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.
Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg, was a German-Canadian pioneering physicist and physical chemist, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1971, "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals". Herzberg's main work concerned atomic and molecular spectroscopy. He is well known for using these techniques that determine the structures of diatomic and polyatomic molecules, including free radicals which are difficult to investigate in any other way, and for the chemical analysis of astronomical objects. Herzberg served as Chancellor of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada from 1973 to 1980.
Annie Jump Cannon was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. She was nearly deaf throughout her career. She was a suffragist and a member of the National Women's Party.
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the heavenly bodies, rather than their positions or motions in space–what they are, rather than where they are." Among the subjects studied are the Sun, other stars, galaxies, extrasolar planets, the interstellar medium and the cosmic microwave background. Emissions from these objects are examined across all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the properties examined include luminosity, density, temperature, and chemical composition. Because astrophysics is a very broad subject, astrophysicists apply concepts and methods from many disciplines of physics, including classical mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear and particle physics, and atomic and molecular physics.
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.
Cecilia Helena 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, carried out with her husband, Sergei Gaposchkin, was foundational to modern astrophysics.
Eleanor Margaret Burbidge, FRS (née Peachey; 12 August 1919 – 5 April 2020) was a British-American observational astronomer and astrophysicist. In the 1950s, she was one of the founders of stellar nucleosynthesis and was first author of the influential B2FH paper. During the 1960s and 70s she worked on galaxy rotation curves and quasars, discovering the most distant astronomical object then known. In the 1980s and 90s she helped develop and utilise the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. Burbidge was well known for her work opposing discrimination against women in astronomy.
Virginia Louise Trimble is an American astronomer specializing in the structure and evolution of stars and galaxies, and the history of astronomy. She has published more than 600 works in Astrophysics, and dozens of other works in the history of other sciences. She is famous for an annual review of astronomy and astrophysics research that was published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and often gives summary reviews at astrophysical conferences. In 2018, she was elected a Patron of the American Astronomical Society, for her many years of intellectual, organizational, and financial contributions to the society.
Randolph–Macon College is a private liberal arts college in Ashland, Virginia. Founded in 1830, the college has an enrollment of more than 1,500 students. It is the second-oldest Methodist-run college in the country, and the oldest in continuous operation. The college currently offers bachelor's degrees, though the institution has announced plans to provide a Master of Science in physician's assistant studies with the first cohort of students entering in 2021–2022.
Randolph-Macon Academy (R-MA) is a coeducational college preparatory school for students in grades 6–12 and postgraduates in Front Royal, Virginia, US. The school was founded in 1892 and features both boarding and day programs. Randolph-Macon Academy is affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
Jay Myron Pasachoff is an American astronomer. Pasachoff is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and the author of textbooks and tradebooks in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and other sciences.
Samuel Alfred Mitchell was a Canadian-American astronomer who studied solar eclipses and set up a program to use photographic techniques to determine the distance to stars at McCormick Observatory, where he served as the director.
Margaret J. Geller is an American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Her work has included pioneering maps of the nearby universe, studies of the relationship between galaxies and their environment, and the development and application of methods for measuring the distribution of matter in the universe.
Robert P. Kirshner is an American astronomer, Chief Program Officer for Science for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Clownes Research Professor of Science at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several areas of astronomy including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the large-scale structure of the cosmos, and the use of supernovae to measure the expansion of the universe.
Vytautas Straižys was a Lithuanian astronomer. In 1963–65 he and his collaborators created and developed the Vilnius photometric system, a seven-color intermediate band system, optimized for photometric stellar classification. In 1996 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Straižys was an editor of the journal Baltic Astronomy. He spent a lot of time working at the Molėtai Astronomical Observatory. Asteroid 68730 Straizys in 2002 was named after him.
Randolph College is a private liberal arts and sciences college in Lynchburg, Virginia. Founded in 1891 as Randolph-Macon Woman's College, it was renamed on July 1, 2007, when it became coeducational.
The Daniel S. Schanck Observatory is an historical astronomical observatory on the Queens Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States, and is tied for the seventh oldest observatory in the US alongside the Vassar College Observatory. It is located on George Street near the corner with Hamilton Street, opposite the parking lot adjacent to Kirkpatrick Chapel, and to the northeast of Old Queens and Geology Hall.
John Wainwright Evans was an American solar astronomer born in New York City. He spent much of his career studying the sun and working with optics both of which earned him awards. The Evans Solar Facility at Sacramento Peak was named after him. Evans died in a murder–suicide with his wife in 1999.
Mabel Gweneth Humphreys was a Canadian-American mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at Randolph-Macon Women's College. The M. Gweneth Humphreys Award of the Association for Women in Mathematics was established in her honor.
Eve Alexandra Littig Torrence is an American mathematician, a professor emerita of mathematics at Randolph–Macon College, and a former president of mathematics society Pi Mu Epsilon. She is known for her award-winning writing and books in mathematics, for her mathematical origami art, and for her efforts debunking overly broad claims regarding the ubiquity of the golden ratio.
