Background

Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly was born on September 24, 1898, in Ercildoun, Pennsylvania, United States. She was a daughter of George Winfield Moore, a school superintendent, and Elizabeth Palmer Moore (maiden name Walton) a school teacher.

Education

Charlotte Moore Sitterly’s parents instilled a disciplined appreciation for learning that she maintained throughout her life. Upon graduating from high school in 1916, she entered Swarthmore College, graduating in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics.

Aided by the Lick fellowship, she had the possibility to pursue her doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1931 with a dissertation on the atomic lines in the sunspot spectrum.

Career

Charlotte Moore Sitterly started her career in 1920. She landed a job in mathematical computation at the Princeton University Observatory. There, she worked with the astrophysicist Henry Norris Russell, whose research had resulted in a theory of stellar evolution. Typical of most astrophysicists, Moore and Russell used spectroscopy to measure certain cosmological objects' spectra or distribution of radiation at particular wavelengths of light. By determining the wavelength at which certain spectral lines appeared, they identified the elements making up the object under investigation. Russell guided Moore's initial research into atomic spectra, and in 1928 they collaborated on the publication of a monograph on the solar spectrum of elemental iron.

Although Moore's academic career began and would later would end at Princeton, she spent eight years researching in California. Beginning in 1926, she worked with Dr. Charles E. St. John at the renowned Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena for five years. Their spectroscopical researches resulted in a 1928 revision of Henry Rowland's classic 'Preliminary Table of Spectrum Wavelengths' published between 1893 and 1896.

In 1931, Moore returned to the Princeton University Observatory as a researcher and remained until 1945 when she left its academic surrounds and joined the National Bureau of Standards (currently the National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Washington, D.C. Joining William F. Meggers's section on spectroscopy, Moore was soon placed in charge of a project involving the compilation of data on atomic energy levels.

She scrutinized the data and sought to correct any shortcomings by persuading spectroscopists to provide new analyses. The voluminous amount of unpublished data Moore received attested to the spectroscopists' great confidence in Moore's competence. The chief result of her stringent and persistent efforts in collecting data was the publication in 1949, 1952, and 1958 of the three-volume reference source 'Atomic Energy Levels as Derived from the Analyses of Optical Spectra' containing an organized representation of the atomic energy information for 485 atomic species.

While at the Bureau of Standards, Charlotte Moore published other valuable reference sources including 'Die Masses of the Stars' in 1940 with Russell, her Previous Princeton colleague, and 'The Solar Spectrum' in 1947 with Harold D. Babcock. In the following decade, she began collaborations with Richard Tousey at the Naval Research Laboratory which were to continue until her death, using data gathered from V-2 rockets to analyze ultraviolet solar spectra.

In 1968, Moore officially retired from the Bureau of Standards. Her career, however, was hardly finished. She spent the next three years working at the Office of Standard Reference Data, then joined Tousey's group working at the Space Science Division of the Naval Research Laboratory from 1971 to 1978. Throughout this time, she retained strong working relationships with her previous colleagues at the National Bureau of Standards. She also increased her involvement in professional astronomical societies.

Achievements

• Charlotte Moore Sitterly received worldwide recognition for her analytic interpretations and compilations of solar and stellar spectra, including the honor of being among six women to receive the first Federal Woman’s Award from the United States Government in 1961 for her outstanding contributions in a federal career. She was also the first woman scientist elected as a foreign associate, in 1949, into the Royal Astronomical Society of London.
  
  Also among Moore’s accomplishments was her discovery of the existence of technetium in the sun.
  
  Moore’s three-volume reference source 'Atomic Energy Levels as Derived from the Analyses of Optical Spectra' was described by her colleague William C. Martin as "one of the most highly respected and frequently cited sources of basic atomic data ever published."
  
  Moore was the recipient of the Annie Jump Cannon Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 1937 and the William F. Meggers Award of the Optical Society of America in 1972.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Selected Tables of Atomic Spectra

    (The analysis is chiefly, from the 1965 paper by Radziemski...)

    1965
  • A Multiplet Table of Astrophysical Interest

    (The book consists of two parts, Table of Multiplets, and ...)

    1933
  • The Solar Spectrum

    (The book is written in collaboration with Harold D. Babcock.)

    1947
  • Atomic Energy Levels as Derived from the Analyses of Optical Spectra

    (The volume consists of three parts.)

    1949
  • An Ultraviolet Multiplet Table 1950
  • Bibliography on the Analyses of Optical Atomic Spectra 1968
  • Ionization Potentials and Ionization Limits Derived from the Analyses of Optical Spectra 1970
  • Tables of Spectra of Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen Atoms and Ions 1993

Membership

Charlotte Moore Sitterly was a member of Phi Betta Kappa, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Astronomical Union, and the Royal Astronomical Society of London.

Personality

During her college studies, Charlotte Moore Sitterly took part in many extracurricular activities like ice hockey, student government, glee club, and tutoring. She served as a substitute teacher to earn money for her tuition.

Moore established her scientific career and received recognition under her maiden name, so she continued publishing many journal articles under that name throughout her life, although a few publications appear under the name Sitterly or Moore-Sitterly.

Interests

• gardening, traveling, music

Connections

Charlotte Moore Sitterly married an astronomer and physicist Bancroft Walker Sitterly on May 30, 1937.

Father:

George Winfield Moore

Mother:

Elizabeth Palmer Moore

husband:

Bancroft Walker Sitterly

colleague:

Henry Norris Russell