Marjorie Hall Harrison (September 14, 1918 – August 6, 1986) was an English-born American astronomer. Hall was born in

Nottingham, England Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham is the legendary home of Robin Hood and to the lace-maki ...

in September 1918. In 1947, she authored one of the first scientific books, a dissertation while at the

Yerkes Observatory Yerkes Observatory ( ) is an astronomical observatory located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, United States. The observatory was operated by the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from its founding in 1897 until 2018. O ...

of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, with the word "

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided in ...

" in the title. This work describes the processes that fuel

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

s and is among the first works that endeavored to create detailed mathematical models for complex physical systems. Along with

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian Americans, Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution and ...

George Gamow George Gamow (sometimes Gammoff; born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov; ; 4 March 1904 – 19 August 1968) was a Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Georges Lemaître's Big Ba ...

and G. Keller, Harrison published models in 1944, 1946 and 1947 discussing stars modeled with

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

-depleted and

isothermal An isothermal process is a type of thermodynamic process in which the temperature ''T'' of a system remains constant: Δ''T'' = 0. This typically occurs when a system is in contact with an outside thermal reservoir, and a change in the sys ...

core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber ...

s. As a doctoral student of S. Chandrasekhar at the University of Chicago, she received a degree in astronomy in 1947. A brother, Cecil Hall, was one of Eli Franklin Burton's graduate students who built the first practical

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it ...

at the University of Toronto in 1938. Hall Harrison died in

Huntsville, Texas Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas, United States. Its population was 45,941 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville United States micropolitan area, micropolitan area ...

in August 1986 at the age of 67.University of Chicago Alumni: Marjorie H. Harrison, 1947
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References

*Harrison, Marjorie Hall. "Stellar models." Thesis, University of Chicago (1947). *"The Generalized Cowling Model." ''The Astrophysical Journal,'' vol. 100, p. 343 (1944). *"A Stellar Model with a Gravitational Source of Energy." ''The Astrophysical Journal,'' vol. 102, p. 216 (1945). *"Stellar Models with Partially Degenerate Isothermal Cores and Point-Source Envelopes." ''The Astrophysical Journal,'' vol. 103, p. 193 (1946). *"Stellar Models with Isothermal Cores and Point-Source Envelopes." ''The Astrophysical Journal,'' vol. 105, p. 322 (March, 1947). *"On the Chemical Composition of the sun from its Internal Constitution." ''The Astrophysical Journal,'' vol. 1098, p. 310 (1948). *"Note on the Chemical Composition of the Sun." ''The Astrophysical Journal,'' vol. 111, p. 446 (1950). *Donald E. Osterbrock. "Chandra and his students at Yerkes Observatory" '' J. Astrophys. Astr.''(1996) 17, 233–268.

References

1918 births 1986 deaths 20th-century British astronomers Scientists from Nottingham University of Chicago alumni British women astronomers 20th-century British women scientists British emigrants to the United States {{UK-astronomer-stub