Charlotte Moore Sitterly
Charlotte Moore Sitterly | |
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Naval Research Laboratory | |
Thesis | Atomic lines in the sun-spot spectrum (1931) |
Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly (September 24, 1898 – March 3, 1990) was an American astronomer.[2] She is known for her extensive spectroscopic studies of the Sun and chemical elements. Her tables of data are known for their reliability and are still used regularly.[3]
Early life and education
Charlotte Moore was born to George W. and Elizabeth Walton Moore in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania, a small village near Coatesville. Her father was the Superintendent of Schools for Chester County and her mother was a schoolteacher. Her parents were Quakers and Charlotte was a lifelong member of Fallowfield Friends Meeting.[4]
She attended Swarthmore College, where she participated in many extracurricular activities such as ice hockey, student government, glee club, and tutoring. In order to pay her tuition, Moore was a substitute teacher, one of the few ways she thought she could work her way through college.[4][5] She wanted to pursue a career outside teaching because "I did not enjoy the teaching that I did from first grade through high school. I succeeded at it, but I didn’t like it; it was too wearing."[5]
Moore graduated from Swarthmore in 1920 with a
Career
On the recommendation of her mathematics professor at Swarthmore, John. Miller, Moore obtained a job at the Princeton University Observatory working for Professor
Although she spent five years at Princeton working under Russell, he refused to consider her a PhD, an unexceptional fact since there were no women in any of Princeton's graduate programs until 1961. Moore said “I was used to prejudice against women because Princeton was a man's stronghold, and a woman was really out of step there.”[8] Though in 1926, Russell left his own name off a paper they worked on together and used hers alone.[8]
After five years at Princeton, Moore took a leave of absence due to ill health and she moved to the Mount Wilson Observatory as part of an ongoing collaboration between Russell and research groups there.[8] While at Mount Wilson she worked extensively on solar spectroscopy, analyzing the spectral lines of the Sun and thereby identifying the chemical elements in the Sun. With her collaborators, she analyzed the spectra of sunspots.[3] Moore was able to deduce the temperature of sunspots to be about 4,700 kelvins.[8] Her pictures from the Mount Wilson Observatory helped redetermine the new International Angstrom scale.
She earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1931 from the University of California, Berkeley, which had more relaxed rules on women graduates than Princeton, on a Lick Fellowship. Princeton still did not accept women – and would not for the next 30 years.[6][4] While working on her Ph.D, she continued researching spectroscopy and collected and analyzed data about the spectra of chemical elements and molecules. After obtaining her Ph.D, she returned to Princeton to continue work with Russell as a research assistant.[6]
One of her most significant contributions to physics was her identification of technetium in sunlight, the first example of technetium naturally existing. She joined the then
In 1949 she became the first woman elected as an associate of the
Personal life
While working at Princeton in the 1920s, she met physicist Bancroft W. Sitterly, whom she eventually married on May 30, 1937.[5] She continued to publish journals under her maiden name because most of her recognition was under that name. She believed that traveling is one of the most important aspects of a scientist's life, as it promotes collaboration between scientists. She enjoyed gardening, traveling, and music with her husband until his death in 1977. She continued her research until her death from heart failure at the age of 91.[6]
Honors
Awards
- Annie J. Cannon Award (1937)[3]
- Fellow of the Optical Society (1959) – member of the first class of OSA Fellows, one of only five women in the class of 115.[12]
- Federal Woman's Award (1961)
- Optical Society (1972)[3]
- Bruce Medal (1990)[3]
Service
- Vice President, American Astronomical Society
- Vice President, American Association for the Advancement of Science Section D
- President, Commission on Fundamental Spectroscopic Data, International Astronomical Union[7]
Named after her
- 2110 Moore-Sitterly
Works
- A Multiplet Table of Astrophysical Interest, 1933
- The Solar Spectrum (with Harold D. Babcock), 1947
- The Masses of the Stars (with Henry Norris Russell), 1940
- Ultraviolet Multiplet Table, 1950
- Atomic Energy Levels as Derived from the Analyses of Optical Spectra, 1958
Further reading
- Bibliography from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- Wayne, Tiffany K. (2011). American women of science since 1900. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598841596.
References
- ISBN 978-1-4419-9916-0, retrieved August 24, 2023
- doi:10.1063/1.2810096. Archived from the originalon October 5, 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f "Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly: 1990 Bruce Medalist". Department of Physics & Astronomy, Sonoma State University. June 24, 2021. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
- ^ ISSN 1440-2807.
- ^ a b c d "Oral History Interviews: Interview of Charlotte Moore Sitterly by David DeVorkin". Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. June 15, 1978. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
- ^ ISBN 978-0313293030.
- ^ Bibcode:1991BAAS...23.1492R.
- ^ a b c d e Landau, Elizabeth (September 23, 2019). "How Charlotte Moore Sitterly Wrote The Encyclopedia of Starlight". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved October 7, 2022.
- ^ Walter Sullivan (March 8, 1990). "Charlotte Sitterly, 91; Devoted Career to Sunlight Studies". The New York Times.
- .
- ISSN 0035-8738.
- ^ "OSA's First Fellows". The Optical Society. Archived from the original on April 24, 2019.
External links
Media related to Charlotte Moore Sitterly at Wikimedia Commons