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Harlow Shapley
Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952), and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal. Shapley used Cepheid variable stars to estimate the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Sun's position within it by using parallax.Bart J. Bok. Harlow Shapely 1885–1972 A Biographical Memoir. National Academy of Sciences In 1953 he proposed his "liquid water belt" theory, now known as the concept of a habitable zone.Richard J. Hugget, ''uGeoecology: an evolutionary approach''. p. 10 Background Shapley was born on a farm five miles outside Nashville, Missouri, to Willis and Sarah (née Stowell) Shapley. He went to school in Jasper, Missouri, but not beyond elementary school. He worked as a journalist after studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter for the ''Daily Sun'' in Chanute, Kansas, and intermittently for the ''Times'' of Joplin, Missouri. In Chan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nashville, Missouri
Nashville is a small unincorporated community in southwestern Barton County one mile north of the Barton-Jasper county line, near the western border of Missouri, United States. It is on Missouri Route AA one mile west of Route 43. The community is approximately twelve miles southwest of Lamar and 22 miles north of Joplin. Developed in a rural, farming area, Nashville was platted in 1869 after the American Civil War. The name is a transfer from Nashville, Tennessee. A post office called Nashville had been established in 1861, and remained in operation until 1959. Harlow Shapley Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952), and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal. Shapley used Cepheid variable stars to estim ... was born at Nashville in 1885. He became a notable American astronomer and was director of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952). References ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruce Medal
The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal is awarded every year by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to astronomy. It is named after Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American patroness of astronomy, and was first awarded in 1898. List of Bruce Medalists SourceAstronomical Society of the Pacific * 1898 – Simon Newcomb * 1899 – Arthur Auwers * 1900 – David Gill * 1902 – Giovanni V. Schiaparelli * 1904 – William Huggins * 1906 – Hermann Carl Vogel * 1908 – Edward C. Pickering * 1909 – George William Hill * 1911 – Henri Poincaré * 1913 – Jacobus C. Kapteyn * 1914 – Oskar Backlund * 1915 – William Wallace Campbell * 1916 – George Ellery Hale * 1917 – Edward Emerson Barnard * 1920 – Ernest W. Brown * 1921 – Henri A. Deslandres * 1922 – Frank W. Dyson * 1923 – Benjamin Baillaud * 1924 – Arthur Stanley Eddington * 1925 – Henry Norris Russell * 1926 – Robert G. Aitken * 1927 – Herbert Ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Kiepura
Jan Wiktor Kiepura (May 16, 1902 – August 15, 1966) was a Polish singer (tenor) and actor. Life and career Jan Kiepura was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, the son of Miriam (née Neuman), a former professional singer, and Franciszek Kiepura, a baker and grocery owner. His mother was Jewish. He had a brother, Władysław. During 1916–1920, he attended the Junior School in Sosnowiec where he graduated from high school. In 1921 he studied law at the University of Warsaw. He learned singing from Wacław Brzeziński and Tadeusz Leliwa. In 1923 he performed his first concert in the Sphinx cinema in Sosnowiec. In 1924, Jan Kiepura was admitted by Emil Młynarski to the local choir. He played the role of Góral in Moniuszko's opera ''Halka''. He also took part in a production of Gounod's ''Faust'' in the Polish city of Lwow (now Lviv, Ukraine). In 1926, Jan Kiepura left Poland for an international career in Germany, Hungary, France, and England. When he returned to Poland, with the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jo Davidson
Jo Davidson (March 30, 1883 – January 2, 1952) was an American sculptor. Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them. He worked primarily with clay, while the final products were typically cast in terra-cotta or bronze, or carved from marble. Background Davidson was born in New York City, where he was educated before going to work in the atelier of American sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil. He subsequently moved to Paris in 1907 to study sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Career Art After returning to the United States, he was befriended by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who purchased some of his work. In 1911 Davidson secured his first solo gallery shows. In 1927 he was one of a dozen sculptors invited by the oilman E. W. Marland to compete for a commission for a ''Pioneer Woman'' statue in Ponca City. Each was paid a commission to produce a small ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hannah Weinstein
Hannah Weinstein ( Dorner; June 23, 1911 – March 9, 1984) was an American journalist, publicist and left-wing political activist who moved to Britain and became a television producer. She is best remembered for having produced ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' television series in the mid-to-late 1950s. Early life Born to a Jewish family in New York City, After graduating with a degree in journalism from New York University, Weinstein worked for the ''New York Herald Tribune'' from 1927. In 1937, she left the newspaper to join Fiorello H. La Guardia's mayoral campaign in New York City. She was also involved in the presidential campaigns of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Wallace. With Ring Lardner Jr., she wrote speeches for Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles during this period. Exile In 1950, Weinstein began her film career in Paris having left the US to avoid the rise of anticommunism, as typified by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In 1952, after settl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 in Plainfield, New Jersey – May 2, 1963 in Bridgewater, Connecticut) was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian. Biography Brooks graduated from Harvard University in 1908. As