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In the centennial year, 1985-86, of Harlow Shapley's birth, the study of globular clusters was no less important to the development of astronomy than in 1915, when Shapley first noted their concentration on the sky. By 1917 Shapley had used the properties of the system of globular clusters to complete the Copernican revolution and locate the solar system, and its Earth-bound observers, far from the center of the Galaxy and the globular cluster distribution. Seven decades later, in the year of these proceedings, globular cluster research and the study of the system of globular clusters in our own and distant galaxies is undergoing a renaissance of activity. The introduction of new observation...
Harlow Shapley was an astronomer, humanitarian, and public figure in his day. Born in the hills of the Ozarks in Missouri he went on to become the Director of the Harvard College Observatory and discovered our place in the Galaxy. Because of the painstaking work of this tireless American astronomer, we were given a clearer picture of our place in the Universe. Shapley was a prodigious astronomer who completed significant work on globular clusters, Cepheid variables, as well as key aspects of cosmology and stellar astronomy, including nebular and stellar spectroscopy and photometry. Shapley also did important work on the Magellanic Clouds, which are neighbor galaxies to our own Milky Way. He ...
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The phenomenal growth of modern astronomy, including the invention of the coronagraph and major developments in telescope design and photographic technique, is unparalleled in many centuries. Theories of relativity, the concept and measurement of the expanding universe, the location of sun and planets far from the center of the Milky Way, the exploration of the interiors of stars, the pulsation theory of Cepheid variation, and investigations of interstellar space have profoundly altered the astronomer's approach. These fundamental discoveries are reported in papers by such eminent scientists as Albert Einstein, Sir Arthur S. Eddington, Henry Norris Russell, Sir James Jeans, Meghnad Saha, Otto Struve, Fred L. Whipple, Bernard Lyot, Jan H. Oort, and George Ellery Hale. The Source Book's 69 contributions represent all fields of astronomy. For example, there are reports on the equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc ) of the special theory of relativity; building the 200-inch Palomar telescope; the scattering of galaxies suggesting a rapidly expanding universe; stellar evolution; and the Big Bang and Steady State theories of the universe's origin.
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Henry Norris Russell lived in two universes: that of his Presbyterian forebears and that of his science. Sharp-witted and animated by nervous energy, he became one of the most powerful voices in twentieth-century American astronomy, wielding that influence in calculated ways to redefine an entire science. He, more than any American of his generation, worked to turn an observation-centered discipline into a theory-driven pursuit centered on physics. Today, professional and amateur astronomers alike know Russell for the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, the playing field for much of stellar astrophysics, as well as for his work on the evolution of stars and the origin of the solar system. But of fa...
Essays on the stars, the basic composition of life, cosmic evolution, and the role of the scientist in civilization. For contents, see Author Catalog.