George Ellery Hale Papers 10142-MS
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Helium Mrs. Ahng the Second Lightest Element on Earth, Helium Is One Of
Helium Mrs. Ahng The second lightest element on Earth, Helium is one of the most important elements in our universe. It is the reason that we have sunlight, it makes balloons float, and used to cool down nuclear reactors. Although it is a simple noble gas with only two protons and two electrons, it is a powerful and essential resource. Discovered in1868 by astronomer Pierre Janssen while studying a solar eclipse; he noticed a yellow line around sun that had a wavelength that he had not seen before. English Astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer later named the element after the Greek word “Helios”, making the connection to how it was discovered. Helium only makes ups less than 1% of Earth’s atmosphere because of how light it is. It’s atomic mass is only 4.003, so the surrounding air is heavier than helium. An example of the difference in mass can be seen when comparing a helium filled balloon to a balloon filled with a mixture of atmospheric gases. The mass of the mixture is much heavier, and therefore is more effected by gravitational pull. Helium is found mostly in space in the core of stars, but it was also found on Earth in 1895 trapped underground. Scientists believe that the Helium that we harvest today was created during the creation of the universe, or the “Big Bang”. Only two electrons energize one orbital for this element, giving us the popular image for all atoms. With the outer orbital shell full, the element is referred to as inert and nonreactive. -
Ernest Merritt Was a Rather Small Pixieish Man, Somewhat Hard of Hearing, Eyes Sparkling, Who Obviously Enjoyed What He Was Doing, Just a Delightful Person
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES E R N E S T G E O R G E M ERRITT 1865—1948 A Biographical Memoir by P A U L L . H A R T M A N Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 1997 NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS WASHINGTON D.C. Photo ca. 1926 ERNEST GEORGE MERRITT April 28, 1865–June 5, 1948 BY PAUL L. HARTMAN RNEST GEORGE MERRITT, emeritus professor of physics at ECornell University and long-time member of that de- partment and personification of American physics, died June 5, 1948, in Ithaca, New York, after a short illness. He was born April 28, 1865, (two weeks after Lincoln’s assassina- tion) in Indianapolis. As a youngster he already showed an inclination toward his adult vocations of editor and scien- tist. By the age of eight or so, in Indiana no less, he had founded and edited two journals, Sea Breeze, and its succes- sor, The Mountain Echo, which he also printed and bound; and he had obtained a modest telescope which he housed in his small observatory. The Indianapolis Journal reported on “the boy astronomer (whose) eager study of the stars may some day make him famous.” In high school Merritt showed a talent for mathematics, winning a small prize. After one year at Purdue he went to Cornell’s engineering school, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. When the mathematical and as- tronomical inclinations disappeared is not clear. -
Arxiv:0906.0144V1 [Physics.Hist-Ph] 31 May 2009 Event
Solar physics at the Kodaikanal Observatory: A Historical Perspective S. S. Hasan, D.C.V. Mallik, S. P. Bagare & S. P. Rajaguru Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, India 1 Background The Kodaikanal Observatory traces its origins to the East India Company which started an observatory in Madras \for promoting the knowledge of as- tronomy, geography and navigation in India". Observations began in 1787 at the initiative of William Petrie, an officer of the Company, with the use of two 3-in achromatic telescopes, two astronomical clocks with compound penduumns and a transit instrument. By the early 19th century the Madras Observatory had already established a reputation as a leading astronomical centre devoted to work on the fundamental positions of stars, and a principal source of stellar positions for most of the southern hemisphere stars. John Goldingham (1796 - 1805, 1812 - 1830), T. G. Taylor (1830 - 1848), W. S. Jacob (1849 - 1858) and Norman R. Pogson (1861 - 1891) were successive Government Astronomers who led the activities in Madras. Scientific high- lights of the work included a catalogue of 11,000 southern stars produced by the Madras Observatory in 1844 under Taylor's direction using the new 5-ft transit instrument. The observatory had recently acquired a transit circle by Troughton and Simms which was mounted and ready for use in 1862. Norman Pogson, a well known astronomer whose name is associated with the modern definition of the magnitude scale and who had considerable experience with transit instruments in England, put this instrument to good use. With the help of his Indian assistants, Pogson measured accurate positions of about 50,000 stars from 1861 until his death in 1891. -
Dirk Brouwer
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES D I R K B R O U W ER 1902—1966 A Biographical Memoir by G . M . C LEMENCE Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 1970 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WASHINGTON D.C. DIRK BROUWER September 1, 1902-January 31, 1966 BY G. M. CLEMENCE IRK BROUWER, who contributed more to dynamical astron- D omy than any other astronomer of his time, died on January 31, 1966, after a week in hospital; his death was occa- sioned by an acute disorder of the heart. He is survived by his widow and an only son, James. Brouwer was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on September 1, 1902, the son of a civil service employee. As a stu- dent in the University of Leiden he studied mathematics and astronomy, coming under the influence of Willem de Sitter, who in his own day was the dean of that branch of astronomy in which Brouwer was to do most of his work. Receiving the Ph.D. degree in 1927 under de Sitter, Brouwer came to the United States as a fellow of the International Education Board, spending a year at the University of California in Berkeley and at Yale University, where he was to remain the rest of his life. His initial appointment at Yale was in 1928 as research as- sistant to Ernest W. Brown, who was then the greatest living authority on the motion of the moon. -
