Adelaide Ames (June 3, 1900 – June 26, 1932) was an American

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...

and research assistant at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. She contributed to the study of

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

with her co-authorship of ''A Survey of the External Galaxies Brighter Than the Thirteenth Magnitude'', which was later known as the

Shapley-Ames catalog The ''Shapley-Ames Catalog of Bright Galaxies'' is a catalog of galaxies published in 1932 that includes observations of 1249 objects brighter than 13.2 magnitude. It was compiled by Harlow Shapley and Adelaide Ames. They identified 1189 objects ba ...

.''Research Astronomer Lost by Drowning.'' In: ''Popular astronomy'', Vol. 40, August/September 1932, S. 448–449.
online
Ames was a member of the American Astronomical Society. She was a contemporary of

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; – ) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking con ...

and her closest friend at the observatory.Barbara L. Welther: ''Adelaide Ames and the Shapley-Ames Catalogue''. (Abstract) In: Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. Vol. 22, 1990, S. 841.
online
Ames died in a boating accident in 1932, the same year the Shapley-Ames catalog was published. She was interred at the

Arlington National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery is one of two national cemeteries run by the United States Army. Nearly 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres (259 ha) in Arlington, Virginia. There are about 30 funerals conducted on weekdays and 7 held on Sa ...

Biography

Ames attended

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely fol ...

until 1922 and then studied at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, where there was a recently created graduate program in astronomy. Ames graduated in 1924 as the first woman with an

M.A A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

in astronomy at Radcliffe. Originally she had planned to become a journalist, but she found no work in the area and instead accepted a job as a research assistant at the

Harvard College Observatory The Harvard College Observatory (HCO) is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United S ...

(HCO), a position she held until her death. The focus of her work was the cataloging of galaxies in the constellations

Coma A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...

and Virgo. In 1931, the finished catalog included nearly 2800 objects. This work earned her membership in the IAU Commission 28 on Nebulae and Star Clusters. On June 26, 1932, while vacationing on Squam Lake, Ames was taking a canoe tour with a friend on the lake when the boat capsized. She was presumed to have drowned and her body was found after a ten-day search on July 5, 1932. She died at the age of 32.

Research at Harvard

In 1921,

Harlow Shapley Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952), and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal. Shapley used Cepheid variable stars to e ...

became director of HCO, and soon afterward hired Ames as an assistant. Ames was Shapley's first graduate student and Ames went on to supervise her own graduate students. Her early work at Harvard focused on the identification of NGC/IC objects. In 1926, she and Shapley published several articles on the shapes, colors, and diameters of 103 NGC galaxies. In 1930, she published ''A catalog of 2778 nebulae including the Coma-Virgo group'', which identified 214 NGC and 342 IC objects in the area of the

Virgo cluster The Virgo Cluster is a large cluster of galaxies whose center is 53.8 ± 0.3 Mly (16.5 ± 0.1 Mpc) away in the constellation Virgo. Comprising approximately 1,300 (and possibly up to 2,000) member galaxies, the cluster forms the heart of the l ...

Shapley-Ames Catalog

During her tenure at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked together with Harlow Shapley on the Shapley-Ames catalog, which lists galaxies beyond the 13th magnitude. From their observations of approximately 1250 galaxies, they found evidence of clustering near the north pole of the Milky Way that differs from the south pole. These results were significant because their finding of "general unevenness in distribution" of galaxies deviated from the assumption of

isotropy Isotropy is uniformity in all orientations; it is derived . Precise definitions depend on the subject area. Exceptions, or inequalities, are frequently indicated by the prefix ' or ', hence ''anisotropy''. ''Anisotropy'' is also used to describe ...

Family

Adelaide Ames's father was T.L. Ames, who served as a colonel in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

References

External links

Adelaide Ames Publications
in

Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned ...