Beatrice Tinsley
Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley ( born January 27, 1941 in Chester, England; † 23 March 1981) was a New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist.
Life
Beatrice Tinsley was born on January 27, 1941 in Chester, England, the daughter of Edward Hill and his wife Jean Morton. 1946 the family moved to New Zealand. From 1958 to 1963 she studied physics and mathematics at the University of Canterbury. In 1961 she married the physicist Brian Alfred Tinsley. In 1963 she moved to Dallas ( Texas), where Brian Tinsley accepted a post. Beatrice Tinsley began an astronomy studies at the University of Texas (Austin ), where she graduated in 1966 with a doctorate degree. In difficult employment drove continued her research until she went to Yale University in 1975 and in 1978 became the first woman professor of astronomy was. Beginning of 1978 the first signs of malignant melanoma were diagnosed, which she finally succumbed on 23 March 1981.
Work
Tinsley developed the first comprehensive models of the evolution of stars, the gas content and the frequency of heavy elements in galaxies. With their help the development of the color and brightness of galaxies in the early universe and the development of relationships between types of galaxies can be better understood in the Hubble sequence. They showed that galaxies by the emergence and aging of their stars can change over times much shorter than the age of the universe significantly their properties already, thus paving the studies of galaxy evolution in the modern sense. On the other hand, it is very difficult by this development, the previously intended use of galaxies as standard candles for cosmological studies.