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Gérard Henri de Vaucouleurs (25 April 1918 – 7 October 1995) was a French
astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...
best known for his studies of galaxies.


Life and career

Gérard de Vaucouleurs was born on April 25, 1918 in Paris, he took the maiden name of his mother as his last name. He had an early interest in
amateur astronomy Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the Naked eye, unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astr ...
and received his undergraduate degree in 1939 at the Sorbonne in that city. After military service in World War II, he resumed his pursuit of astronomy. He was married to fellow astronomer Antoinette de Vaucouleurs on October 31, 1944, and the couple would frequently collaborate on astronomical research. He was fluent in English and spent 1949-51 in England and 1951–57 in Australia at
Mount Stromlo Observatory Mount Stromlo Observatory located in the west of Canberra, Australia, is part of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (ANU). Australia's oldest telescope and several others at the observatory we ...
. He was at
Lowell Observatory Lowell Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States. Lowell Observatory was established in 1894, placing it among the oldest observatories in the United States, and was designated a National Historic Landmark ...
in
Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
from 1957-1958 and at
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
from 1958-60. In 1960 he was appointed to the
University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
, where he spent the rest of his career. He was one of the first five faculty in the newly formed astronomy department there. His wife Antoinette died in 1987. In 1995 he died of a heart attack in his home in Austin at the age of 77. At the time of his death he had a second wife named Elysabeth.


Research

His earliest work had concerned the planet Mars and while at Harvard he used telescope observations from 1909 to 1958 to study the areographic coordinates of features on the surface of Mars. His later work focused on the study of
galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...
and he co-authored the ''Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies'' with his wife Antoinette (1921-1987), a fellow UT Austin astronomer and lifelong collaborator. His specialty included reanalyzing Hubble and Sandage's galaxy atlas and recomputing the distance measurements utilizing a method of averaging many different kinds of metrics such as luminosity, the diameters of ring galaxies, brightest star clusters, etc., in a method he called "spreading the risks." During the 1950s he promoted the idea that galactic clusters are grouped into superclusters. The '' de Vaucouleurs modified Hubble sequence'' is a widely used variant of the standard
Hubble sequence The Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies published by Edwin Hubble in 1926. It is often colloquially known as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram because the shape in which it is traditionally represented resembles a ...
. De Vaucouleurs was awarded the
Henry Norris Russell Lectureship The Henry Norris Russell Lectureship is awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society in recognition of a lifetime of excellence in astronomical research. The idea for the lectureship came from then society President Harlow Shapley in 1945, ...
by the
American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...
in 1988. He was awarded the
Prix Jules Janssen The Prix Jules Janssen is the highest award of the Société astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society. This annual prize is given to a professional French astronomer or to an astronomer of another nationality in recognition ...
of the
Société astronomique de France The Société astronomique de France (SAF; ), the France, French astronomical society, is a non-profit association in the public interest organized under French law (Association loi de 1901). Founded by astronomer Camille Flammarion in 1887, its ...
(Astronomical Society of France) in the same year. He and his wife and longtime collaborator, Antoinette, together produced 400 research and technical papers, 20 books and 100 articles for laymen.


See also

*
De Vaucouleurs's law In astronomy, de Vaucouleurs's law, also known as the de Vaucouleurs profile or de Vaucouleurs model, describes how the surface brightness I of an elliptical galaxy varies as a function of apparent distance R from the center of the galaxy: \ln I( ...
*
Edwin Hubble Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. Hubble proved that many objects previously ...
* Galaxy color–magnitude diagram * William Wilson Morgan * Julien Peridier


References


Further reading

* * * * * *


External links


Oral history interview transcript with Gérard de Vaucouleurs on 7 November 1988, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Oral history interview transcript with Gérard de Vaucouleurs on 20 November 1991, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Oral history interview transcript with Gérard de Vaucouleurs on 23 November 1991, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Obituary: Gerard Henri De Vaucouleurs, 1918-1995


* http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/normal_galaxies.html
E. Margaret Burbidge, "Gerard de Vaucouleurs", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2002)


Other resources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaucouleurs, Gerard de 1918 births 1995 deaths University of Paris alumni French emigrants to the United States Harvard University staff University of Texas at Austin faculty Scientists from Paris 20th-century American astronomers 20th-century French astronomers Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences