Alice Grace Cook

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alice Grace Cook ( 1877 or 1887 - 1958 ) was a British astronomer and one of the first female members of the Royal Astronomical Society .

Life and accomplishments

Alice Grace Cook attended six lectures by Joseph Alfred Hardcastle in Stowmarket , Suffolk , in the fall of 1909 , which sparked her interest in astronomy . In 1911 she was accepted into the British Astronomical Association (BAA). There she worked mainly on the observation of meteors together with William Frederick Denning and Fiammetta Wilson . From 1911 to 1921 Martin Davidson (1880-1968) was head of the meteor section of the BAA. When he had to leave the section in 1916 to serve as army chaplain in World War I , Cook and Wilson were appointed as interim directors until his return in 1919. After that she was director of the section for a few years. In addition to the Meteor Section, she was also a member of the Saturn , Lunar , and Polar and Zodiacal Light sections.

On January 14, 1916, she was accepted into the Royal Astronomical Society as one of the first four women, along with Ella K. Church , Mary Adela Blagg and Fiammetta Wilson , and six more women followed in the same year. In 1920 she received the Edward C. Pickering Fellowship to continue her meteor observations at Harvard College Observatory . She was also a founding member of the Ipswich section of the Chaldean Society, founded in 1921, and the Ipswich and District Astronomical Society, founded in 1950.

Cook was among the discoverers of the Nova Aquilae in 1918 (V603 Aquilae), first seen by Zygmunt Laskowski (1841-1928) and confirmed by Cook, and identified and classified together with Hardcastle 785 NGC / IC objects. She also published articles on astronomy under the pseudonym Mary Star in the East Anglian Daily Times .

swell

literature

  • Annie Jump Cannon : Report of the Astronomical Fellowship Committee . In: Annual Report of the Maria Mitchell Association . Vol. 19, 1921, pp. 15–17 , bibcode : 1921MMAAR..19 ... 15C (English).
  • Alan Hunter : Report of the Ordinary General Meeting of the Association . Held on Wednesday, 1958 June 25 at the Royal Institution, London, W 1. In: Journal of the British Astronomical Association . Vol. 68, 1958, pp. 302–308 , bibcode : 1958JBAA ... 68..302B (English, notice of death on p. 302).
  • Kristine Larsen: Shooting Stars: The Women Directors of the Meteor Section of the British Astronomical Association . In: The Antiquarian Astronomer . No. 3 , 2006, p. 75–82 , bibcode : 2006AntAs ... 3 ... 75L (English).
  • Pete Richards: Notes on Alice Grace Cook (1877-1958). In: Orwell Astronomical Society (Ipswich). 2014, Retrieved October 3, 2016 (English, letters from Cook to Dennis Jack Fulcher, 1951).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b 100 years and counting: women in the RAS go from strength to strength. In: Royal Astronomical Society. January 14, 2016, accessed October 3, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Steinicke : Nebulae and Star Clusters . History of their discovery, observation and cataloging - from Herschel to “Dreyer's New General Catalog”. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-8350-7 , pp. 495 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Both birth years exist in the literature. More detailed information is not available.
personal data
SURNAME Cook, Alice Grace
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Star, Mary (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH 1877 or 1887
DATE OF DEATH 1958