David Stanley Evans

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David Stanley Evans (born January 28, 1916 in Cardiff , Wales , † November 14, 2004 in Austin , Texas ) was a British astronomer who became known for using lunar occultations to determine the angular diameters of stars in the 1950s.

Life

Evans went to Cardiff High School for Boys. He completed Part 2 of the Mathematics Tripos at King's College (Cambridge) in 1936 with First Class and in 1937 the third part. In 1937 he became a Ph. D. student at the Cambridge Observatory , where he was also a student of Sir Arthur Eddington . He received his Ph. D. himself in 1941 for the work "The Formation of the Balmer Series of Hydrogen in Stellar Atmospheres". During the Second World War he worked in Oxford with the physicist Kurt Mendelssohn on medical problems related to the war. During that time he was the scientific editor of Discovery and editor of The Observatory .

Evans left England in 1946 to work at the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria , South Africa . At that time, positioning and photometry were the main interests of the astronomical world. Together with Harold Knox-Shaw , he determined the diameter of Antares and also came to the false statement that Arcturus was elliptical. This was later identified as an optical defect. Evans became chief assistant at the Royal Observatory in Cape Town .

David was the second son of Arthur Cyril Evans and Kate Priest. He was married to Betty Hall Evans and adopted two sons: Jonathan Evans from Nashville, Tennessee, and Barnaby Evans from Austin, Texas. He had six grandchildren, three in Nashville and three in Austin.

Books

  • David Stanley Evans: Astronomy (Teach Yourself) . Teach Yourself Books, London 1975, ISBN 0-340-15248-6 .
  • David Stanley Evans: The Eddington Enigma . Xlibris Corporation, Princeton / NJ 1998, ISBN 0-7388-0131-3 .
  • John Herschel, Terence J. Deeming, David S. Evans: Herschel at the Cape. Diaries and correspondence of Sir John Herschel 1834–1838 . University of Texas Press, Austin 1969, ISBN 0-292-78387-6 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Evans, David Stanley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Cardiff
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 2004
Place of death Austin (Texas)