Harlow Shapley
| Harlow Shapley | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | November 2, 1885 Nashville, Missouri |
| Died | October 20, 1972 (aged 86) Boulder, Colorado |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Alma mater | University of Missouri, Princeton University |
| Doctoral advisor | Henry Norris Russell |
| Doctoral students | Georges Lemaître, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin |
| Known for | Determining the correct position of the Sun within the Milky Way Galaxy |
| Notable awards |
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Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American astronomer.
He used RR Lyrae stars to correctly estimate the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Sun's position within it by using parallax. In 1953 he proposed his "liquid water belt" theory, now known as the concept of a habitable zone.
Shapley was born on a farm in Nashville, Missouri, to Willis and Sarah (née Stowell) Shapley, and dropped out of school with only the equivalent of a fifth-grade education. After studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter, Shapley returned to complete a six-year high school program in only two years, graduating as class valedictorian.
In 1907, at the age of 22, Harlow Shapley went to study journalism at the University of Missouri. 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 Harlow later explained he couldn't pronounce, Harlow chose the next subject, Astronomy.
Post-graduation, Shapley received a fellowship to Princeton University for graduate work, where he studied under Henry Norris Russell and used the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars (discovered by Henrietta Swan Leavitt) to determine distances to globular clusters. He was instrumental in moving astronomy away from the idea that Cepheids were spectroscopic binaries, and toward the concept that they were pulsators. He was the first to realize that the Milky Way Galaxy was much larger than previously believed, and that the Sun's place in the galaxy was in a nondescript location. This discovery by Shapley is a part of the Copernican principle, according to which the Earth is not at the center of our Solar System, our galaxy, or our Universe.
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