Henrietta Hill Swope
Henrietta Hill Swope | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | November 24, 1980 | (aged 78)
Alma mater | Barnard College (BA) Radcliffe College (MA) |
Known for | Distances to Galaxies |
Awards | Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy (1968) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astronomy |
Institutions | Carnegie Institution for Science |
Henrietta Hill Swope (October 26, 1902 – November 24, 1980)[2] was an American astronomer who studied variable stars. In particular, she measured the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid stars, which are bright variable stars whose periods of variability relate directly to their intrinsic luminosities. Their measured periods can therefore be related to their distances and used to measure the size of the Milky Way and distances to other galaxies.
Personal life
She was the daughter of Mary Hill and
She learned of talks at Maria Mitchell Observatory while vacationing with her family on Nantucket, and took an evening class there alongside her brother.[5] She also heard Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley speak;[6] eventually she would go to work with him on variable stars.
Education
Swope attended Barnard College, and graduated in 1925,[7] with an AB degree in mathematics. She only took an astronomy class, from Harold Jacoby, in her final year.
After college, she went back to Chicago and attended the School of Social Service Administration, at the University of Chicago, but only for one year.[4]
While working with Harlow Shapley, she obtained her Masters in Astronomy in 1928 from Radcliffe College.[8]
Professional history
She learned that Dr. Shapley at Harvard was offering fellowships for women to work on finding variable stars. Swope went to work for Shapley in 1926 and began working alongside other "girls" to identify variable stars in the Milky Way.[4] She became friends with Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and Adelaide Ames. She supported herself on a salary from Harvard and a stipend from her family. She became an expert on estimating magnitudes of stars from images on photographic plates.[8]
Swope left Harvard to work for MIT's staff radiation laboratory in 1942.[9] In her Oral History, she says, "...they said, 'How much were you getting [at Harvard]?' And I said, I think, $2000. That’s what they say they would pay me, what I was getting, but that was too little for them. They couldn't. So I rose fairly quickly." From 1942-1947, she worked on the LORAN navigation tables.[6]
From 1947 until 1952, Swope taught astronomy at Barnard College and Connecticut College for Women and did research using old plates from Harvard.[4]
In 1952,
In 1964, a paper by Baade & Swope reported the results of light curves for 275 Cepheids derived by Swope from photographic plates of the Andromeda Galaxy taken at the relatively new Hale 200-inch Telescope at Palomar Mountain. They reported a new distance to M31, given as a distance modulus of 24.25. They followed up this work in 1963 with new results of 20 Cepheids in a region of Andromeda less affected by extinction and estimated a new distance modulus of 24.20 mag.[10]
Legacy
In 1967, Swope made a donation of securities valued at $650,000 to the
Henrietta Hill Swope died at the age of 78 in
Awards and honors
- Annie J. Cannon Awardin 1968
- Asteroid 2168 Swopeis named in her honor.
- Barnard Distinguished Alumnae Award, 1975
- The Swope Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile is named in her honor.
- Honorary PhD, 1975, University of Basel, Switzerland
- Barnard College Medal of Distinction, 1980
References
- ^ a b "California Death Index, 1940-1997". FamilySearch. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
- doi:10.1063/1.2914495. Archived from the originalon 2013-09-28.
- ^ "Obituary: Henrietta H. Swope". New York Times. November 29, 1980.
- ^ a b c d e f McDermott, Stacy Pratt. "Hull-House in the Family and in the Stars". Retrieved 2021-07-14.
- ^ "The Remarkable Transformation of V725 Sgr" (PDF). Variable Star of the Season. 2006.
- ^ a b "Interview of Dr. Henrietta Swope by David DeVorkin on August 3, 1977". Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD. Archived from the original on January 12, 2015. Retrieved September 8, 2014.
- ^ Barnard College, Mortarboard (1925 yearbook): 171.
- ^ a b Hoffleit, Dorrit (2001). "The Maria Mitchell Observatory-For Astronomical Research and Public Enlightenment". Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. 30: 80–81.
- ISBN 9781135963439.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - doi:10.1086/108996.
- ^ "Legacy of a Life: Henrietta Swope". CIW Newsletter. 1983.
External links
- Henrietta Hill Swope Papers.Schlesinger Library Archived 2012-05-09 at the Wayback Machine, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
- Oral history interview transcript with Henrietta Hill Swope on 3 August 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives