Lois Tripp Slocum (May 8, 1899 – May 25, 1951) was an American astronomer. She taught astronomy at

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

, and Wilson College during her career.

Early life

Lois Tripp Slocum was born in

New Bedford, Massachusetts New Bedford (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast (Massachusetts), South Coast region. Up throug ...

, the daughter of Edward Manchester Slocum and Eleanor Victoria Tripp Slocum. She graduated from Smith College in 1921, adding a master's degree in 1924. She held a

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by th ...

fellowship, and earned a Ph.D. at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

in 1930, completing a dissertation titled "A study of color indices of faint stars in five selected areas in the Milky Way" under advisor Robert J. Trumpler.

Fred Whipple Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906 – August 30, 2004) was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for more than 70 years. Amongst his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the " dirty snowball" h ...

was in the same astronomy cohort at California, finishing in the same year as Slocum. Her uncle was astronomer Frederick Slocum, who was a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island, and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Career

Lois Slocum taught at Wellesley College with

Leah Allen Leah Brown Allen (November 6, 1884 in Providence, Rhode Island – February 1973) was an American astronomer and Professor of Astronomy at Hood College. She joined Lick Observatory as Carnegie Assistant in 1908.Mary Proctorbr>"Halley's Comet ...

early in her career. She was a member of the astronomy department at Smith College from 1932 to 1943, and in 1944 joined the faculty at Wilson College. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, she worked at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard. She was an active member of 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 ...

(elected 1922) and the

American Association of Variable Star Observers The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is an international nonprofit organization, founded in 1911, focused on coordinating, analyzing, publishing, and archiving variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers. ...

. Her research focused on

dark nebula A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection nebu ...

e and the Milky Way galaxy. In 1932, she joined

Annie Jump Cannon Annie Jump Cannon (; December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941) was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of ...

Margaret Harwood Margaret Harwood (March 19, 1885 February 6, 1979) was an American astronomer specializing in photometry and the first director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket, Massachusetts. An asteroid discovered in 1960 was named 7040 Harw ...

, and

Vibert Douglas Allie (or Alice) Vibert Douglas, (December 15, 1894 – July 2, 1988), who usually went by her middle name, was a Canadian astronomer and the first Canadian woman to become an astrophysicist. Life Douglas was born in Montreal, Quebec, on 15 Dec ...

in studying a solar eclipse at different locations across New England and Canada. "Miss Slocum has been working arduously with the other scientists at the delicate job of adjusting and checking the elaborate instruments which are to be focused on the sun at the time of the eclipse," reported the ''Boston Globe''. She was also involved in the study of (named after its discoverer, Clarence Lewis Friend) in 1939. Publications by Slocum included "Occultations of the Pleiades by the moon on February 14, 1932" (''Astronomical Journal'' 1932), and "The eclipsing binary WW Aurigae" (''Lick Observatory Bulletin'' 1942).

Personal life

Lois Tripp Slocum died in 1951, aged 52 years, in

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania Chambersburg is a borough in and the county seat of Franklin County, in the South Central region of Pennsylvania, United States. It is in the Cumberland Valley, which is part of the Great Appalachian Valley, and north of Maryland and the Mas ...

. In 1967, an endowment from her mother's estate established the annual Lois T. Slocum Lecture at Wilson College, named in her memory.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slocum, Lois Tripp 1899 births 1951 deaths American women astronomers Smith College faculty Wellesley College faculty Wilson College (Pennsylvania) faculty University of California alumni Smith College alumni People from New Bedford, Massachusetts