MacTutor
Harlow Shapley was one of the giant stars in the astronomical firmament during the first half of our century. His name will be forever linked with his proof, at which he arrived single-handedly, that the Sun is not anywhere near the centre of our Galaxy, but that instead it occupies a peripheral position in our Milky Way system. In the year of Copernican celebrations we can feel proud that our generation of astronomers produced a man who did for our Milky Way system what Copernicus achieved for our Solar System. Shapley was not a lone worker. He enjoyed tremendously his close personal contacts with hundreds of astronomical friends at home in the United States as well as abroad. He valued highly the recognition that came his way (he was a Foreign Member or Associate of 12 National Academies) and he was especially proud of being an Associate and Gold Medallist of the RAS and the Society's George Darwin Lecturer of 1934.
Shapley was born on a Missouri farm on 1885 November 2. Before he entered the University of Missouri (where F.H.Seares became his mentor), he spent two years working as a newspaper reporter. As a result of this experience, he retained in later life much of the brash approach of the young reporter! In 1911 he entered Princeton University as a graduate student and Thaw Fellow, and in a little more than two years he completed his work for the doctorate. He wrote a magnificent thesis on eclipsing variable stars, written with joint supervision and encouragement from Henry Norris Russell and Raymond Smith Dugan. Luck was with Shapley, because shortly after the completion of his thesis George Ellery Hale offered him a position at Mount Wilson Observatory.
At Mount Wilson Observatory Shapley was to do the researches that brought him deserved eternal fame: his work on globular star clusters and the structure of our Galaxy. The months before Mount Wilson were the ones in which Shapley did the basic planning for his future career. Two events deserve to be noticed. First, he married Martha Betz, a loving wife and mother and a highly effective scientific collaborator for the rest of his life. And, second, he visited Solon Irving Bailey at Harvard College Observatory who wisely advised him to use the great telescopes at Mount Wilson Observatory for a study of variable stars in globular clusters.
The Shapleys made the westward trek from Princeton to Pasadena and the rest is history. I like to think of them as travelling in a covered wagon with Harlow holding the reins and with Martha Shapley as his constant helpmate! Shapley's work on globular clusters, the Galaxy and the Universe was truly undertaken in the spirit of the expanding frontier.
I wish that every budding young astronomer – including young Britishers would read Shapley's wonderful series of papers on 'Studies based on the colors and magnitudes in stellar clusters'. These papers were published in the Astrophysical Journal and reprinted in the Contributions from Mount Wilson Observatory, mostly between 1914 and 1921. Shapley was an ardent and careful observer, even though by his own admission he never really enjoyed to the fullest the pleasure of being alone with the stars at night. He worked hard and he was effective as a measurer of the hundreds of photographs he obtained (mostly made with the Mount Wilson 60-in. reflector). All of his measurements were analysed promptly, on several occasions jointly with Martha Betz Shapley (he called her affectionately 'Gretchen'). The series starts off quietly and unobtrusively with several apparently rather dull and pedestrian papers, all of them with tables and light curves attesting to the major effort that went into their preparation. There are no complex integrals or related advanced mathematical deductions, most of the mathematics being limited to simple arithmetic. In an important paper published in 1914, Shapley disposed once, for all time of the basic binary nature of cepheid variables, advancing the pulsation theory in its place. He brought order in the situation regarding the period-luminosity curve, and related his studies to those for cepheid variables in the Magellanic Clouds by Henrietta S.Leavitt and by Ejnar Hertzsprung. The real fireworks did not come until 1918, when Shapley reached the unmistakable conclusion that our Sun is located at about 17000 parsecs from the centre of the system of globular clusters, which, so he concluded, must be identical with the centre of our Galaxy. There were many doubters and detractors, among them the great Dutch astronomer, Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, and some of Shapley's American colleagues, Heber Doust Curtis being in the lead. But it is amazing to note that really very few astronomers questioned seriously Shapley's conclusions about the eccentric position of our Sun in our Galaxy. In 1916 practically all astronomers believed the Sun to hold a central (or near-central) position in our Galaxy. Four years later the pendulum had swung over completely to the Shapley point of view. The arguments that raged dealt principally with the distance estimates for the globular clusters and the precise value of the distance from the Sun to the galactic centre. The new Copernican revolution was effected with minimum bloodshed!
