Henrietta Hill Swope

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Henrietta Hill Swope (born October 26, 1902 in St. Louis , Missouri, † November 24, 1980 in Pasadena , California) was an American astronomer who discovered more than 2000 variable stars . The asteroid 2168 Swope and the Swope telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory near La Serena in Chile are named after her.

Life

Henrietta Hill Swope was one of five children of Gerard Swope (1872–1927), President of the General Electric Company from 1922 to 1939 , and his wife Mary Dayton, b. Hill. Her brother John (1908–1979) was a photographer and married to the Hollywood actress Dorothy McGuire .

Swope attended Barnard College at Columbia University , where she received her bachelor's degree in 1925. After a short stay at the School of Commerce and Administration of the University of Chicago , a predecessor of the Booth School of Business , where she failed felt out of place ( a wee mouse amoung many fiercy cats ; Eng .: a poor mouse among many grim cats ), she moved to Radcliffe College , Harvard, where she graduated with a Master of Arts in 1928 . At the suggestion of the astronomer and then director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory , Margaret Harwood , she applied to the Harvard College Observatory , where in the following 14 years she became the most successful astronomer in this field after Henrietta Swan Leavitt with over 2000 variable stars discovered .

During the Second World War she worked from 1943 as a mathematician for the Hydrographic Office of the Navy and for MIT , there in the Radiation Laboratory (sometimes also called the Radar Laboratory ). She held the position in the Navy until 1947. After the end of the war, Henrietta Swope tried to return to the observatory in Harvard, which however did not succeed because - unlike other astronomers such as Dorrit Hoffleit or Annie Cannon - she was not prepared to work for free or for a symbolic salary. So she went to Barnard College, where she taught astronomy from 1947 to 1952.

In 1952 Walter Baade , who worked at the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories , tried to win her for an assistant position. Swope accepted, but only after the obsolete job title computer (which would roughly correspond to an arithmetic assistant) had been changed to assistant . She later had an independent position there as a scientist.

Together with Baade she worked on the Andromeda nebula and various dwarf galaxies . In 1962, for example, she calculated the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy to be 2.2 million light years. In addition, she concluded from her research that the division of the stars of a galaxy into the groups Population I and Population II , which goes back to Baade, had to be refined, at least for dwarf galaxies, by an intermediate class.

For her work, she was among others in 1968 with the Annie Jump Cannon Award for astronomy and in 1975 from the University of Basel with the honorary doctorate awarded.

After her retirement in 1967, she made the promotion and further development of optical astronomical observatories in the southern hemisphere possible with a donation of US $ 650,000 to the Carnegie Institute of Washington . The donation was used to expand the institute's infrastructure (roads, water and energy supply) and to purchase a 40-inch telescope, later named after her, in the Las Campanas observatory belonging to the institute. The Swope telescope began operating in 1971 and is still in use today. She bequeathed a significant portion of her fortune to the Institute with the determination to continue to support and promote Las Campanas and astronomical research in general.

Henrietta Hill Swope died in Pasadena , California at the age of 78 .

literature

  • Peter Broughton: A Photograph of Nine Young Women Astronomers at Harvard College Observatory in 1928. In: The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada . Vol. 28 (6), December 2002, pp. 255-258.
  • Kimberley J. Laird and Dorrit Hoffleit : Henrietta Hill Swope . In: Notable Women in the physical scienses. A biographical dictionary. Benjamin F. Shearer and Barbara S. Shearer (ed.), Greenwood Press, Westport (Connecticut) 1997, pp. 389-391

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted in: Laird / Hoffleit (1997), p. 389
  2. ↑ See Laird / Hoffleit (1997), p. 389
  3. ↑ cf. Laird / Hoffleit (1997), p. 390
  4. ↑ "Dorrit Hoffleit (...) noted:“ the millionairess did not follow my example by volunteering to work at a token salary, or even like our famous predecessor, Annie J. Cannon, who had the reputation of regulary receiving her just salary and then turning it back to the Department ”; Eng .: Dorrit Hoffleit (…) wrote:“ The millionaire followed my example of volunteering for a symbolic salary, or even like our famous predecessor, Annie Cannon, who was known for it, regularly followed her To get earned salary and then to give it back to the faculty, not. ”Quoted in: Laird / Hoffleit (1997), p. 390
  5. ↑ cf. Laird / Hoffleit (1997), p. 390
  6. ↑ Laird / Hoffleit (1997), p. 390
personal data
SURNAME Swope, Henrietta Hill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Swope, Henrietta H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis , Missouri
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1980
Place of death Pasadena , California