Beatrice Tinsley

Mount Tinsley (1,537 m / m) in New Zealand

Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley (born January 27, 1941 in Chester , England , † March 23, 1981 ) was a New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist.

Life

Beatrice Tinsley was born on January 27, 1941 in Chester, England to Edward Hill and his wife Jean Morton. In 1946 the family moved to New Zealand. From 1958 to 1963 she studied physics and mathematics at the University of Canterbury . In 1961 she married the physicist Brian Alfred Tinsley. In 1963 they moved to Dallas, Texas, where Brian Tinsley started a job. Beatrice Tinsley began studying astronomy at the University of Texas (Austin), which she graduated with a doctorate in 1966. In difficult employment relationships, she continued her research until she went to Yale University in 1975 , where she became the first woman professor of astronomy in 1978. In 1975 she received a research grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ( Sloan Research Fellowship ). In early 1978 the first signs of malignant melanoma were diagnosed, to which she finally succumbed on March 23, 1981.

plant

Tinsley was the first to develop comprehensive models of the evolution of stars, the gas content and the abundance of heavy elements in galaxies . With their help, the development of the colors and brightness of galaxies in the early universe as well as development relationships between galaxy types in the Hubble sequence can be better understood. She proved that galaxies can change their properties significantly shorter than the age of the universe due to the formation and aging of their stars and thus justified studies of the evolution of galaxies in today's sense. On the other hand, this development makes the previously intended use of galaxies as standard candles for cosmological studies very difficult.

Awards

• 1974 Annie Jump Cannon Award for Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society

Appreciations

• 1985 namesake of the main belt asteroid (3087) Beatrice Tinsley , which was discovered in 1981 at the Mt John University Observatory .
• The Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize , which has been awarded since 1986, is named after her.
• In December 2010, the New Zealand Geographic Board officially named a mountain in the Kepler Mountains (named after the astronomer Johannes Kepler) in Fiordland National Park on New Zealand's South Island as Mount Tinsley.

Web links

• Publications by BM Tinsley in the Astrophysics Data System
• S. Faber: Beatrice Tinsley. Physics Today, Volume 34, Issue 9, page 110, doi : 10.1063 / 1.2914734 (obituary, English)