In 1921, the National Academy of Sciences (mostly at the urging of George Ellery Hale) decided that the time had come for a real confrontation: Shapley and Curtis were invited to present their views. They prepared their papers for the 'Great Debate' on The scale of the Universe; their papers were published in a Bulletin of the Academy's National Research Council.
In the first part of his address, Curtis attacks Shapley's calibration of the zero point of absolute magnitudes for the period-luminosity relation of cepheid variables. Shapley answers him sharply, and there is little doubt that Curtis loses this part of the debate. However, the story goes beyond the problems of establishing the reality of the distant galactic centre and of finding the distance from the Sun to this centre. The second major item that was considered by both speakers during the debate dealt with the place of the spiral and elliptical 'nebulae' in the universe at large. In this part, Curtis took the position that these were really island universes and that they represented Milky Way systems in their own right. Shapley took the position that they were relatively nearby companions of comparatively small dimensions associated with our Milky Way system.
Why did Shapley take a position, which now appears to have been so far from the truth? During his years at Mount Wilson Observatory Shapley became a close friend of the Dutch-born and educated astronomer Adriaan van Maanen, who was engaged upon the measurement of displacements of condensations in spiral nebulae. Van Maanen felt that his measurements proved conclusively that proper motions could be determined, indicating roughly motions of these condensations along the spiral arms. At the time of the debate, van Maanen's measurements had not yet been shown to have been in error. Proof of this would not be forthcoming until a few years later when Knut Lundmark of Sweden made further measurements, which proved that van Maanen had been wrong. Shapley could well reason in 1920 that van Maanen's estimates were essentially correct, which, if so, would have definitely placed the spiral nebulae close to, or within, our Milky Way system.
In a way, the debate was a draw: Shapley won out conclusively on the eccentric position of the Sun in our Milky Way system and in basic matters relating to the establishment of the distance scale, whereas Curtis was the winner in the controversies surrounding the spiral nebulae.
At the time of the Washington Debate, Harvard University was looking for a successor to E.C.Pickering as Director of Harvard College Observatory. Many names were considered, including the name of Henry Norris Russell, but young Shapley's name figured prominently on the lists. President Abbott Lawrence Lowell asked two of his friends and close advisers, George Russell Agassiz and Theodore Lyman, to look over Shapley during the debate and report to him whether or not young Harlow had the makings of a good Director for Harvard College Observatory. Their report must have been a favourable one, for Shapley was invited to come to Harvard on a temporary appointment, followed shortly thereafter (in 1921) by his becoming the Director of Harvard College Observatory, a position that he retained until his retirement in 1952.
Shapley's years at Harvard were full of activities. He did personally some good, but not truly great, work on the distribution of faint galaxies. Also, he continued with vigour work on variable stars near the galactic centre and in globular clusters. In these researches he was assisted by very capable associates, Henrietta H.Swope and S. Helen Hogg among them. Shapley encouraged Annie J.Cannon in her work and he helped to make possible the completion of the Henry Draper Catalogue and the Extensions. During the 1930s Shapley made the important discovery of the first two dwarf galaxies, in Fornax and in Sculptor, and he furthered the studies of the Magellanic Clouds. Under his Directorship, Harvard's Southern Station was transferred from Arequipa, Peru, to a site near Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, South Africa. The graduate school of astronomy at Harvard had its start toward the end of the first decade of Harlow Shapley's directorship. He furthered the careers of many young astronomers, Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin and many others, including the author of this Biographical Note. But his influence went far beyond the staff and students at Harvard College Observatory and many astronomers in the United States and abroad still look upon Harlow Shapley as the man who gave them a push in the right direction at the right time.
