Harlow Shapley | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 2, 1885 Nashville, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | October 20, 1972(1972-10-20) (aged 86) Boulder, Colorado, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Missouri,Princeton University |
| Known for | Determining correct position ofSun withinMilky Way Galaxy; head ofHarvard College Observatory (1921–1952) |
| Spouse | Martha Betz Shapley |
| Children | 5, including
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| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Doctoral advisor | Henry Norris Russell |
| Doctoral students | Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin,Carl Seyfert |
| Other notable students | Georges Lemaître |
Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an Americanastronomer, who served as head of theHarvard College Observatory from 1921–1952, and political activist during the latterNew Deal andFair Deal.[1][2]
Shapley usedCepheid variable stars to estimate the size of theMilky Way Galaxy and the Sun's position within it.[3] In 1953 he proposed his "liquid water belt" theory, a concept now known as ahabitable zone.[4]
Shapley was born on a farm five miles outsideNashville, Missouri, to Willis and Sarah (née Stowell) Shapley.[5] He went to school inJasper, Missouri, but not beyond elementary school.[6] He worked as a journalist[7] after studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter for theDaily Sun inChanute, Kansas, and intermittently for theTimes ofJoplin, Missouri.[3] In Chanute, he found a Carnegie library and started reading and studying on his own.[3] Shapley returned to complete a six-year high school program in 1.5 years, graduating as class valedictorian.[3]
In 1907, Shapley went to theUniversity of Missouri to study journalism. When he learned that the opening of the School of Journalism had been postponed for a year, he decided to study the first subject he came across in the course directory. Rejecting Archaeology, which Shapley later claimed he could not pronounce, he chose the next subject,Astronomy.[8]
After graduation, Shapley received a fellowship toPrinceton University for graduate work, where he studied underHenry Norris Russell and used theperiod-luminosity relation forCepheid variable stars (discovered byHenrietta Swan Leavitt) to determine distances toglobular clusters. He was instrumental in moving astronomy away from the idea that Cepheids werespectroscopic binaries, and toward the concept that they were pulsators.[9]
He realized that theMilky Way Galaxy was far larger than previously believed, and that the Sun's place in the galaxy was in a nondescript location. This discovery supports theCopernican principle, according to which the Earth is not at the center of the Solar System, the Milky Way galaxy, nor the Universe.
Shapley participated in the "Great Debate" withHeber D. Curtis on the nature of nebulae and galaxies and the size of the Universe. The debate took place on April 26, 1920, in the hall of theUnited States National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Shapley took the side that spiral nebulae (what are now called galaxies) are inside the Milky Way, while Curtis took the side that the spiral nebulae are "island universes" far outside the Milky Way and comparable in size and nature to the Milky Way. This issue and debate are the start ofextragalactic astronomy, while the detailed arguments and data, often with ambiguities, appeared together in 1921.[10]
Characteristic issues were whetherAdriaan van Maanen had measured rotation in a spiral nebula, the nature and luminosity of the exploding novae and supernovae seen in spiral galaxies, and the size of the Milky Way. However, Shapley's actual talk and argument given during the Great Debate were completely different from the published paper. Historian Michael Hoskin says "His decision was to treat the National Academy of Sciences to an address so elementary that much of it was necessarily uncontroversial", with Shapley's motivation being only to impress a delegation from Harvard who were interviewing him for a possible offer as the next Director ofHarvard College Observatory.[11] With the default by Shapley, Curtis won the debate. The astronomical issues were soon resolved in favor of Curtis' position whenEdwin Hubble discovered Cepheid variable stars in theAndromeda Galaxy.[12][13]
At the time of the debate, Shapley was working at theMount Wilson Observatory, where he had been hired byGeorge Ellery Hale. After the debate, however, he was hired to replace the recently deceasedEdward Charles Pickering as director of theHarvard College Observatory (HCO).
He is also known to have opposedEdwin Hubble's observations that there are additional galaxies in the universe other than the Milky Way. Shapley fiercely critiqued Hubble and regarded his work as junk science. However, after he received a letter from Hubble showing Hubble's observed light curve of V1, aCepheid variable star in the Andromeda galaxy, he withdrew his criticism. He reportedly told a colleague, "Here is the letter that destroyed my universe." He also encouraged Hubble to write a paper for a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.[12] Hubble's findings went on to fundamentally reshape the scientific view of the universe.[13]
Despite having earlier argued strongly against the idea of galaxies other than the Milky Way, Shapley went on to make significant progress in the research of the distribution of galaxies, working between 1925 and 1932. In this time period, with theHarvard College Observatory, he worked to map 76,000 galaxies. One of the first astronomers to believe in the existence of galaxy superclusters, Shapley later discovered a large and distant example, which was later named theShapley Supercluster. He estimated the distance to this supercluster at 231 Mpc, which is within 15% of the currently accepted value.[citation needed]
He served as director of the HCO from 1921 to 1952. During this time, he hiredCecilia Payne, who, in 1925, became the first person to earn a doctorate atRadcliffe College in the field ofastronomy, for work done at Harvard College Observatory.
