Access

Book Review

Nature 408, 645-646 (7 December 2000) | doi:10.1038/35047151

Observing the astronomer

Dorrit Hoffleit1

More than any other American astronomer, Henry Norris Russell (1877–1957) believed that observational astronomy was only of use if it was directed specifically at solving problems concerned with the constitution and evolution of the stars. For, before 1920, so little was known about atomic theory that progress in interpreting stellar spectra was extremely erratic.