Betty Louise Turtle

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Betty Louise Turtle (née Webster [also Webster in published works]) (20 May 1941 - 29 September 1990) was an Australian astronomer and physicist. In 1971, with her colleague Paul Murdin, she identified the powerful X-ray source Cygnus X-1 as the first clear candidate for a black hole.

Career

She attended the

Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceux Castle, firstly as a Scientific Officer then Principal Scientific Officer. She worked with Richard Woolley, the Astronomer Royal, and then Paul Murdin, with whom she had been elected to the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time in 1963.[1][2]

Turtle and Murdin were careful about the language of the paper they submitted to the journal

Charles Thomas Bolton) agreed with them.[3]

Her work in Sussex led directly to a posting at the South African Astronomical Observatory, where Woolley became director from 1972, and then the new 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope in a commissioning role before becoming staff astronomer there.[1]

In 1978, she found her final employment at University of New South Wales in the Physics faculty; in November that year she married Tony Turtle. While at the university, she was the driving force for the Automated Patrol Telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory, introduced a fourth-year course for astronomers, served on or chaired many committees and promoted astronomy very actively through the International Astronomical Union and the Astronomical Society of Australia.[1]

She died after a long illness at her home in Paddington, Sydney.

Legacy

The Bok Prize, awarded annually to undergraduates for excellence in research, was introduced largely at Turtle's instigation, and is sponsored by Astronomical Society of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science. In honour of her contribution to astronomy, The Louise Webster Prize has been awarded annually since 2009 by the Astronomical Society of Australia to reward outstanding postdoctoral research early in a scientist's career.[1][4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Storey, J.W.V.; Faulkner, D.J. (1991). "Betty Louise Turtle, 1941-1990". Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of Australia. 9 (1).
  2. ^ "Reports of meetings: meeting of 1963, April 10". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 4: 271. 1963.
  3. ^ DeNooyer, Rushmore (2018). "Black Hole Apocalypse". Nova. WGBH Boston/ARTE France.
  4. ^ "The Louise Webster Prize". asa.astronomy.org.au. Archived from the original on 20 October 2018. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Betty_Louise_Turtle&oldid=1219968911"