Background

Henry Norris Russell was born in Oyster Bay, N. Y. , the son of Alexander Gatherer Russell, a Presbyterian minister who was a central figure in the reform of the catechism, and Eliza Hoxie Norris. He spent his first twelve years in Oyster Bay.

Education

He had been educated at home and at a local Dames' School in Oyster Bay. Later Russell was sent to live with his maternal aunt in Princeton, N. J. , where he attended the Princeton Preparatory School and, three years later, Princeton University. In 1897 he graduated insigne cum laude ("with distinguished praise"), one of only two people ever to receive this honor. Three years later he received a Ph. D. with a dissertation on the orbit of the minor planet Eros, which had just been discovered and was causing great excitement as a probe with which one might gauge the scale of the solar system. An unusual zeal for work, and consuming interests in both mathematics and astronomy, led Russell to pursue a double course load as a graduate student at Princeton, working with Henry Burchard Fine in mathematics and Charles Augustus Young in astronomy. In 1902 Russell began postdoctoral study at King's College, Cambridge, to which he was attracted primarily by George Darwin and his work in orbit theory. He also attended lectures on planetary theory, on spherical harmonics, and on general topics by Arthur Robert Hinks.

Career

During the next year Russell worked with Hinks, supported by a Carnegie fellowship, to develop a program for the photographic determination of stellar parallaxes, one of the first of its kind. While engaged in the long observation project, Russell fell ill. In 1904 he had to return home, leaving the remaining observations to Hinks.

In 1905 Russell was appointed instructor in astronomy by Edgar O. Lovett, who had succeeded Young as chairman of the astronomy department at Princeton. He also began the long process of reducing his photographic parallax observations to find the distances and actual brightnesses of the stars involved. Upon his return to Princeton, he found a small, stable department interested in teaching and in observing double stars. The stability soon disappeared when Lovett left to become president of Rice University. Russell and Raymond Smith Dugan were put under the mathematics department, a situation that continued until Russell was appointed the chairman of the astronomy department in 1912.

Russell had long been keen on the analysis of double-star systems, contributing a technique for the reduction of visual pairs in 1898, a method for determining the densities of eclipsing pairs of the Algol type in 1899, and a method for spectroscopic systems in 1904. He also included several double stars on his Cambridge parallax list, for without distances actual stellar masses could not be determined.

Russell was also interested in stellar spectroscopy, a legacy from Young, under whom he had completed a visual spectroscopic survey of bright stars for his senior thesis in 1897. As Russell continued to process his Cambridge parallaxes at Princeton, he acquired spectral data on his stars from Edward Charles Pickering of Harvard. Russell soon found a marked correlation between spectral type (considered a measure of color and temperature) and the actual stellar brightnesses he had found in his parallax work. This idea was not completely new, but had remained only a statistical inference until Russell's examination. Of greater interest to Russell was the realization that there were a few yellow and red stars that did not fit this relation. These were found to be of very high intrinsic brightness--as bright as or brighter than the bluest stars. The explanation, quickly surmised by Russell and later verified by his first graduate student, Harlow Shapley, was that these stars were of enormous volume. Russell thought he was the first, by 1909-1910, to detect these giants, but in fact a Dane, Ejnar Hertzsprung, had made the suggestion a few years earlier.

Hertzsprung and Russell were introduced to each other's work in late 1910, and both were delighted that they had come, by independent means, to what was a fundamental relationship in the study of the physical behavior of stars: the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. To Russell the existence of the red giants recalled a discarded theory of stellar evolution. He saw them as the initial stages of star formation, with subsequent stages arising from gravitational contraction and heating. By 1914 he drew upon almost every available observational source in stellar astronomy to create an empirical synthesis to support his view, which was widely discussed and debated. What Russell actually succeeded in doing was to set down firmly the reality of the diagram: that giant stars indeed exist. His interpretation--his theory of stellar evolution--has not stood the test of time. Russell was aware of the problems that existed with his theory. Largely in response to the British theorist Arthur Stanley Eddington and to Meghnad Saha, who in 1920 provided a theoretical extension of the Bohr theory of the atom to explain the physical conditions necessary to produce the observed solar spectrum, Russell embarked upon a significantly different course of attack on the fundamental problems that confronted his evolutionary theory and stellar astronomy.

