Abstract
THE Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society has been awarded to Dr. Harlow Shapley for his studies of the structure and dimensions of the galactic system. Dr. Shapley, who was born on November 2, 1885, has been director of Harvard College Observatory and Paine professor of astronomy at Harvard since 1921, succeeding E. C. Pickering. He is known particularly for his development of the period-luminosity law of the relation between the period of variation and the absolute magnitude of Cepheid variable stars. The apparent magnitude of the Cepheid variables in a globular cluster is measured and compared with the known absolute magnitude of a Cepheid of the same period, and from this the distance of the cluster is obtained immediately, provided absorption of light in interstellar space is negligible. In 1915–18 he published a noteworthy series of papers on researches on the globular clusters which brought these objects prominently before astronomers. His principal results were brought together in 1930 in his “Star Clusters”. Dr. Shapley's investigations have been applied at Mount Wilson by Dr. E. P. Hubble to measure the distances of the spiral nebulæ. Recent papers from the Harvard College Observatory have discussed the distribution of the galaxies and the uniformity of distribution of matter in space. Dr. Shapley is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Dr. Harlow Shapley. Nature 133, 93 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133093c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133093c0