Elske van Panhuys Smith (born 1929) is a Dutch-American astronomer, academic administrator, and author of books on astronomy. She has also been outspoken about discrimination against women in academia. [1]
Smith was born in 1929 [2] in Monaco as the daughter of a Dutch diplomat. She spent the early years of her life in Austria before moving to the Netherlands, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and finally in 1943 to Boston in the US. She remained in Boston to complete her high school and college education, as her father moved on to more posts. She majored in astronomy at Radcliffe College, after becoming interested in it through a freshman-year friend, and was mentored there by Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok and by Harlow Shapley. She remained at Harvard University with her husband, Harry Smith, for graduate study on interstellar polarization with Bok. [1] She completed her Ph.D. in 1956. [3]
After difficulties finding a satisfactory solution to their two-body problem, Smith and her husband shifted from stellar astronomy to solar astronomy, then out of fashion, in order to obtain joint positions at the National Solar Observatory on Sacramento Peak, hers initially part-time. After a year, she was able to convert her position there to full time. Seven years later, in the early 1960s, they moved to Boulder, Colorado, so her husband could take a position at the National Bureau of Standards; she became a research fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics. They moved again, a year later, to Washington DC, where her husband had a position at NASA; she became a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park, and began focusing more on astronomy education than on research. [1]
At Maryland, her work shifted to academic administration, initially as acting director of the astronomy program and eventually as an assistant vice chancellor. She moved to Virginia Commonwealth University as dean of humanities and science, held the position for twelve years, and then prior to retiring became the director of a new program in environmental studies. [1]
Smith's books include:
Smith was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1966. [6]
Sandra Moore Faber is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin 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 conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics.
Bartholomeus Jan "Bart" Bok was a Dutch-American astronomer, teacher, and lecturer. He is best known for his work on the structure and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, and for the discovery of Bok globules, which are small, densely dark clouds of interstellar gas and dust that can be seen silhouetted against brighter backgrounds. Bok suggested that these globules may be in the process of contracting, before forming into stars.
Claudia Zaslavsky was an American mathematics teacher and ethnomathematician.
Priscilla Fairfield Bok was an American astronomer and the wife of Dutch-born astronomer Bart Bok, Director of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia and later of Steward Observatory in Arizona, US. Their harmonious marriage accompanied the four decades of their close scientific collaboration, in which "it is difficult and pointless to separate his achievements from hers". They co-authored a number of academic papers on star clusters, stellar magnitudes, and the structure of the Milky Way galaxy. The Boks displayed great mutual enthusiasm for explaining astronomy to the public: described as "salesmen of the Milky Way" by The Boston Globe, their general interest book The Milky Way went through five editions and was said to be "one of the most successful astronomical texts ever written".
Elisabeth (Elly) Dekker is a Dutch astronomer and science historian, specialising in the history of astronomy. She studied theoretical physics and astronomy at Utrecht University. In 1975 she obtained a PhD in astronomy at Leiden University with the thesis Spiral structure and the dynamics of flat stellar systems supervised by Hendrik C. van de Hulst. From 1978-1988 she was a curator of Museum Boerhaave in Leiden and afterwards an independent scholar. From 1993-1995 she was a Sackler fellow of the Royal Museums Greenwich. In 1998 she was awarded the Caird Medal for her work on the globe collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Helen Dodson Prince was an American astronomer who pioneered work in solar flares at the University of Michigan.
Jiong Qiu (邱炯) is a Chinese-born American astrophysicist who won the Karen Harvey Prize for her work in solar flares.
Hilary Ockendon is a British mathematician who worked at the University of Oxford until retirement in 2008. Her research focuses on applications of mathematics with a particular interest in continuum models for industrial problems. She is an emeritus fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, the former president of the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry, and the author of multiple books on fluid dynamics. She is an expert on problems in fluid dynamics, such as the reduction of sloshing in coffee cups.
Nan Dieter-Conklin, also known as Nannielou Reier Hepburn Dieter Conklin, was an American radio astronomer.
Clarisse Doris Hellman Pepper was an American historian of science, "one of the first professional historians of science in the United States". She specialized in 16th and 17th century astronomy, wrote a book on the Great Comet of 1577, and was the translator of another book, a biography of Johannes Kepler. She became a professor at the Pratt Institute and later at the Queens College, City University of New York, and was recognized by membership in several selective academic societies.
Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi is a Hungarian solar scientist and professor of physics at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London. She also maintains affiliations with Solar and Stellar Activity Research Team at Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Space Research Laboratory (LESIA) of Paris Observatory. She has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Solar Physics since 2005 and has served in leadership roles within the International Astronomical Union.
Peggy Aldrich Kidwell is an American historian of science, the curator of medicine and science at the National Museum of American History.
Catherine Lee Westfall is an American historian of science known for her work documenting the history of the United States Department of Energy national laboratories.
Judith Veronica Field is a British historian of science with interests in mathematics and the impact of science in art, an honorary visiting research fellow in the Department of History of Art of Birkbeck, University of London, former president of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and president of the Leonardo da Vinci Society.
Anne Tihon is a Belgian historian of science specializing in the history of astronomy, with works on Theon of Alexandria, Byzantine astronomy, and astronomical tables. She is a professor emerita in the Faculty of Philosophy, Arts and Letters of the Université catholique de Louvain.
Barbara Bell was an American astronomer, affiliated with Harvard College Observatory, now the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, for her entire career. In addition to her work in astronomy, she contributed to the field of climate history, with studies of ancient Egypt.
Ileana Chinnici is an Italian historian of astronomy, book author, and biographer, whose biography of Angelo Secchi won the 2021 Osterbrock Book Prize of the American Astronomical Society.
Merri Sue Carter is an American astronomer who works at the United States Naval Observatory as director of the World Data Center for the Rotation of the Earth, Washington. She is also the author of books on the history of astronomy with her father, geodesist William E. Carter.
Katharina Lodders is a German-American planetary scientist and cosmochemist who works as a research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, where she co-directs the Planetary Chemistry Laboratory. Her research concerns the chemical composition of solar and stellar environments, including the atmospheres of planets, exoplanets, and brown dwarfs, and the study of the temperatures at which elements condense in stellar environments.
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