In a recollection of his career, Russell noted that his work could be briefly summed up: 1. The development of methods for calculating the orbits of eclipsing binary stars, and various practical applications. 2. The determination of dynamical parallaxes and the investigation of the masses of binary stars. 3. The application of physical principles to the study of the spectra of the sun, sunspots, and stars. 4. The application of these principles to a quantitative analysis of the atmospheres of the sun and stars. 5. The term-analysis of complex atomic spectra. Russell felt that the first and the fifth areas were his most original, the latter work involving what is now known as Russell-Saunders coupling, which explains the spectral behavior of the alkaline earth elements.

From the third and fourth areas came his monumental work, "On the Composition of the Sun's Atmosphere" (1929), which helped to establish hydrogen as the most abundant element in the solar atmosphere and produced an abundance picture that remains useful today. His role as teacher might best be summed up in his two-volume text Astronomy (1926 - 1927), written with R. S. Dugan and J. Q. Stewart, which was the standard reference for almost three decades. For many years Russell served as consultant to the staff at Mount Wilson Observatory and as a research associate in residence during summers. Later he held a similar post at Harvard. On many occasions he lectured on religion and science, and on the role of science in society. From his upbringing he held strong religious convictions and worked diligently toward their reconciliation with scientific knowledge.

During World War I he contributed significantly to the development of air navigation. Russell had ample opportunity to take administrative positions, and on several occasions was called to major observatory and institutional directorships. He declined them all, preferring freedom to work as he pleased, unencumbered by bureaucracy. The enormous influence he gained as "Dean of American Astronomers" brought Russell awesome power within the discipline. While he could appear austere at a distance, to those who knew him best--his family and close associates--his passion for scientific truth translated into a love for life that knew virtually no bounds. He died at Princeton.

Achievements

• Russell was known for the development with Ejnar Hertzsprung the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (1910). In 1923, working with Frederick Saunders, he developed Russell–Saunders coupling, which is also known as LS coupling. Russell was also co-writer of the influential two-volume textbook with Raymond Smith Dugan and John Quincy Stewart: "Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy". This became the standard astronomy textbook for about two decades.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Some Problems of Sidereal Astronomy, Vol. 5 (Classic Reprint)

    (Announcement Concerning Publications of theN ational Rese...)

  • Einstein's Theory of Relativity: A Clear Explanation

    (Astronomy Professor Henry Norris Russell’s clear and unde...)

  • The Masses of the Stars With a General Catalogue of Dynamical Parallaxes,

    (Excerpt from the Preface: This monograph has grown out of...)

  • The Solar System And Its Origin

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Determination of Stellar Parallax. With Magnitudes and Spectra Determined at the Harvard College Observatory Under Direction of Prof. E. C. Pickering

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • Number 5. Reprint and Circular Series of the National Research Council. Some Problems of Sidereal Astronomy

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • An Analysis of the Arc and Spark Spectra of Scandium (Sc I and Sc II) (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from An Analysis of the Arc and Spark Spectra of ...)

  • Astronomy;: A revision of Young's Manual of astronomy
  • Position of the moon determined photographically
  • Astronomy II Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy

Connections

On November 24, 1908, Russell married Lucy May Cole, whom he had long known from summer vacations in Oyster Bay. They had four children.

Father:

Alexander Gatherer Russell

Mother:

Eliza Hoxie Norris

Spouse:

Lucy May Cole

References

• Henry Norris Russell
• Sky and Telescope April 1957 Volume 16, Number 6 Henry Norris Russell