Otto Struve

Otto Struve
Otto Struve on a 1949 US Post envelope
Born	Отто Людвигович Струве (1897-08-12)August 12, 1897 Kharkiv, Sloboda Ukraine, then Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died	April 6, 1963(1963-04-06) (aged 65) Berkeley, CA, U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Astronomy
Alma mater	Kharkiv University
Notable awards	Fellow of the Royal Society

Otto Struve (August 12, 1897 – April 6, 1963) was a Russian astronomer. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as Otto Lyudvigovich Struve (Отто Людвигович Струве); however, he spent most of his life and his entire scientific career in the United States. Otto was the descendant of famous astronomers of the Struve family; he was the son of Ludwig Struve, grandson of Otto Wilhelm von Struve and great-grandson of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve. He was also the nephew of Karl Hermann Struve.

With more than 900 journal articles and books, Struve was one of the most distinguished and prolific astronomers of the mid-20th century. He served as director of Yerkes, McDonald, Leuschner and National Radio Astronomy Observatories and is credited with raising world-wide prestige and building schools of talented scientists at Yerkes and McDonald observatories. In particular, he hired Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Gerhard Herzberg who later became Nobel Prize winners. Struve's research was mostly focused on binary and variable stars, stellar rotation and interstellar matter. He was one of the few eminent astronomers in the pre-Space Age era to publicly express a belief that extraterrestrial intelligence was abundant, and so was an early advocate of the search for extraterrestrial life.

Struve was born in 1897 in Kharkiv, the largest city of Sloboda Ukraine, then Russian Empire (now Ukraine), as the first child of Ludwig Struve and Elizaveta Khrystoforovna Struve (1874–1964). His astronomy experience started early: from the age of eight, he was accompanying father in the telescope tower and from 10 carried out some minor observations, despite his fear of the dark spaces. After having received home education, at the age of 12, Struve started attending a school in Kharkiv and showed mathematical talents. Otto was the first child of the Struve family in Russia who attended a Russian-speaking rather than German-speaking school, and was bilingual in German and Russian. After graduating in 1914, he continued his astronomy work. In June 1914, Struve took part in preparations for observation of a total solar eclipse (August 8, 1914) and later used that experience and results for his master's degree work defended in 1919 at Kharkiv University.