Helen Sawyer Hogg

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Memorial plaque for Helen Sawyer Hogg at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology.

Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg , CC (born August 1, 1905 in Lowell (Massachusetts) , † January 28, 1993 in Richmond Hill , Ontario ) was a Canadian astronomer who was best known for an astronomical column from 1951 to 1981.

She first studied chemistry and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1926 . She then went to Harvard College Observatory at the invitation of Annie Jump Cannon . There she worked with Harlow Shapley on star clusters and published several articles. She received her masters degree in astronomy in 1928 and received her PhD from Radcliffe College in 1931 .

She married her fellow student, the astronomer Frank Scott Hogg , in 1930 and had three children with him. In 1931 the two moved to Victoria , Canada, where Hogg worked at the observatory. In 1935 they moved to Ontario , where her husband did research at the University of Toronto and she also got a job at the David Dunlap Observatory . Frank Hogg was director of the observatory from 1946 until his death in 1951. In 1957 Helen Hogg received a full professorship at the University of Toronto and retired in 1976.

Over six decades she published numerous papers and became one of the leading observing astronomers. After her husband's death, she took over his column, With the Stars, in Toronto Star magazine , which she wrote for thirty years.

In 1985 she married again, the retired English professor Francis Ethelbert Louis Priestley (* 1905, † 1988). She died of a heart attack in 1993.

She won the Annie Jump Cannon Prize for Astronomy in 1949 and the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 1983. In 1968 she was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada and in 1976 made a Companion. 1981 she was awarded the Saint Mary's University Halifax , the honorary doctorate . On May 20, 2004, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame at the suggestion of John Percy . She was president of the Canadian Astronomical Society.

The asteroid (2917) Sawyer Hogg is named after her.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Order of Canada Citation ( Memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on the website www.gg.ca (English)
  2. Honorary Degrees 1971–1990 , Saint Mary's University Halifax
  3. Helen Sawyer Hogg Honored by Randall C. Brooks, Curator, Physical Sciences and Space, Canada Science and Technology Museum, viewed on casca.ca, the Canadian Astronomical Society website, March 26, 2011