From 1941 he was on the original standing committee of theFoundation for the Study of Cycles. He also served on the board of trustees of Science Service, now known asSociety for Science & the Public, from 1935 to 1971.[citation needed]
In the 1940s, Shapley helped found government funded scientific associations, including theNational Science Foundation. He shares credit with British biochemistJoseph Needham for the addition of the "S" inUNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).[14][15]
On November 14, 1946, Shapley appeared under subpoena by theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) in his role as member of theIndependent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP), which HCUA described as a "major political arm of the Russophile left". It had opposed re-election of U.S. RepresentativeJoseph William Martin Jr. during mid-term elections that year and was asked to answer questions about the ICCASP's Massachusetts' chapter. HCUA committee chairmanJohn E. Rankin commented about Shapley's attitude, "I have never seen a witness treat a committee with more contempt" and considered contempt of Congress charges. Shapley accused HCUA of "Gestapo methods" and advocated for its abolition, saying that it had made "civic cowards of many citizens" by pursuing the "bogey of political radicalism."[2][16]
A few weeks later, in early 1947, Shapley becamepresident of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). At the time, the AAAS's choice appeared to be a "rebuke" of HCUA and a positive championing of scientists.[2] In his inaugural address, Shapley referred to the danger of the "genius maniac" and proposed the elimination of "all primates that show any evidence or signs of genius or even talent" (a suggestion that was apparently tongue-in-cheek). Four other global threats he listed were: drugs that suppressed the desire for sex, boredom, a world war with weapons of mass destruction, and a plague epidemic.[17][18]
In March 1949, Shapley chaired theCultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at theWaldorf-Astoria inNew York. It was sponsored by theNational Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions. Arch-conservativeWilliam F. Buckley, Jr., authored a 1951 book,God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom," wherein, in the eve ofMcCarthyism, he attacked liberalism atYale and academia in general. In the book, Buckley cited Shapley's participation and averred that event was "Communist-inspired" and "Russian-dominated."[19]
In 1950, Shapley was instrumental in organizing a campaign in academia againstWorlds in Collision byRussian expatriate psychiatristImmanuel Velikovsky. Scientists generally considered this controversial US bestseller to bepseudoscience.
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting aworld constitution.[20][21] As a result, for the first time in human history, aWorld Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt theConstitution for the Federation of Earth.[22]
Shapley marriedMartha Betz (1890–1981) in April 1914, whom he had met in Missouri. She assisted her husband in astronomical research both at Mount Wilson and at Harvard Observatory. She wrote numerous articles on eclipsing stars and other astronomical objects.
They had one daughter, editor and writerMildred Shapley Matthews; and four sons. These includedLloyd Shapley, a mathematician and economist who won aNobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2012,[2] andWillis Shapley, who became aSenior Executive Service leader atNASA.[23] His eldest granddaughter,June Lorraine Matthews, became a physicist.
Although Shapley was an agnostic, he was greatly interested in religion.[24][25]
Shapley died in a nursing home inBoulder, Colorado on October 20, 1972, shortly before his 87th birthday.[2]
Named after him are:
Before the anti-communist phrase "Better Dead Than Red" became popular during McCarthyism in the 1950s, Shapley said in a 1947 speech entitled "Peace or Pieces" that "A slave world is not worth preserving. Better be lifeless like the cold moon, or primitively vegetal like desolate Mars, than be a planet populated by social robots."[2]
Shapley wrote many books onastronomy and the sciences. Among these was Source Book in Astronomy (New York: McGraw–Hill, 1929, co-written withHelen E. Howarth, also on the staff of the Harvard College Observatory), the first of the publisher's series of source books in the history of the sciences.
In 1953, he wrote the "Liquid Water Belt" which gave scientific credence to theecosphere theory ofHubertus Strughold.[35]
In his 1957 bookOf Stars and Men, Shapley proposed the termMetagalaxies for what are now calledsuperclusters.[citation needed]
Shapley attendedInstitute on Religion in an Age of Science conferences atStar Island and was the editor of the bookScience Ponders Religion (1960).[36]
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link). ISSN 0003-0937 (publication);OCLC 38258794,5543369091 (article).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) OCLC 122262620 (all editions).{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help). OCLC 189667 (all editions).Shapley was not committed to any particular model of the expanding universe, but he did have strong opinions about the relationship between astronomy and religion. A confirmed agnostic, in the postwar period he often participated in science-religion discussions, and in 1960 he edited a major work on the subject –Science Ponders Religion.
Although a declared agnostic, Shapley was deeply interested in religion and was a genuinely 'religious' person from a philosophical point of view. 'I never go to church', he told Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, 'I am too religious.
The Pope today attended the inauguration of the new academic year of thePontifical Academy...
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