Elske Smith

Last updated

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]

Contents

Education and career

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, Henry 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]

Books

Smith's books include:

Recognition

Smith was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1966. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Astronomical Society</span> Society of professional astronomers based in Washington, DC

The American Astronomical Society is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the advancement of astronomy and closely related branches of science, while the secondary purpose includes enhancing astronomy education and providing a political voice for its members through lobbying and grassroots activities. Its current mission is to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin</span> British-American astronomer (1900–1979)

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a British-American astronomer and astrophysicist. In her 1925 doctoral thesis she proposed that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected by leading astrophysicists, including Henry Norris Russell, because it contradicted the science of the time, which held that no significant elemental differences distinguished the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved that she was correct.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beatrice Tinsley</span> New Zealand astronomer (1941–1981)

Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley was a British-born New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist, and the first female professor of astronomy at Yale University, whose research made fundamental contributions to the astronomical understanding of how galaxies evolve, grow and die.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bart Bok</span> American astronomer and lecturer (1906–1983)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Lindsay Huggins</span> Astronomer

Margaret Lindsay, Lady Huggins, born Margaret Lindsay Murray, was an Irish-English scientific investigator and astronomer. With her husband William Huggins she was a pioneer in the field of spectroscopy and co-wrote the Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra (1897).

Eric Ronald Priest is Emeritus Professor at St Andrews University, where he previously held the Gregory Chair of Mathematics and a Bishop Wardlaw Professorship.

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elly Dekker</span> Dutch astronomer (born 1943)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Dodson Prince</span> American astronomer (1905–2002)

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.

Jarita Charmian Holbrook is an American astronomer and associate professor of physics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) where she is principal investigator of the Astronomy & Society group. Holbrook's work examines the relationship between humans and the night sky, and she has produced scientific publications on cultural astronomy, starburst galaxies, and star formation regions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nan Dieter-Conklin</span> American radio astronomer

Nan Dieter-Conklin, also known as Nannielou Reier Hepburn Dieter Conklin, was an American radio astronomer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. Doris Hellman</span> American historian of science (1910–1973)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dara Norman</span> Astronomer

Dara J. Norman is an astronomer and the deputy director of the Community Science and Data Center at the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in Tucson, Arizona. She is also the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Diversity Advocate at NOAO. Her research centers on the influence of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) on the evolution of galaxies. In 2020, she was inducted into the inaugural cohort of American Astronomical Society Fellows in recognition of her leadership and achievements.

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.

Thérèse Encrenaz is a French planetary scientist who "played a leading role in the development of planetology in Europe". Her research concerns extraterrestrial atmospheres, particularly of the planets and comets in the Solar System. She is a research director for the CNRS, emeritus, affiliated with the Paris Observatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Carl Rufus</span> American astronomer and mathematician

Will Carl Rufus was an American astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, poet, administrator and instructor.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Thompson, Samantha M. (July 5, 2015), "Elske v. P. Smith", Niels Bohr Library & Archives: Oral History (interview), American Institute of Physics
  2. ↑ Birth year from Library of Congress catalog entry, retrieved 2022-06-03
  3. ↑ "Elske van Panhuys Smith", AstroGen, American Astronomical Society, retrieved 2022-06-03
  4. ↑ Reviews of Solar Flares:
  5. ↑ Reviews of Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics:
  6. ↑ Historic fellows, American Association for the Advancement of Science, retrieved 2022-06-03
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.