The Fundamental Properties of the Galactic System.

£450 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

women in cosmology, from the library of a nobel prize winner First edition of this collection of eight cosmology papers from the New York Academy of Science's conference on the Fundamental Properties of the Galactic System, held in New York on May 2nd and 3rd, 1941. One of the papers, 'Mean Parallaxes from Peculiar Motions', is by the prominent female astronomer Emma Vyssotsky (née Williams). This copy is from the library of Allan R. Sandage, the most important astronomer and cosmologist of his generation, who determined the first reasonably accurate values for the Hubble Constant and the age of the universe. It was originally owned by his wife, the astronomer Mary Connelly, whose ownership initials are on the wrapper. Connelly had studied at Indiana University and Racliffe, and was teaching at Mount Holyoke when they met (New York Times obituary, November 17, 2010). Vyssotsky (1894-1975) studied mathematics and astronomy as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, then researched A-type (young, energetic) stars from the Harvard Observatory for her Radcliffe Phd. While she was a postgraduate researcher at the University of Virginia's McCormick Observatory she met and married fellow astronomy Alexander N. Vyssotsky. 'She remained for the rest of her career at the University of Virginia, first as a research fellow and instructor in astronomy, and then, at age fifty, began to work with her husband on a book on stellar motions, published four years later' (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary

• Binding: Hardcover

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