Dorothea Klumpke
Dorothea Klumpke, married Roberts, ( born August 9, 1861 in San Francisco, † October 5, 1942, ibid ) was an American, mostly living in Paris astronomer.
Life
Klumpke was the daughter of German immigrant John Gerard Klumpke (1825-1917), who originally came to California in the gold rush and there made a fortune in real estate, and of Dorothea Mathilda Tolle ( Marriage 1855). Klumpke as her five sisters ( and two brothers ) into schools to Europe. From her sisters Anna Elizabeth Klumpke was a well-known painter, a violinist and composer Julia ( student of Eugene Ysaye ), Mathilda, a pianist ( pupil of Antoine François Marmontel ) and Augusta, a neurologist who founded a hospital with her husband Joseph Jules Dejerine.
From 1877 was Klumpke in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, where she made in 1886 with a degree in mathematics (or astronomy), previously, as two of her sisters, began training as a musician. Then she took a position at the Paris Observatory, where she schoolyard and the pioneers of astrophotography Paul and Prosper Henry collaborated among others with Guillaume Bigourdan and Lipót, who photographed the asteroid with the new 34 cm refractor. As at the Paris Observatory, a conductor for the big international sky map projections ( Carte du Ciel ) was sought should be mapped up to the 11th magnitude for the stars, they beat out the competition of 50 men.
In 1893 she was the first woman in France received a Ph.D. in mathematics with a dissertation on the rings of Saturn. The examiners included Gaston Darboux, Marie Henri Andoyer and Félix Tisserand.
In 1899 she was selected by the director of the observatory at Meudon Jules Janssen, carried out by the French side balloon investigations for the Leonids meteor shower (which had been predicted by observations in 1799, 1833 and 1866, the last major astronomical event of the outgoing 19th century ), which however, for the then high expectations brought disappointing results. On 16 November 1899 rose early in the morning with the balloon Le Centaur with two companions on Paris in 1600 feet altitude, and flew with him towards the English Channel. However, in five hours they only saw 30 meteors, of which half belonged to the Leonids. At the same time such Balloon investigations were carried out in Germany and Russia. As the leading female Aeronautin and first woman who made astronomical observations from the balloon, but it received a lot of attention at that time.
On an expedition with the ship Norse King to Norway to observe the total solar eclipse of August 9, 1896 ( which was, however, obscured by clouds ), she met the wealthy Welsh entrepreneur and pioneer of astrophotography Isaac Roberts ( 1829-1904 ), who own a private observatory owned. 1901 both were married ( despite an age difference of 31 years ). She left the Paris Observatory and supported her husband in the photography of astronomical nebulae ( 52 Fields of Nebulosity by William Herschel ). After the death of her husband in 1904, she continued his work, first in their common residence in Sussex and then in Paris, where she again worked at the observatory and lived with her sister Anna and her mother at Chateau Rosa Bonheur. For 25 years she measured from the photographic plates of the mists and published it in 1929 ( the 100th anniversary of her husband ) as The Isaac Roberts Atlas of 52 Regions, a Guide to William Herschel 's Fields of Nebulosity. For this she received the 1932 Helen and Paul Helbronner Prize of the French Academy of Sciences.
In 1934 she moved with her sister Anna back to California, where she remained afterwards. Your U.S. citizenship she had never given up. Her home was in San Francisco center of a circle of scientists and artists.
In 1893 she was academic officer of the French Academy of Sciences, the first Prix de Dames she received in 1889. In 1934 she was personally awarded by French President as a knight of the Legion of Honour.
According to her the Klumpke - Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is named, originally donated by her as a series of lectures and awarded since 1974 as an annual award to individuals or groups who have rendered outstanding services to the popularization of astronomy. Klumpke bequeathed to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, as well as the University of California and the Paris Observatory foundations and pushed for a promotion of women in astronomy. The minor planet 339 Dorothea and 1040 Klumpkea are named after her.
She was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, member of the British Astronomical Association, the societie of Astronomique de France, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
After Dorothea Klumpkes death in 1942, their urn at the Neptune Society Columbarium of San Francisco was buried.