Wallace Leslie William Sargent (February 15, 1935 – October 29, 2012) was a British-born American

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

and the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy at

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Education

Sargent was born in

Elsham, North Lincolnshire Elsham is a village and civil parish in North Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 400. It is situated north from Brigg, north from the M180 and west from the A15 road. The A15 (built in 1978) tr ...

, the son of a gardener and a housecleaner, and grew up in Winterton, Lincolnshire. Sargent was the first person in his family to attend high school, and the first student from his high school to ever attend college. He received his bachelor's degree from the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

in 1956, and his Ph.D. in 1959 from the same institution.

Career and research

Sargent spent the majority of his career at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), excepting an absence of four years during which he claims to have had to go back to England to find himself a wife,

Anneila Sargent Professor Anneila Isabel Sargent FRSE DSc (born Anneila Cassells, 1942, Kirkcaldy) is a Scottish–American astronomer who specializes in star formation. Biography Sargent was brought up in Burntisland, Fife, and schooled at Burntisland ...

. Sargent carried out research in many areas of astronomy including stars, galaxies, quasars and

active galactic nuclei An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that has a much-higher-than-normal luminosity over at least some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with characteristics indicating that the luminosity is not prod ...

, quasar absorption lines, and the intergalactic medium. He pioneered the detection of

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical ob ...

s in galactic nuclei using stellar dynamics, and published the first dynamical measurement of the mass of the black hole in the elliptical galaxy

Messier 87 Messier 87 (also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486, generally abbreviated to M87) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy with several trillion stars in the constellation Virgo. One of the largest and most massive galaxies in the local ...

. He supervised the theses of a number of students while at Caltech, including John Huchra, Edwin Turner, Peter J. Young, Charles C. Steidel, and Alex Filippenko. He was director of the Palomar Observatory from 1997 to 2000.

Donald Lynden-Bell Donald Lynden-Bell CBE FRS (5 April 1935 – 6 February 2018) was a British theoretical astrophysicist. He was the first to determine that galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centres, and that such black holes power quasars. ...

, Roger Griffin (Astronomer),

Neville Woolf Neville may refer to: Places *Neville, New South Wales, Australia *Neville, Saskatchewan, Canada * Néville, in the Seine-Maritime department, France * Néville-sur-Mer, in the Manche department, France *Neville, Ohio, USA *Neville Township, Pen ...

, and Wal Sargent were in the film

Star Men Star Men is a 2015 documentary film directed by Alison E. Rose that follows four British astronomers—Donald Lynden-Bell, Roger Griffin Roger David Griffin (born 31 January 1948) is a British professor of modern history and political theo ...

that documented some of their professional accomplishments at their fiftieth reunion to redo a memorable hike. The film also revealed the personalities of these men.

Awards and honors

Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy The Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy is awarded annually by the American Astronomical Society to a young astronomer (aged less than 36, or within 8 years of the award of their PhD) for a significant contribution to observational or theoretical ...

(1969) *

Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics The Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics is jointly awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics for outstanding work in astrophysics. It is funded by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heine ...

(1991) *

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 fi ...

(1994) * Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (2001) *Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1981 *The Asteroid 11758 Sargent is named in his honor

Personal life

Sargent was married to fellow Caltech astronomer

from 1964 until his death. Although he became a U.S. citizen, he was born in Elsham, England. He was an atheist."Wallace Sargent". NNDB.com. Retrieved 17 July 2012.

References

20th-century American astronomers 1935 births 2012 deaths California Institute of Technology faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Alumni of the University of Manchester Fellows of the Royal Society English emigrants to the United States 20th-century British astronomers People from Winterton, Lincolnshire Winners of the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics People from Elsham, North Lincolnshire {{US-astronomer-stub