Sarah Lee Lippincott (October 26, 1920 – February 28, 2019), also known as Sarah Lee Lippincott Zimmerman, was an American astronomer. She was

professor emerita ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of astronomy at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

and director emerita of the college's

Sproul Observatory Sproul Observatory was an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Swarthmore College. It was located in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States, and named after William Cameron Sproul, the 27th Governor of Pennsylvania, who graduate ...

. She was a pioneer in the use of

astrometry Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way. His ...

to determine the character of

binary stars A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in wh ...

and search for extrasolar planets.

Education

Lippincott received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and an Master of Arts from

in 1942.

Life

Lippincott was born in 1920 and attended college at the University of Pennsylvania College for Women in the 1940s, where she played on the women's basketball team. After graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, Lippincott attended Swarthmore College, where she worked closely with Peter van de Kamp on many

projects between 1945 and his retirement in 1972, when she became observatory director. She wrote his

obituary An obituary ( obit for short) is an article about a recently deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case. Ac ...

when he died in 1995. She was the third wife of the late Dave Garroway, the founding host of

NBC's The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

'' Today'' show. Garroway had an active interest in astronomy, and they met on a tour of observatories in the Soviet Union that she was hosting. After Garroway's death by suicide at their home in 1982, she helped establish the Dave Garroway Laboratory for the Study of Depression at the University of Pennsylvania. She conducted numerous astrometric studies of nearby stars with van de Kamp in the search for extrasolar planets. She reported the discovery of several objects of substellar mass and proposed a 0.01 solar-mass planetary companion to the star ''

Lalande 21185 Lalande 21185 (also known as BD+36 2147, Gliese 411, and HD 95735) is a star in the south of Ursa Major. It is the apparent brightest red dwarf in the northern hemisphere.Only AX Microscopii and Lacaille 9352, in the southern hemisphere, ...

'' in 1951. The same proposal of planetary objects was made for a number of other stars, as well. Claims for the smaller planetary objects were never confirmed and gradually have become discredited. However, she was quite successful in using the same techniques for characterizing many binary star systems. Her 1951 calculations of the orbit of the difficult astronomical binary star system ''

Ross 614 Ross 614 (V577 Monocerotis) is a red dwarf UV Ceti flare star and it is the primary member of a nearby binary star system in the constellation of Monoceros. This star has a magnitude of about 11, making it invisible to the unaided e ...

'' were used to successfully find and image the system's secondary star. These calculations were used by Walter Baade to find and optically resolve this binary system for the first time using the then new Hale Telescope at the

Palomar Observatory Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...

in California. She is listed as professor emerita of astronomy and director emerita of the Sproul Observatory in the 2010 Swarthmore college catalog. She last published astronomy research papers in 1983. In 2009, she attended the dedication ceremony for the new Peter van de Kamp observatory at Swarthmore College. Lippincott died on February 28, 2019, in Kendal Longwood.

Honors and awards

In 1966, she received the

Kappa Kappa Gamma Kappa Kappa Gamma (), also known simply as Kappa or KKG, is a collegiate sorority founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, United States. It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States a ...

Alumnae Achievement Award. In 1973, she was awarded an honorary doctor of science by Villanova University. In 1976, she was elected to the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania (as Mrs. Christian Zimmerman).

Sample publications

Books

Lippincott authored two books, with coauthors:
Philadelphia: The Unexpected City
with Laurence Lafore; Publisher: Doubleday & Co.; 1st edition (January 1, 1965); ASIN: B002LQQJR4
Point to the Stars - Revised Edition
with

Joseph Maron Joseph Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...

; Publisher: McGraw-Hill Book Company (1967); ASIN: B002BG231A

Papers

Lippincott published over one hundred papers in her career. These are two typical examples:
A determination of the parallax and mass-ratio of 6 Equulei
by van de Kamp, Peter and Lippincott, Sarah Lee, Astronomical Journal, Volume 51, Page 162 (1945)
An unseen companion to 36 Ursae Majoris A from analysis of plates taken with the Sproul 61-CM refractor
by Lippincott, S. L. Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Publications, Volume 95, Pages 775-777 (1983)

References

External links

1975 Swarthmore College faculty photographSwarthmore College, Faculty and Instructional Staff - Emeriti"SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System" BibliographySarah Lee Lippincott Zimmerman, directory page at the IAU
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lippincott, Sarah Lee 1920 births 2019 deaths American women astronomers 20th-century American astronomers 21st-century American astronomers Swarthmore College faculty Scientists from Philadelphia 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists American women academics