a student he published his first book, a collection of poetry called ''Verses by Two Undergraduates'', co-written with his friend John Hall Wheelock. Brooks's best-known work is a series of studies entitled ''Makers and Finders'' (5 volumes, 1936–1952), which chronicled the development of American literature during the long 19th century. Brooks embroidered elaborate biographical detail into anecdotal prose. For ''The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865'' (1936) he won the second National Book Award for Non-Fiction from the American Book Sellers Association "Books and Authors", ''The New York Times'', 1936-04-12, p. BR12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2007)."5 Honors Awarded on the Year's Books: ...", ''The New York ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the leader of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. He built the New Deal Coalition, which defined modern liberalism in the United States throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II, which ended in victory shortly after he died in office. Born into the prominent Roosevelt family in Hyde Park, New York, he graduated from both Groton School and Harvard College, and attended Columbia Law Sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Independent Citizens Committee Of The Arts, Sciences And Professions
The Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP) (1945–1946) was an American association that lobbied unofficially for New Deal causes, as well as the cause of world peace; members included future US President Ronald Reagan. Some members would later be accused of infiltrating the group to spread socialist, and occasionally pro-Soviet Communist ideas. The group included a chapter sometimes called the "Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions" (HICCASP) involved in the Hollywood Ten. Organization January 1946 national group: * Chair: Jo Davidson * Treasurer: Fredric March * Members of the national board of directors: Olivia de Havilland, William Rose Benét, Van Wyck Brooks, Louis Calhern, Marc Connelly, John Cromwell, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, Norman Corwin, Bartley Crum, Dr. Moses Diamond, Donald du Shank, Albert Einstein, Florence Eldridge, Rudolph Ganz, Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, Howard Koch, Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Service
Society for Science, formerly known as Science Service and later Society for Science and the Public, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of science, through its science education programs and publications, including the bi-weekly ''Science News'' magazine and the free-accessible online Science News Explores'. The organization has headquarters in Washington, D.C. It promotes the understanding and appreciation of science and the role it plays in human advancement. In pursuit of this goal, it publishes ''Science News'' and ''Science News Explores (formerly Science News for Students)'', and sponsors events including the International Science and Engineering Fair, the Regeneron Science Talent Search, and the Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars) competition. History Society for Science was founded in 1921 by journalist Edward W. Scripps and zoologist William Emerson Ritter, under the name "Science Serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitable Zone
In astronomy and astrobiology, the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the habitable zone, is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure.J. F. Kasting, D. P. Whitmire, R. T. Reynolds, Icarus 101, 108 (1993). The bounds of the CHZ are based on Earth's position in the Solar System and the amount of radiant energy it receives from the Sun. Due to the importance of liquid water to Earth's biosphere, the nature of the CHZ and the objects within it may be instrumental in determining the scope and distribution of planets capable of supporting Earth-like extraterrestrial life and intelligence. The habitable zone is also called the Goldilocks zone, a metaphor, allusion and antonomasia of the children's fairy tale of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", in which a little girl chooses from sets of three items, ignoring the ones that are too extreme (large or small, hot or cold, etc.), and settlin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallax
Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby objects show a larger parallax than farther objects when observed from different positions, so parallax can be used to determine distances. To measure large distances, such as the distance of a planet or a star from Earth, astronomers use the principle of parallax. Here, the term ''parallax'' is the semi-angle of inclination between two sight-lines to the star, as observed when Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit. These distances form the lowest rung of what is called "the cosmic distance ladder", the first in a succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects, serving as a basis for other distance measurements in astronomy forming the higher rungs of the ladder. Parallax also affects optic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cepheid Variable
A Cepheid variable () is a type of star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature and producing changes in brightness with a well-defined stable period and amplitude. A strong direct relationship between a Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period established Cepheids as important indicators of cosmic benchmarks for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances. This robust characteristic of classical Cepheids was discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt after studying thousands of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. This discovery allows one to know the true luminosity of a Cepheid by simply observing its pulsation period. This in turn allows one to determine the distance to the star, by comparing its known luminosity to its observed brightness. The term ''Cepheid'' originates from Delta Cephei in the constellation Cepheus, identified by John Goodricke in 1784, the first of its type to be so identified. The mechanics of stella ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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