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244 Trimble, JAAVSO Volume 43, 2015 As International as They Would Let Us Be Virginia Trimble Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-4575; [email protected] Received July 15, 2015; accepted August 28, 2015 Abstract Astronomy has always crossed borders, continents, and oceans. AAVSO itself has roughly half its membership residing outside the USA. In this excessively long paper, I look briefly at ancient and medieval beginnings and more extensively at the 18th and 19th centuries, plunge into the tragedies associated with World War I, and then try to say something relatively cheerful about subsequent events. Most of the people mentioned here you will have heard of before (Eratosthenes, Copernicus, Kepler, Olbers, Lockyer, Eddington…), others, just as important, perhaps not (von Zach, Gould, Argelander, Freundlich…). Division into heroes and villains is neither necessary nor possible, though some of the stories are tragic. In the end, all one can really say about astronomers’ efforts to keep open channels of communication that others wanted to choke off is, “the best we can do is the best we can do.” 1. Introduction astronomy (though some of the practitioners were actually Christian and Jewish) coincided with the largest extents of Astronomy has always been among the most international of regions governed by caliphates and other Moslem empire-like sciences. Some of the reasons are obvious. You cannot observe structures. In addition, Arabic astronomy also drew on earlier the whole sky continuously from any one place. Attempts to Greek, Persian, and Indian writings. measure geocentric parallax and to observe solar eclipses have In contrast, the Europe of the 16th century, across which required going to the ends (or anyhow the middles) of the earth. -
212 Publications of the Some Pioneer
212 PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOME PIONEER OBSERVERS1 By Frank Schlesinger In choosing a subject upon which to speak to you this eve- ning, I have had to bear in mind that, although this is a meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, not many of my audience are astronomers, and I am therefore debarred from speaking on too technical a matter. Under these circumstances I have thought that a historical subject, and one that has been somewhat neglected by the, formal historians of our science, may be of interest. I propose to outline, very briefly of course, the history of the advances that have been made in the accuracy of astronomical measurements. To do this within an hour, I must confine myself to the measurement of the relative places of objects not very close together, neglecting not only measure- ments other than of angles, but also such as can be carried out, for example, by the filar micrometer and the interferometer; these form a somewhat distinct chapter and would be well worth your consideration in an evening by themselves. It is clear to you, I hope, in how restricted a sense I am using the word observer ; Galileo, Herschel, and Barnard were great observers in another sense and they were great pioneers. But of their kind of observing I am not to speak to you tonight. My pioneers are five in number ; they are Hipparchus in the second century b.c., Tycho in the sixteenth century, Bradley in the eighteenth, Bessel in the first half of the nineteenth century and Rüther fur d in the second half. -
Norman Lockyer Resources Information Sheet
Norman Lockyer resources information sheet Sir Joseph Lockyer was born in Rugby in 1836, the only son of a surgeon-apothecary, Joseph Hooley Lockyer and was educated privately in England and he also studied languages on the Continent. At the age of twenty-one he became a clerk in the War Office, and married Winifred James in the following year. He developed an interest in astronomy and journalism, and in 1863 began to give scientific papers to the Royal Astronomical Society. It is his discovery of helium which he has become most well known for. In 1869 Lockyer founded the journal 'Nature', which he edited until a few months before his death, and which remains to this day a major resource for international scientific knowledge. In 1870 he was appointed secretary to the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, which over the next five years reported on scientific education and resulted in the government setting up a laboratory of solar physics at South Kensington. To further this work Lockyer was transferred from the War Office to the Science and Art Department at South Kensington in 1875. Here he organised an international exhibition of scientific apparatus, as well as establishing the loan collection which eventually formed the nucleus of the collections of the Science Museum. Throughout this period, Lockyer continued to be active in astronomical observations and in spectroscopic studies in the laboratory of the College of Chemistry; he also wrote several books on astronomy and spectral analysis. Lockyer also studied the correlations between solar activity and weather, and developed interests in meteorology. -
Francis Gladheim Pease Papers: Finding Aid
http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8988d3d No online items Francis Gladheim Pease Papers: Finding Aid Finding aid prepared by Brooke M. Black, September 11, 2012. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Manuscripts Department 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2129 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org © 2012 The Huntington Library. All rights reserved. Francis Gladheim Pease Papers: mssPease papers 1 Finding Aid Overview of the Collection Title: Francis Gladheim Pease Papers Dates (inclusive): 1850-1937 Bulk dates: 1905-1937 Collection Number: mssPease papers Creator: Pease, F. G. (Francis Gladheim), 1881- Extent: Approximately 4,250 items in 18 boxes Repository: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Manuscripts Department 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2129 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org Abstract: This collection consists of the research papers of American astronomer Francis Pease (1881-1938), one of the original staff members of the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory. Language: English. Access Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services. Publication Rights The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher. Preferred Citation [Identification of item]. Francis Gladheim Pease Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Provenance Deposit, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Collection , 1988. -
Miller's Waves
