - Project Ozma, under the direction of astronomer Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in Green Bank, West Virginia, commenced and was the first modern Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) experiment. * April 13 – The U.S. Navy Transit satellite 1B is successfully launched by a Thor-Ablestar rocket leading to the first successful tests of a satellite navigation system. * June 22 – The U.S. Navy SOLRAD 1 Galactic Radiation and Background program satellite is successfully launched by the same Thor-Ablestar rocket as Transit 2A, serving as the first successful U.S. reconnaissance satellite and returning the first real-time X-ray and ultraviolet observations of the Sun. * August 11 – The return capsule of the U.S. ''Discoverer 13'' Corona mission is successfully recovered from the Pacific Ocean, the first time any ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerard P
Gerard is a masculine forename of Proto-Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this case, those constituents are ''gari'' > ''ger-'' (meaning 'spear') and -''hard'' (meaning 'hard/strong/brave'). Common forms of the name are Gerard (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, Polish and Catalan); Gerrard (English, Scottish, Irish); Gerardo (Italian, and Spanish); Geraldo (Portuguese); Gherardo (Italian); Gherardi (Northern Italian, now only a surname); Gérard (variant forms ''Girard'' and ''Guérard'', now only surnames, French); Gearóid ( Irish); Gerhardt and Gerhart/Gerhard/ Gerhardus (German, Dutch, and Afrikaans); Gellért ( Hungarian); Gerardas ( Lithuanian) and Gerards/Ģirts ( Latvian); Γεράρδης (Greece). A few abbreviated forms are Gerry and Jerry (English); Gerd (German) and Gert (Afrikaans and Dutch); Gerrit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1959 In Science
Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of Earth's Moon, and was also the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric orbit. * January 3 ** The three southernmost atolls of the Maldive archipelago (Addu Atoll, Huvadhu Atoll and Fuvahmulah island) declare independence. ** Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state. * January 4 ** In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana. ** Léopoldville riots: At least 49 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the ABAKO Party in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo. * January 6 ** Fidel Castro arrives in Havana. ** The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated. * January 7 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Baade
Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (March 24, 1893 – June 25, 1960) was a German astronomer who worked in the United States from 1931 to 1959. Biography The son of a teacher, Baade finished school in 1912. He then studied maths, physics and astronomy at the universities of Münster and Göttingen. After receiving his PhD in 1919, Baade worked at Hamburg Observatory at Bergedorf from 1919 to 1931. There in 1920 he discovered 944 Hidalgo, the first of a class of minor planets now called Centaurs which cross the orbits of giant planets. He worked at Mount Wilson Observatory from 1931 to 1958. There, during World War II, he took advantage of wartime blackout conditions (which reduced light pollution), to resolve stars in the center of the Andromeda Galaxy for the first time. These observations led him to define distinct " populations" for stars (Population I and Population II). The same observations led him to discover that there are two types of Cepheid variable stars. Using t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1958 In Science
The year 1958 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. Events * During International Geophysical Year ** Earth's magnetosphere is discovered. ** The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition discovers the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountain Range in Antarctica; also becoming the first to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility (December 14). ** The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes (March 2) its three-year mission to make the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole. The first (and third ever) team to reach the Pole overland (January 3) is Edmund Hillary's, using adapted Ferguson TE20 tractors, the first powered vehicles to complete a trip here. * April 17–October 19 – Expo 58 in Brussels. The centrepiece is the Atomium; and a model of tobacco mosaic virus structure by Rosalind Franklin's research team is exhibited. * July 9 – 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami: A 7.8 strike-slip earthquake in Southeast Alaska causes a lands ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Struve
Otto Struve (August 12, 1897 – April 6, 1963) was a Russian-American astronomer of Baltic German origins. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as Otto Lyudvigovich Struve (Отто Людвигович Струве); however, he spent most of his life and his entire scientific career in the United States. Otto was the descendant of famous astronomers of the Struve family; he was the son of Ludwig Struve, grandson of Otto Wilhelm von Struve and great-grandson of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve. He was also the nephew of Karl Hermann Struve. With more than 900 journal articles and books, Struve was one of the most distinguished and prolific astronomers of the mid-20th century. He served as director of Yerkes, McDonald, Leuschner and National Radio Astronomy Observatories and is credited with raising worldwide prestige and building schools of talented scientists at Yerkes and McDonald observatories. In particular, he hired Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Gerhard Herzbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1957 In Science
The year 1957 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. Astronomy and space exploration * October 4 – Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, by an R-7 Semyorka rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. * November 3 – Launch of Sputnik 2, with a dog called Laika on board, the first animal sent into orbit. There is no technology available to return it to Earth. * December 6 – The United States attempts launch of Vanguard TV3 which fails after just two seconds in the air. * Project Orion begins, a U.S. program to build a spacecraft powered by nuclear explosions. * Wilhelm Gliese publishes the first Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars. Biology * Dopamine is first identified in the human brain by Katharine Montagu. * The structure of myoglobin is determined (using x-ray crystallography) by John Kendrew and colleagues in England. * The discovery of Na+/K+-ATPase, the first antipor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joel Stebbins
Joel Stebbins (July 30, 1878 – March 16, 1966) was an American astronomer who pioneered photoelectric photometry in astronomy. He was director of the University of Illinois Observatory from 1903 to 1922 where he performed innovative work with the selenium cell. In 1922 he became director of the Washburn Observatory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he remained until 1948. After 1948, Stebbins continued his research at Lick Observatory until his final retirement in 1958. Stebbins brought photoelectric photometry from its infancy in the early 1900s to a mature technique by the 1950s, when it succeeded photography as the primary method of photometry. He used the new technique to investigate eclipsing binaries, the reddening of starlight by interstellar dust, colors of galaxies, and variable stars. Biography Joel Stebbins was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 30, 1878, the son of Charles Stebbins, an office worker at the Union Pacific Railroad and his wife Sara Ann n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1956 In Science
The year 1956 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below. Biology * March – Denham Harman proposes the free-radical theory of aging. * Wesley K. Whitten reports developing eight-cell mouse ova to blastocyst stage ''in vitro''. Climatology * May – Gilbert Plass publishes his seminal article "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". Computer science * July 13 – John McCarthy (Dartmouth), Marvin Minsky (MIT), Claude Shannon (Bell Labs) and Nathaniel Rochester (IBM) assemble the first coordinated research meeting on the topic of artificial intelligence, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. * September 13 – The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B. Johnson. * TX-0 transistorized computer completed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the United States. Mathematics * February 1 – Joseph Kruskal publishes Kruskal's algorithm. * December – Martin Gardner begins his ''Mathematical Games'' col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
