At Grand Central Terminal, 109 E 42nd St, New York, NY 10017, United States
Albert Einstein, the famous German physicist, was the Guest of Honor at a dinner given at the Hotel Commodore, New York, March 15th, by the American Friends of the Hebrew University in Palestine. Left to right, standing: Dr. O.C. Kiep, German Consul General in New York; His Excellency, Ferdinand Veverka; Dr. Harlow Shapley of the Harvard College Observatory; and Sol. M. Stroock, Chairman of the Dinner Committee; seated: Dr. Karl T. Compton, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Frau Einstein, and Dr. Einstein.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1933
Cambridge, MA, United States
From right, Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; Bob Hazard, superintendent of the construction site; and H. E. Hansen, a mechanical engineer by the big telescope tube, at the Harvard College Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, on October 22, 1933.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1939
Cambridge, MA, United States
Professor Harlow Shapley of Harvard College in 1939.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1943
881 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019, United States
Nine American scientists and one Chinese scholar were awarded citations for eminence in widely varied fields of achievement in pure and applied science tonight climaxing in a day of the nationwide commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, who died May 24, 1543. The awards were made at a meeting in Carnegie Hall sponsored jointly by the Kosciusko Foundation and the Copernican Quadricentennial National Committee. Here, at the meeting, are (left to right): Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, president of Vassar College and of the Kosciusko Foundation; Professor Albert Einstein; Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; and Dr. James Y.C. Yen, of Chungking, China. Professor Einstein and Dr. Yen received citations.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1944
United States
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, talking to the Independent Voters Committee (left to right) Van Wyck Brooks, Hanna Dornen, Jo Davidson, Jan Jiepung, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Gish, Dir. Harlow Shapely and James Proctor. Photo by George Skadding.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1946
Washington DC, United States
American astronomer and director of Harvard College Observatory, Harlow Shapley on left, hands a piece of Uranium ore to United States Senator from Connecticut, Brien McMahon, Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy in Washington DC, United States on 2nd April 1946. Photo by Paul Popper.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1948
United States
Dr. Howard Shapley during the Progressive Citizens of America convention in 1948. Photo by George Skadding.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1949
301 Park Ave, New York, NY 10022, United States
American playwright Lillian Hellman laughs at comments made by professor Harlow Shapley, the official host of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, New York, New York, late March 1949. The conference was held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel between March 25 and 27. Photo by Leonard McCombe.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1949
301 Park Ave, New York, NY 10022, United States
Harlow Shapley of Harvard speaking at Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1959
22 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602, United States
Julian Huxley (left), Adlai E. Stevenson (second left), Irv Kupcinet (second right), and Harlow Shapley appearing on the TV discussion program, 'At Random'. Photo by Lee Balterman.
Gallery of Harlow Shapley
1959
22 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602, United States
Harlow Shapley smoking cigarette during an appearance on TV discussion program, 'At Random'. Photo by Lee Balterman.
Achievements
Membership
Society for Science and the Public
In 1935, Harlow Shapley served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science and the Public, a position that he held until 1971.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Harlow Shapley was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Harlow Shapley was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
American Astronomical Society
Harlow Shapley was a member of the American Astronomical Society.
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Harlow Shapley was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
National Academy of Sciences
Harlow Shapley was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
At Grand Central Terminal, 109 E 42nd St, New York, NY 10017, United States
Albert Einstein, the famous German physicist, was the Guest of Honor at a dinner given at the Hotel Commodore, New York, March 15th, by the American Friends of the Hebrew University in Palestine. Left to right, standing: Dr. O.C. Kiep, German Consul General in New York; His Excellency, Ferdinand Veverka; Dr. Harlow Shapley of the Harvard College Observatory; and Sol. M. Stroock, Chairman of the Dinner Committee; seated: Dr. Karl T. Compton, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Frau Einstein, and Dr. Einstein.
From right, Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; Bob Hazard, superintendent of the construction site; and H. E. Hansen, a mechanical engineer by the big telescope tube, at the Harvard College Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, on October 22, 1933.
Nine American scientists and one Chinese scholar were awarded citations for eminence in widely varied fields of achievement in pure and applied science tonight climaxing in a day of the nationwide commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, who died May 24, 1543. The awards were made at a meeting in Carnegie Hall sponsored jointly by the Kosciusko Foundation and the Copernican Quadricentennial National Committee. Here, at the meeting, are (left to right): Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, president of Vassar College and of the Kosciusko Foundation; Professor Albert Einstein; Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; and Dr. James Y.C. Yen, of Chungking, China. Professor Einstein and Dr. Yen received citations.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, talking to the Independent Voters Committee (left to right) Van Wyck Brooks, Hanna Dornen, Jo Davidson, Jan Jiepung, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Gish, Dir. Harlow Shapely and James Proctor. Photo by George Skadding.
American astronomer and director of Harvard College Observatory, Harlow Shapley on left, hands a piece of Uranium ore to United States Senator from Connecticut, Brien McMahon, Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy in Washington DC, United States on 2nd April 1946. Photo by Paul Popper.