During the Harvard years a new side of Harlow Shapley revealed itself. He took increasingly an interest in national and international affairs and he became a power to be reckoned with on both the national and international scene. Shapley was much sought after as a public lecturer and he responded to these requests effectively and with gusto. He was one of the great public speakers of his day, and man with a wonderful ability to bring astronomy in all its glory to laymen, especially to young people. His involvement in political affairs began really toward the end of the 1930s, when he became profoundly shocked by the treatment of Jewish scientists and scholars in Hitler's Germany. He headed a nationwide effort in the United States to bring refugees from Germany to our country and he took part personally in the resettlement of at least 1000o refugee families.
After World War II, Shapley turned more and more away from astronomical research to participation in national and international affairs. On the national scene in the United States he became the scientist who spear-headed many movements relating to the freedom of science. His expressed liberal and anti-war views made him thousands of friends, but also a sizeable section of articulate political enemies. He was subpoenaed to appear before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. In his appearance before the Committee, he was harassed by arch-conservative Representative John G.Rankin (1946), and a few years later he was listed by Senator Joseph McCarthy (1950) as one of the 'Communists in the State Department'. Looking back it seems amazing how anyone could have accused Harlow Shapley, with his constantly independent and unorthodox views, of having been a member of the Communist Party!
On the less controversial side, Harlow Shapley proved to be a mighty builder and changer of things. He revitalized the Boston-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was active not only in the American Astronomical Society, but also in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, both organizations naming him for a period as their President. He was recognized as one of the more powerful members of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington and he was an adviser of Presidents, notably to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S.Truman. Congress often came to him for advice and analysis, and Shapley was truly one of the movers toward the establishment of the National Science Foundation. He had close connections in the State Department.
On the international scene, he was especially active in furthering international scientific collaboration. Astronomers are all aware of the services that he gave to the International Astronomical Union, in the affairs of which organization he played an especially important part during the early and middle 1920s. Shapley was one of the chief United States propagandists for the establishment of UNESCO and it was he who, along with his British and French colleagues, saw to it that the 'S' was inserted in what originally had been planned to become UNECO. He assisted effectively in the writing of the Charter for UNESCO and played a key role in the early organization of this world body. He loved to quote the famous line initiated by Clement Attlee of Great Britain and by Archibald MacLeish of the United States that opens the Charter, a line that merits quotation at any time: 'Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed'.
Shapley died on 1972 October 20. He was a great scientist, whose name belongs proudly beside the names of the great astronomers from Copernicus to Newton to Eddington. Shapley was a great humani-tarian, whose love for people and whose desire to assist them in their development knew no bounds. And for many of us he remains today in our memory as a great friend, one whom we have all been proud and happy to have known.
BART J. BOOK
Shapley was born on a Missouri farm on 1885 November 2. Before he entered the University of Missouri (where F.H.Seares became his mentor), he spent two years working as a newspaper reporter. As a result of this experience, he retained in later life much of the brash approach of the young reporter! In 1911 he entered Princeton University as a graduate student and Thaw Fellow, and in a little more than two years he completed his work for the doctorate. He wrote a magnificent thesis on eclipsing variable stars, written with joint supervision and encouragement from Henry Norris Russell and Raymond Smith Dugan. Luck was with Shapley, because shortly after the completion of his thesis George Ellery Hale offered him a position at Mount Wilson Observatory.
At Mount Wilson Observatory Shapley was to do the researches that brought him deserved eternal fame: his work on globular star clusters and the structure of our Galaxy. The months before Mount Wilson were the ones in which Shapley did the basic planning for his future career. Two events deserve to be noticed. First, he married Martha Betz, a loving wife and mother and a highly effective scientific collaborator for the rest of his life. And, second, he visited Solon Irving Bailey at Harvard College Observatory who wisely advised him to use the great telescopes at Mount Wilson Observatory for a study of variable stars in globular clusters.
The Shapleys made the westward trek from Princeton to Pasadena and the rest is history. I like to think of them as travelling in a covered wagon with Harlow holding the reins and with Martha Shapley as his constant helpmate! Shapley's work on globular clusters, the Galaxy and the Universe was truly undertaken in the spirit of the expanding frontier.
