Henrietta Hill Swope

Henrietta Hill Swope (born 26 October 1902 in St. Louis, Missouri, † November 24, 1980 in Pasadena, California ) was an American astronomer who discovered more than 2,000 variable stars. According to her, the asteroid 2168 Swope and Swope telescope at Las Campanas Observatory - are named near La Serena in Chile.

Life and work

Henrietta Hill Swope was one of five children of Gerard Swope (1872-1927), 1922-1939 president of the General Electric Company, and his wife Mary Dayton, née Hill. Her brother John (1908-1979) was married to photographer and the Hollywood actress Dorothy McGuire.

Swope attended Barnard College of Columbia University, where she received her Bachelor 1925. After a short stay at the School of Commerce and Administration at the University of Chicago, a predecessor of the Booth School of Business, where she misplaced felt (a wee mouse amoung many fiercy cats, dt: a poor mouse among many grim cats ) she transferred to the Radcliffe College at Harvard, where she graduated in 1928 with a Master of Arts. At the suggestion of the astronomer and former director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory, Margaret Harwood, she applied at the observatory at Harvard, where she worked with over 2,000 discovered in the following 14 years, variable stars the most successful astronomer in this division by Henrietta Swan Leavitt was.

During the Second World War she worked from 1943 as a mathematician for the Hydrographic Office of the Navy and for the MIT, there at the Laboratory of Radiation ( Radiation Laboratory, sometimes called radar Laboratoy ). The position in the Navy, she held until 1947. After the end of the war Henrietta Swope tried again to return to the Observatory in Harvard, which did not succeed, because they - unlike other astronomers as Dorrit Hoffleit or Annie Cannon - was not willing to work for free or for a token salary. Therefore, she went to Barnard College, where she took over from 1947 to 1952 lecturer in astronomy.

1952 Walter Baade tried, who worked at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatory on to win them for an assistantship. Swope attended, but only after her outdated occurring Job Title computer ( which would correspond approximately to a computing Tight aids) was changed to assistant. Later they had there a distinct entity as a scientist.

Together with Baade, she worked for the Andromeda nebula and various dwarf galaxies. They calculated the distance of the Andromeda galaxy in 1962 to 2.2 million light years. They also concluded from their research that goes back to Baade classification of stars in a galaxy, the groups Population I and Population II dwarf galaxies at least, must be refined to an intermediate class.

For her work she was awarded, among others, in 1968 and 1975 with the Annie Jump Cannon Prize for Astronomy of the University of Basel with an honorary doctorate.

After she retired, she allowed the Las Campanas Observatory, with a large donation to purchase one later named after her 40 -inch telescope. Henrietta Hill Swope died with 79 years in Pasadena, California.