The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [153]
8. The Solar System Is Off Center and Consequently Man Is Too
114 “I have looked at some cluster plates a little”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, May 20, 1914.
114 “He is much more venturesome”: HUA, Hale to A. Lawrence Lowell, March 29, 1920.
115 “keep the rhythm going”: Shapley (1969), p. 11.
115 “The St. Louis Globe-Democrat was our chief contact”: Ibid., p. 5.
115 refused admission … had always desired: Ibid., p. 12. On May 3, 1963, the town of Carthage, Missouri, celebrated “Harlow Shapley Day,” in honor of its most famous citizen. Along with a parade of thirty floats and fourteen marching bands, the high school, which had rejected Shapley's admission fifty-seven years earlier, gave him an honorary diploma. See Hoagland (1965), pp. 424–25.
115 “So there I was”: Shapley (1969), p. 17. Martha Shapley, in some remembrances after her husband's death, said that “the story about ‘Archaeology/Astronomy’ in the catalogue was a H.S. joke.” HUA, Martha Shapley's Notes on His [Shapley's] Life.
115 He actually was in need of a job … with honors: Shapley (1969), pp. 17–21.
115 “thinks about what he is doing”: DeVorkin (2000), p. 104.
116 accept this rising star: Ibid.
116 specialized in eclipsing binaries: Shapley (1969), p. 25.
116 “wild Missourian”: Ibid., p. 31.
116 “worse than log tables”: HL, Seares Papers, Shapley to Seares, December 26, 1912.
117 “his cane to sweep the undergraduates out of their path”: DeVorkin (2000), p. 105.
117 helped open doors for Shapley to become a staff astronomer: HL, Seares Papers, Seares to Shapley, April 27, 1912.
117 salary of $90 a month, plus free board on the mountain: HUA, Hale to Shapley, November 7, 1912.
117 happily computed eclipsing binary orbits: Shapley (1969), p. 49.
117 “Just killed a 3 ft. rattlesnake”: Hoge (2005), p. 4.
117 “We had to be rugged in those days”: Shapley (1969), p. 51.
117 Adriaan van Maanen, the latter of whom first arrived at Mount Wilson in 1911 as a volunteer assistant and remained on as a staff member for thirty-five years: Adams (1947), p. 294.
117 “A discussion with him was like a rousing game of ping-pong”: Payne-Gaposchkin (1984), p. 155.
118 “A generous supporter, a stimulating companion”: Ibid., p. 156.
118 so regular in his habits … cigarette stand: Sutton (1933b).
118 “I feel very sure that if I should go away”: HUA, Shapley to George Monk, January 28, 1918.
118 “to make measures of stars in globular clusters”: Shapley (1969), p. 41.
118 he had begun discovering large numbers of variables: Historian Horace Smith suggests that Bailey found enough Cepheids in Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way, to have discerned a crude period-luminosity relation six years before Henrietta Leavitt's first suggestion of such a rule. But Bailey was more focused on gathering data than interpreting it and so never made the connection. See Smith (2000), pp. 190–91.
118 “became synonyms”: Shapley (1969), p. 90.
118 “I have not intended to intrude upon your field”: HUA, Shapley to S. I. Bailey, January 30, 1917.
119 “I hope you will appreciate the fact”: HUA, Bailey to Shapley, February 15, 1917.
119 Bailey was primarily a data gatherer: Smith (2000), pp. 194–95.
119 a trait enhanced during his apprenticeship with Russell, who advocated problem-driven research: See DeVorkin (2000).
119 was not known until the 1600s: The German astronomer Johann Abraham Ihle in 1665 discovered the first globular cluster, later labeled M22 by Charles Messier, while observing Saturn. The cluster is situated within the constellation Sagittarius.
119 “It is quite obvious that a globular cluster”: Shapley (1915a), p. 213.
120 These included Omega Centauri (the biggest of them all): Recent evidence suggests that Omega Centauri, which was always atypical, is not a true globular cluster but rather a dwarf galaxy stripped of its outermost stars.
121 “Her discovery … is destined to be one of the most significant results of stellar astronomy”: HUA, Shapley to Pickering, September