(SNES) Fw: Harlow Shapley Lecture at RIC

["Les Coleman" <les11@cox.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dorcas Metcalf" <Dorcas_Metcalf@BROWN.EDU>
To: "Dorcas Metcalf" <Dorcas_Metcalf@BROWN.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 12:14 PM
Subject: Harlow Shapley Lecture at RIC


Please share the following announcement with your colleagues and students and post it in a
visible place for others.

Many thanks,

Dorcas
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Professor Arthur R. Upgren will deliver the 2003 Harlow Shapley Visiting Lecture in
Astronomy at Rhode Island College on Tuesday, April 8, at 8 PM in Clarke Science Building
128.

Dr. Upgren is John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, at Wesleyan
University and Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Astronomy, Yale University.
He is the author of several books (Night Has a Thousand Eyes: A Naked-Eye Guide to the Sky,
its Science, and Lore, Weather: How it Works and Why it Matters, and, in 2002, The Turtle
and the Stars: Observations of an Earthbound Astronomer. He also has published more than
140 papers, as well as abstracts and book reviews. His topic will be The Brightness of the
Night Sky.

The Harlow Shapley Lecture is sponsored by American Astronomical Society, the Rhode Island
College Lectures Fund, and the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium. The public is
invited to Dr. Upgren's talk.
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Harlow Shapley (Nov 2, 1885 - Oct. 20, 1972) was President of the American Astronomical
Society from 1943 to 1946 and throughout his life was a most active member of the Society.
In 1914, he was appointed a staff member of Mount Wilson Observatory and that year he began
his epoch-making studies on colors and magnitudes of stars in globular clusters. As a
result of this work, he obtained not only high quality distances for most globular
clusters, but he showed also that our Sun is located near the outer rim of the system of
globular clusters. Before the days of Shapley, astronomers had generally assumed that our
Sun had a central postion in our Milky Way system. Shapley's research changed all that! He
proved conclusively that our Sun is a star located at a distance of nearly 10,000 parsecs
from the center of our galaxy. Shapley did for the Milky Way system what Copenicus had done
for the solar system.

In 1921, Harlow Shapley went to Harvard Observatory where he soon assumed the
responsibilities of the Directorship, a post he held until 1952. His research at Harvard
covered a wide spectrum, especially his studies of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds
and Milky Way fields and work on faint southern galaxies. In the 1930s he discovered the
first dwarf galaxies in Sculptor and Fornax, both of them recognized members of the local
group.

Not only was Harlow Shapley a great astronomer, but especially in the later years of his
life, he became an important figure on the national and international scene. He played a
major role in the founding of UNESCO and from the start he was exceedingly active in the
affairs of the International Astronomical Union. He was a magnificent public lecturer and
educator. In his honor, the Endowment Fund for the Visiting Professors Program is known as
the Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureships in Astronomy.
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Dorcas E. Metcalf >*">*" (401) 863-1151
Program Manager >*">*" FAX: (401) 863-1292
NASA RI Space Grant Program
Brown University, Box 1846 >*">*" Dorcas_Metcalf@brown.edu
Providence, RI 02912 >*">*" http://www.spacegrant.brown.edu/RI_Space_Grant/
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