I wish that every budding young astronomer – including young Britishers would read Shapley's wonderful series of papers on 'Studies based on the colors and magnitudes in stellar clusters'. These papers were published in the Astrophysical Journal and reprinted in the Contributions from Mount Wilson Observatory, mostly between 1914 and 1921. Shapley was an ardent and careful observer, even though by his own admission he never really enjoyed to the fullest the pleasure of being alone with the stars at night. He worked hard and he was effective as a measurer of the hundreds of photographs he obtained (mostly made with the Mount Wilson 60-in. reflector). All of his measurements were analysed promptly, on several occasions jointly with Martha Betz Shapley (he called her affectionately 'Gretchen'). The series starts off quietly and unobtrusively with several apparently rather dull and pedestrian papers, all of them with tables and light curves attesting to the major effort that went into their preparation. There are no complex integrals or related advanced mathematical deductions, most of the mathematics being limited to simple arithmetic. In an important paper published in 1914, Shapley disposed once, for all time of the basic binary nature of cepheid variables, advancing the pulsation theory in its place. He brought order in the situation regarding the period-luminosity curve, and related his studies to those for cepheid variables in the Magellanic Clouds by Henrietta S.Leavitt and by Ejnar Hertzsprung. The real fireworks did not come until 1918, when Shapley reached the unmistakable conclusion that our Sun is located at about 17000 parsecs from the centre of the system of globular clusters, which, so he concluded, must be identical with the centre of our Galaxy. There were many doubters and detractors, among them the great Dutch astronomer, Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, and some of Shapley's American colleagues, Heber Doust Curtis being in the lead. But it is amazing to note that really very few astronomers questioned seriously Shapley's conclusions about the eccentric position of our Sun in our Galaxy. In 1916 practically all astronomers believed the Sun to hold a central (or near-central) position in our Galaxy. Four years later the pendulum had swung over completely to the Shapley point of view. The arguments that raged dealt principally with the distance estimates for the globular clusters and the precise value of the distance from the Sun to the galactic centre. The new Copernican revolution was effected with minimum bloodshed!
In 1921, the National Academy of Sciences (mostly at the urging of George Ellery Hale) decided that the time had come for a real confrontation: Shapley and Curtis were invited to present their views. They prepared their papers for the 'Great Debate' on The scale of the Universe; their papers were published in a Bulletin of the Academy's National Research Council.
In the first part of his address, Curtis attacks Shapley's calibration of the zero point of absolute magnitudes for the period-luminosity relation of cepheid variables. Shapley answers him sharply, and there is little doubt that Curtis loses this part of the debate. However, the story goes beyond the problems of establishing the reality of the distant galactic centre and of finding the distance from the Sun to this centre. The second major item that was considered by both speakers during the debate dealt with the place of the spiral and elliptical 'nebulae' in the universe at large. In this part, Curtis took the position that these were really island universes and that they represented Milky Way systems in their own right. Shapley took the position that they were relatively nearby companions of comparatively small dimensions associated with our Milky Way system.
Why did Shapley take a position, which now appears to have been so far from the truth? During his years at Mount Wilson Observatory Shapley became a close friend of the Dutch-born and educated astronomer Adriaan van Maanen, who was engaged upon the measurement of displacements of condensations in spiral nebulae. Van Maanen felt that his measurements proved conclusively that proper motions could be determined, indicating roughly motions of these condensations along the spiral arms. At the time of the debate, van Maanen's measurements had not yet been shown to have been in error. Proof of this would not be forthcoming until a few years later when Knut Lundmark of Sweden made further measurements, which proved that van Maanen had been wrong. Shapley could well reason in 1920 that van Maanen's estimates were essentially correct, which, if so, would have definitely placed the spiral nebulae close to, or within, our Milky Way system.
In a way, the debate was a draw: Shapley won out conclusively on the eccentric position of the Sun in our Milky Way system and in basic matters relating to the establishment of the distance scale, whereas Curtis was the winner in the controversies surrounding the spiral nebulae.
At the time of the Washington Debate, Harvard University was looking for a successor to E.C.Pickering as Director of Harvard College Observatory. Many names were considered, including the name of Henry Norris Russell, but young Shapley's name figured prominently on the lists. President Abbott Lawrence Lowell asked two of his friends and close advisers, George Russell Agassiz and Theodore Lyman, to look over Shapley during the debate and report to him whether or not young Harlow had the makings of a good Director for Harvard College Observatory. Their report must have been a favourable one, for Shapley was invited to come to Harvard on a temporary appointment, followed shortly thereafter (in 1921) by his becoming the Director of Harvard College Observatory, a position that he retained until his retirement in 1952.