Miller’s Waves An Informal Scientific Biography William Fickinger Department of Physics Case Western Reserve University Copyright © 2011 by William Fickinger Library of Congress Control Number: 2011903312 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4568-7746-0 - 1 - Contents Preface ...........................................................................................................3 Acknowledgments ...........................................................................................4 Chapter 1-Youth ............................................................................................5 Chapter 2-Princeton ......................................................................................9 Chapter 3-His Own Comet ............................................................................12 Chapter 4-Revolutions in Physics..................................................................16 Chapter 5-Case Professor ............................................................................19 Chapter 6-Penetrating Rays ..........................................................................25 Chapter 7-The Physics of Music....................................................................31 Chapter 8-The Michelson-Morley Legacy......................................................34 Chapter 9-Paris, 1900 ...................................................................................41 Chapter 10-The Morley-Miller Experiment.....................................................46 Chapter 11-Professor and Chair ...................................................................51 -
Albert Einstein: Relativity, War, and Fame Daniel J
Albert Einstein: Relativity, War, and Fame Daniel J. Kevles In , Princeton University Press published Albert Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity, a popularization of his theory that has remained in print to this day, and that more than a half century ago Datus C. Smith, Jr., then the director of the Press, counted as one of its “crown jewels.”1 The book was the first in what has be- come a sizable number of volumes by and about Einstein that the Press has published, a number that continues to grow as succes- sive editions of his writings appear. Albert Einstein burst upon the world of physics in , at age twenty-six, when he was working as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern and published three extraordinary scientific papers. One, speaking to the developing though somewhat con- troversial atomic theory of matter, demonstrated the reality of atoms and molecules. The other two—one advancing a quantum theory of light, the other proposing the special theory of rela- tivity—contributed decisively to the revolution in physics that marked the twentieth century. Two years later, in , Einstein began work on what became the general theory of relativity. The special theory discarded the assumption of Newtonian physics that there exists an absolute frame of reference in space against which all motion in the uni- verse can be measured. Taking no frame as privileged, it related how phenomena occurring in one inertial frame—that is, one moving at constant velocity—would appear in a second moving in relation to the first. The two frames might be, for example, two trains traveling at different constant speeds on neighboring tracks. -
A Century of Astronomy at the Thacher School
Robotic Telescopes, Student Research and Education (RTSRE) Proceedings Conference Proceedings, San Diego, California, USA, Jun 18-21, 2017 Fitzgerald, M., James, C.R., Buxner, S., White, S., Eds. Vol. 1, No. 1, (2018) ISBN 978-0-6483996-0-5 / doi : 10.32374/rtsre.2017.007 / CC BY-NC-ND license Peer Reviewed Article. rtsre.net/ojs A Century of Astronomy at The Thacher School Chris Vyhnal1*, Jon Swift1 Abstract The Thacher School has a rich legacy of education and research in astronomy that dates back over a century to correspondence in 1906 between our founder, Sherman Thacher, and the Director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, George Hale. Nobel prize winning physicist Robert Millikan served on the School’s Board of Trustees and conducted cosmic ray measurements on our campus in 1928. From 1930 to 1941 students and faculty from the School took annual trips to Pasadena to see the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson and tour the Huntington Library and Caltech. Edwin Hubble gave the commencement address on our campus in 1942 and aluminized the mirror of an 8-inch telescope at the request of one of our students 10 years later. The Summer Science Program (SSP), which brought together some of the nation’s brightest math and science students to participate in an intensive, 6-week immersion in astronomy, operated on our campus for 40 years starting in 1959. A 24-inch astrograph built by Caltech was installed in an observatory building erected on our campus by UCLA in 1965 and was later used for preliminary testing of the UCSD Digicon spectrographs that were eventually installed on the Hubble Space Telescope. -
Frank Schlesinger 1871-1943
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOLUME XXIV THIRD MEMOIR BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF FRANK SCHLESINGER 1871-1943 BY DIRK BROUWER PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, 1945 FRANK SCHLESINGER 1871-1943 BY DIRK BROUWER Frank Schlesinger was born in New York City on May n, 1871. His father, William Joseph Schlesinger (1836-1880), and his mother, Mary Wagner Schlesinger (1832-1892), both natives of the German province of Silesia, had emigrated to the United States. In Silesia they had lived in neighboring vil- lages, but they did not know each other until they met in New York, in 1855, at the home of Mary's cousin. They were mar- ried in 1857 and had seven children, all of whom grew to maturity. Frank was the youngest and, after 1939, the last survivor. His father's death, in 1880, although it brought hardships to the family, was not permitted to interfere with Frank's educa- tion. He attended public school in New York City, and eventually entered the College of the City of New York, receiv- ing the degree of Bachelor of Science in 1890. His aptitude for mathematical science, already evident in grammar school, be- came more marked in the higher stages of his education when he began to show a preference for applied mathematics. Upon completing his undergraduate work it was not possible for him to continue with graduate studies. He had to support himself, and his health at that time made it desirable for him to engage in outdoor activities.