12:30–1:00 pm ERC 401
Nikita Munsif "The Hertzsprung-Russell-Maury Diagram?: A Telescopic History of Stellar Evolution"
The Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram plots stars on a graph based on their brightness and temperature or color. It is one of the anchoring concepts behind the field of stellar evolution. Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Russell, for whom the diagram is named, are remembered as some of the most influential figures in 20th century astrophysics as a result of their collective work on it. But in the 1910s, before the HR diagram became a mainstay of modern astrophysics, theories about the composition of stars and how they developed were subject to intense debate within the astrophysical community. Amongst these astrophysicists theorizing about this emerging field were several women, including Yerkes Observatory’s Harriet Parsons and Antonia Maury of the Harvard College Observatory. Both Maury and Parsons received their undergraduate degrees in astronomy from Vassar College and went on to conduct research at major observatories. Maury focused on classifying stars based on their characteristics, while Parsons wrote her master’s thesis about the relationship between color and brightness of the stars in the Pleiades cluster. However, while both women contributed to cutting edge research in their respective subfields, neither received much credit during their lifetimes. Maury’s stellar classification system enabled Hertzsprung to build his theories on stellar evolution, but people still considered her system incorrect until more than twenty years later. Examining the work of Maury, Parsons, and other scientists who are not celebrated as “astrophysical greats” not only reveals that the pathway from mere theory to accepted scientific fact is neither straight nor well-defined but also poses interesting questions about how credit is distributed and its importance as a form of capital.