American playwright Lillian Hellman laughs at comments made by professor Harlow Shapley, the official host of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, New York, New York, late March 1949. The conference was held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel between March 25 and 27. Photo by Leonard McCombe.
22 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602, United States
Julian Huxley (left), Adlai E. Stevenson (second left), Irv Kupcinet (second right), and Harlow Shapley appearing on the TV discussion program, 'At Random'. Photo by Lee Balterman.
(A collection of 69 selections by scientists such as Alber...)
A collection of 69 selections by scientists such as Albert Einstein, Sir Arthur S. Eddington, Sir James Jeans, Henri Poincare, Henry Norris Russell, Otto Struve, and many others.
(Eminent astronomer and humanist, Harlow Shapley has devot...)
Eminent astronomer and humanist, Harlow Shapley has devoted his long and fruitful life to the search for knowledge about man and the universe. Now, in this book, he records the events and experiences that have shaped this life. A witty, forthright, lively, and delightfully amusing account from a Missouri boyhood to a distinguished career in astronomy. Illustrated with photographs.
Harlow Shapley was an American astronomer, educator, and author. He deduced that the Sun lies near the central plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and was not at the centre but some 30,000 light-years away.
Background
Harlow Shapley was born on January 2, 1885, in Nashville, Missouri, United States to the family of Willis Shapley and Sarah Stowell. His father was a successful hay producer and dealer. He was one of the fraternal twins. Besides his twin, Horace, he had one older sister, Lillian, and a younger brother, John.
Education
Harlow Shapley went to school in Jasper, Missouri, but he did not go at first beyond elementary school; he and his brother John had a brief period in a normal school, where they were only permitted to take a business course. At the time when most boys would go to high school, Shapley studied by himself at home. He had one year of early schooling in Hampton, New York, where he went on a family visit. At the age of fifteen, he became a crime reporter for the Daily Sun in Chanute, Kansas, and he also worked off and on as a police reporter for the Joplin (Missouri) Times. He learned to take notes in shorthand, which, in later life, became a medium of communication between him and his wife. In Chanute, he found a Carnegie library, and there he really started reading and studying on his own. When funds became available, he and his younger brother, John, decided to go to Carthage High School, a prestigious school located in the nearest city to Nashville, Missouri. The boys were refused admission because of an apparent lack of adequate preparation, but they were admitted to the less prestigious Presbyterian Carthage College Institute. Shapley graduated in 1907 as valedictorian of his class.
Shapley then entered the University of Missouri, intending to study journalism, but, finding no degree program available, took up astronomy and never put it down. In 1910 he received his bachelor's degree, the following year he completed his master's degree. He received the valuable Thaw fellowship of Princeton University and began studying under H. N. Russell. In 1913 Shapley received his doctoral degree.
After obtaining his doctorate Harlow Shapley went in 1914 to Mount Wilson Observatory to study stellar distances. While at Mount Wilson, Shapley had recognized that his own interests in variable stars and clusters were closely akin to the main concerns of the research programs carried out at Harvard under Edward C. Pickering’s directorship, and he sometimes contemplated the possibility of becoming Pickering’s successor. In fact, the directorship was first offered to Henry Norris Russell.
In the end, Russell turned down the position, President Lowell of Harvard then offered Shapley a staff appointment, but not the directorship. When Shapley promptly declined the job, Hale informed Lowell that the Mount Wilson Observatory would grant Shapley a year’s leave of absence if Harvard wished to make a trial arrangement. Lowell agreed, and in April 1921 Shapley took up residence in Cambridge; on 31 October he was awarded the appointment as full director.
At Harvard Observatory, Shapley immediately offered his encouragement for the completion and extension of the Henry Draper Catalogue of stellar spectral classifications, and with various collaborators, including Annie Jump Cannon and Lindblad, he began extensive researches into the distribution and distances of stars of various spectral types. Even while at Mount Wilson, Shapley had hoped to use the Harvard objective prism plates to determine spectrographically the distances of bright southern stars, but Walter S. Adams, the acting director, had made him return the plates on the grounds that it was inappropriate for a Mount Wilson staff member to use observational material from elsewhere.
After leaving Mount Wilson, Shapley’s greatest contribution was not so much any particular astronomical discovery, but rather the extraordinarily stimulating environment he created at the Harvard College Observatory. Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1920s became the crossroad through which nearly every major astronomer passed, a status that culminated in the congress of the International Astronomical Union there in 1932. Cecilia Payne and Donald Menzel came to Harvard to pursue pioneering astrophysical problems, and Payne’s doctoral thesis on stellar atmospheres, published as the first of the Harvard Observatory Monographs, was pronounced by Henry Norris Russell as the best he had ever read with the possible exception of Shapley’s. Previously there had been no graduate program in astronomy at Harvard. Shapley quickly set about building a distinguished department whose alumni, in turn, became the leaders in other graduate programs throughout the country. Among the staff members Shapley brought to Harvard in the late 1920s to assist in building a graduate program were H. H. Plaskett and Bart J. Bok. The first Radcliffe and Harvard astronomy Ph,D.’s after Miss Payne, were Frank Hogg, Emma Williams, and Helen Sawyer. Graduates in the 1930’s included peter Millman, Carl Seyfert, Frank Edmondson, Jesse Greenstein, and Leo Goldberg.
