George Ogden Abell was an American educator. Teaching at UCLA, priorly he worked as a research astronomer, administrator, as a popularizer of science and of education, and as a skeptic. He earned his B.S. in 1951, his M.S. in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1957, all from the California Institute of Technology. He was a Ph.D. student under Donald Osterbrock. His astronomical career began as a tour guide at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Abell made great contributions to astronomical knowledge which resulted from his work during and after the National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, especially concerning clusters of galaxies and planetary nebulae. A galaxy, an asteroid, a periodic comet, and an observatory are all named in his honor. His teaching career extended beyond the campus of UCLA to the high school student oriented Summer Science Program, and educational television. He not only taught about science but also about what is not science. He was an originating member of the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Harlow Shapley was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952), and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal.
Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves. Identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work provided the first evidence for the existence of dark matter. These results were confirmed over subsequent decades.
William Wilson Morgan was an American astronomer and astrophysicist. The principal theme in Morgan's work was stellar and galaxy classification. He is also known for helping prove the existence of spiral arms in our galaxy. In addition to his scientific achievements he served as a professor and as astronomy director for University of Chicago, and was the managing editor for George Hale's Astrophysical Journal.
Paul W. Hodge was an American astronomer whose principal area of research was the stellar populations of galaxies.
Alar Toomre is an American astronomer and mathematician. He is a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Toomre's research is focused on the dynamics of galaxies. He is a 1984 MacArthur Fellow.
Simon David Manton White, FRS, is a British astrophysicist. He was one of directors at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics before his retirement in late 2019.
Hyron Spinrad was an American astronomer. His research has ranged from the study of planet atmospheres to the evolution of galaxies. From 2010 until his death in late 2015 he was an emeritus professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Astroinformatics is an interdisciplinary field of study involving the combination of astronomy, data science, machine learning, informatics, and information/communications technologies.
Roger Llewelyn Davies is a British astronomer and cosmologist, one of the so-called Seven Samurai collaboration who discovered an apparent concentration of mass in the Universe called the Great Attractor. He is the Philip Wetton Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University. His research interests centre on cosmology and how galaxies form and evolve. He has a longstanding interest in astronomical instruments and telescopes and developed the scientific case for the UK's involvement in the 8m Gemini telescopes project. He has pioneered the use of a new class of astronomical spectrograph to measure the masses and ages of galaxies, as well as search for black holes in their nuclei. He is the founding Director of the Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surveys which is funded by the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation.
A large quasar group (LQG) is a collection of quasars that form what are thought to constitute the largest astronomical structures in the observable universe. LQGs are thought to be precursors to the sheets, walls and filaments of galaxies found in the relatively nearby universe.
Beth A. Brown was a NASA astrophysicist with a research focus on X-ray observations of elliptical galaxies and black holes. She earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1998, becoming the first African-American woman to do so.
Debra Meloy Elmegreen is an American astronomer. She was the first woman to graduate from Princeton University with a degree in astrophysics, and she was the first female post-doctoral researcher at the Carnegie Observatories.
Vijay Kumar Kapahi was an Indian astrophysicist and the director of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, an autonomous division of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Known for his research on radio galaxies, quasars and observational cosmology, Kapahi was an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies – Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India – as well as of the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for his contributions to physical sciences in 1987.
Ajit Kembhavi is an Indian astrophysicist. He is presently a Professor Emeritus at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, (IUCAA) at Pune, India, of which he was also a founder member. He also serves as a Vice President of the International Astronomical Union.
Yervant Terzian was an American astronomer. He was the Tisch Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Cornell University's Department of Astronomy, which he chaired between 1979 and 1999.
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.
Charles Tsun-Chu Liu is an American astronomer and astronomy educator. His research interests include merging and colliding galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and the star formation history of the universe. He is a former director of the William E. Macaulay Honors College and The Verrazano School at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island. He currently serves as a professor of physics and astronomy at the College of Staten Island, and as President of the Astronomical Society of New York. In 2019, he was named a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society.
Marat Arsen Arakelian was an Armenian astronomer. Arakelian was a specialist in theoretical astrophysics and extragalactic astronomy. He is most noted for his catalog of “Galaxies of high surface brightness”, a list of 621 objects with surface brightness at least 22.0 magnitude from an area of 1 sq. arc second. The Arakelian catalog has become a source in the study of active galactic nuclei.
The Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI) is an Ethiopian institute for research, training and infrastructure development in space science, created in 2016.