Shapley's years at Harvard were full of activities. He did personally some good, but not truly great, work on the distribution of faint galaxies. Also, he continued with vigour work on variable stars near the galactic centre and in globular clusters. In these researches he was assisted by very capable associates, Henrietta H.Swope and S. Helen Hogg among them. Shapley encouraged Annie J.Cannon in her work and he helped to make possible the completion of the Henry Draper Catalogue and the Extensions. During the 1930s Shapley made the important discovery of the first two dwarf galaxies, in Fornax and in Sculptor, and he furthered the studies of the Magellanic Clouds. Under his Directorship, Harvard's Southern Station was transferred from Arequipa, Peru, to a site near Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, South Africa. The graduate school of astronomy at Harvard had its start toward the end of the first decade of Harlow Shapley's directorship. He furthered the careers of many young astronomers, Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin and many others, including the author of this Biographical Note. But his influence went far beyond the staff and students at Harvard College Observatory and many astronomers in the United States and abroad still look upon Harlow Shapley as the man who gave them a push in the right direction at the right time.
During the Harvard years a new side of Harlow Shapley revealed itself. He took increasingly an interest in national and international affairs and he became a power to be reckoned with on both the national and international scene. Shapley was much sought after as a public lecturer and he responded to these requests effectively and with gusto. He was one of the great public speakers of his day, and man with a wonderful ability to bring astronomy in all its glory to laymen, especially to young people. His involvement in political affairs began really toward the end of the 1930s, when he became profoundly shocked by the treatment of Jewish scientists and scholars in Hitler's Germany. He headed a nationwide effort in the United States to bring refugees from Germany to our country and he took part personally in the resettlement of at least 1000o refugee families.
After World War II, Shapley turned more and more away from astronomical research to participation in national and international affairs. On the national scene in the United States he became the scientist who spear-headed many movements relating to the freedom of science. His expressed liberal and anti-war views made him thousands of friends, but also a sizeable section of articulate political enemies. He was subpoenaed to appear before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. In his appearance before the Committee, he was harassed by arch-conservative Representative John G.Rankin (1946), and a few years later he was listed by Senator Joseph McCarthy (1950) as one of the 'Communists in the State Department'. Looking back it seems amazing how anyone could have accused Harlow Shapley, with his constantly independent and unorthodox views, of having been a member of the Communist Party!
On the less controversial side, Harlow Shapley proved to be a mighty builder and changer of things. He revitalized the Boston-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was active not only in the American Astronomical Society, but also in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, both organizations naming him for a period as their President. He was recognized as one of the more powerful members of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington and he was an adviser of Presidents, notably to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S.Truman. Congress often came to him for advice and analysis, and Shapley was truly one of the movers toward the establishment of the National Science Foundation. He had close connections in the State Department.
On the international scene, he was especially active in furthering international scientific collaboration. Astronomers are all aware of the services that he gave to the International Astronomical Union, in the affairs of which organization he played an especially important part during the early and middle 1920s. Shapley was one of the chief United States propagandists for the establishment of UNESCO and it was he who, along with his British and French colleagues, saw to it that the 'S' was inserted in what originally had been planned to become UNECO. He assisted effectively in the writing of the Charter for UNESCO and played a key role in the early organization of this world body. He loved to quote the famous line initiated by Clement Attlee of Great Britain and by Archibald MacLeish of the United States that opens the Charter, a line that merits quotation at any time: 'Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed'.
Shapley died on 1972 October 20. He was a great scientist, whose name belongs proudly beside the names of the great astronomers from Copernicus to Newton to Eddington. Shapley was a great humani-tarian, whose love for people and whose desire to assist them in their development knew no bounds. And for many of us he remains today in our memory as a great friend, one whom we have all been proud and happy to have known.
BART J. BOOK
Harlow Shapley's obituary appeared in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 15:1 (1974), 51-55.