Under Shapley, the Harvard Observatory became a mecca for young astronomers throughout the world. In his early days there he became a confirmed internationalist, and during the late 1930’s he helped rescue European refugee scientists and bring them to the United States.
Shapley was made director emeritus and Paine Professor of Astronomy at Harvard in 1952. His works include Star Clusters (1930), Flights from Chaos (1930), Galaxies (1943), The Inner Metagalaxy (1957), and Of Stars and Men: The Human Response to an Expanding Universe (1958; film 1962).
A brilliant and witty speaker, Shapley accepted numerous lecture assignments, including the Halley lecture in Oxford (1928), the Darwin lecture of the Royal Astronomical Society (London, 1934), and the Henry Norris Russell lecture of the American Astronomical Society (Haverford, 1950), as well as popular lectures in churches and small colleges.
A confirmed agnostic, Shapley nevertheless frequently participated in conferences on science and religion and edited the book Science Ponders Religion.
Politics
During the Second World War, Shapley participated in humanitarian actions. He helped many Jewish scientists flee from Europe, giving them refuge in the United States. Once the war ended, he participated in several international efforts to guarantee peace, which distracted him from his duties as director and caused Harvard Observatory to lose part of its reputation. He was responsible for adding the S to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and firmly subscribed to its ideals, even after many Americans had abandoned the project.
In the 1940s and 50s, he continued acting with a liberal attitude. He became president of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, which raised money for Democratic candidates. He was in contact with Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. He supported the National Science Foundation. Shapley's actions found opposition in the more conservative part of American politics. Senator Joseph McCarthy accused him of being a communist in 1950, and Shapley was subject to an investigation.
Views
In 1911 Shapley, working with results given by Henry Norris Russell, began finding the dimensions of stars in a number of binary systems from measurements of their light variation when they eclipse one another. These methods remained the standard procedure for more than 30 years. Shapley also showed that Cepheid variables cannot be star pairs that eclipse each other. He was the first to propose that they are pulsating stars.
Employing the 1.5-metre (60-inch) reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson, Shapley made a study of the distribution of the globular clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy; these clusters are immense, densely packed groups of stars, some containing as many as 1,000,000 members. He found that of the 100 clusters known at the time, one-third lay within the boundary of the constellation Sagittarius. Using the newly developed concept that RR Lyrae variable stars accurately reveal their distance by their period of variation and apparent brightness, he found that the clusters were distributed roughly in a sphere whose centre lay in Sagittarius. Since the clusters assumed a spherical arrangement, it was logical to conclude that they would cluster around the centre of the Galaxy; from this conclusion and his other distance data Shapley deduced that the Sun lies at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from the centre of the Galaxy; the number was later corrected to 30,000 light-years. Before Shapley, the Sun was believed to lie near the centre of the Galaxy. His work, which led to the first realistic estimate for the actual size of the Galaxy, this was a milestone in galactic astronomy.
At this time, the nature of the spiral nebulae, such as that of Andromeda, was a subject of much debate. On April 26, 1920, Shapley and American astronomer, Heber Curtis debated "the scale of the Universe" at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Their "Great Debate," as it came to be called, had no clear winner. Curtis did not believe in Shapley's size for the Milky Way, but his belief that the spiral nebulae were other galaxies ("island universes") proved correct. Shapley had correctly appreciated the Galaxy’s great size but posited a universe consisting entirely of the Milky Way with the spiral nebulae as objects like the globular clusters.
In addition to his studies of the Galaxy, Shapley studied the neighbouring galaxies, especially the Magellanic Clouds, and found that galaxies tend to occur in clusters, which he called metagalaxies. In 1953 he proposed the "liquid water belt" theory, which stated that a planet had to be a certain distance from its star to develop an atmosphere and have liquid water, and therefore life. This concept is now called the habitable zone.
Membership
In 1935, Harlow Shapley served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science and the Public, a position that he held until 1971. Shapley was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Astronomical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Society for Science and the Public
,
United States
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
,
Sweden
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
United States
American Astronomical Society
,
United States
American Association for the Advancement of Science
,
United States
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Personality
Harlow Shapley was a brilliant and witty speaker. Although a declared agnostic, Shapley was deeply interested in religion.
Interests
religion
Politicians
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman
Connections
On April 15, 1914, Harlow Shapley was married to Martha Betz. The couple met in Missouri in a mathematics class. Aside from being husband and wife, the two collaborated on several scientific papers, complementing each other’s scientific pursuits. Harlow and Martha had five children, four sons, and one daughter: Willis Harlow Shapley, Alan Horace Shapley, Carl Betz Shapley, Lloyd Stowell Shapley, and Mildred Shapley Matthews.