Mary Adela Blagg

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Mary Adela Blagg (born May 17, 1858 in Cheadle , Staffordshire , † April 14, 1944 ibid) was an English astronomer who played an important role in selenographic nomenclature in the first half of the 20th century.

Life and accomplishments

Mary Adela Blagg was born as the eldest of nine children of the solicitor Charles John Blagg (1832 / 3-1915) and Frances Caroline Blagg (née Foottit, 1832 / 3-1896) in the small, central English town of Cheadle. In addition to attending a boarding school in London , she trained primarily on a self-taught basis in mathematics through the textbooks of her brothers . Her interest in astronomy was sparked by lectures given by John Herschel's grandson Joseph Alfred Hardcastle in her hometown. Hardcastle, who made calculations in the field of selenography for Samuel Arthur Saunder (1852-1912) and Herbert Hall Turner , convinced Blagg to work in the field himself.

In 1907, at the meeting of the International Association of Academies in Vienna, a committee ( Lunar Nomenclature Committee ) was founded under the direction of Maurice Loewy , which should bring together the chaotic nomenclature of the lunar formations. In addition to Loewy , members included Franz , Newcomb , Weiss , Saunder and Turner, and a little later also Pickering . After Loewy's death, Baillaud and Puiseux joined them. Saunder, who took over the chairmanship of the committee, won the support of Wesley and Blagg. When Newcomb, Saunder and Franz died before the revised nomenclature was published, Blagg took on a leading role.

During this time, she also studied variable stars . Turner had acquired a manuscript from Joseph Baxendell and published together with Blagg from 1912 and 1918 eleven scientific publications in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . Blagg continued this work with six independent works in the Monthly Notices .

In 1919 the International Astronomical Union was founded. In 1920, Blagg became a member of Commission 17, which dealt with the lunar and Martian nomenclature. The commission was headed by Turner and supplemented by Bigourdan , Müller , Pickering and Puiseux. In 1935 Müller and Blagg published a nomenclature of the moon with almost 6000 named formations, which remained the standard work in this field for almost 30 years before it was replaced by the System of Lunar Craters in 1963/66 .

Except for her boarding school, Blagg lived in her hometown, withdrawn and unmarried. Of the meetings of the International Astronomical Union, she only attended those in Cambridge in 1925 and in Leiden in 1928 . She suffered from heart problems for the last eight years of her life.

On January 14, 1916, she was one of the first four women to be accepted into the Royal Astronomical Society , along with Ella K. Church , Alice Grace Cook and Fiammetta Wilson . Six more women followed in the same year. The moon crater Blagg was named in her honor.

Works (selection)

  • Collated List of Lunar Formations named or lettered in the Maps of Neison, Schmidt, and Mädler . Compiled and Annotated for the Committee by Mary A. Blagg under the Direction of the late SA Saunder. Ed .: Lunar Nomenclature Committee of the National Association of Academies. Messrs Neill & Co., Edinburgh 1913 (English, 182 pp., Archive.org [accessed September 26, 2016]).
  • Mary Adela Blagg, Karl Müller: Named Lunar Formations . Drawn up by them for Commission 17 and approved at the Meeting of the Union held at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1932. Ed .: Union Astronomique Internationale. Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., London 1935 (English, 2 volumes).

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literature

  • Elizabeth H. Oakes: Blagg, Mary Adela . In: Encyclopedia of World Scientists . Revised ed. Infobase Publishing, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-6158-7 , pp. 70 (English).
  • Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie : Blagg, Mary Adela . In: Women in Science . Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century. A Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography. Fourth printing edition. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-262-15031-X , pp. 41 (English).
  • Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie: Blagg, Mary Adela . In: Thomas Hockey et al. (Ed.): The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers . Volume I (A-L). Springer Science + Business Media, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0 , pp. 137-138 (English).
  • PM Ryves: Obituary Notices . Mary Adela Blagg. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . Vol. 105, No. 2. Royal Astronomical Society, London 1945, p. 65-66 , bibcode : 1945MNRAS.105R..65. (English).

On-line

Individual evidence

  1. 100 years and counting: women in the RAS go from strength to strength. In: Royal Astronomical Society. January 14, 2016, accessed July 3, 2019 .