Early in his life, Harlow Shapley resolved to educate himself. Years later, as the director of the Harvard College Observatory, Shapley made education of the public an integral part of the Observatory's mission.
Harlow Shapley was born in Nashville, Missouri, on November 2, 1885. A twin, both Harlow and his brother Horace were named after their grandfathers. Shapley's father was a successful hay producer and dealer, and his childhood was spent on the family farm. He received much of his early education in a one-room schoolhouse. At the age of 16, Harlow took a course at a business school and became a newspaper reporter and city editor for the Daily Sun in Chanute, Kansas. He resolved to save his money and get an education. After attending the Carthage Collegiate Institute in Missouri, Shapley graduated as valedictorian of his class.
Shapley next entered the University of Missouri at Columbia, intent on studying journalism. After discovering that the journalism department wasn't yet open, Shapley took up astronomy instead. Later, Shapley would say that he had opened an alphabetical catalog of courses, found himself unable to pronounce archaeology, and so went on to astronomy. Astronomer Frederick Hanley Seares first got him interested in the study of stars. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1910 and his master's degree in 1911.
Shapley was awarded the Thaw fellowship of Princeton University and began studying as a doctoral candidate under Henry Norris Russell, who was the head of the astronomy department there. Russell's work involved using stellar spectra to determine the properties of stars and the orbits of spectroscopic binary, or double, stars. By 1913, Shapley had earned his Ph.D. His dissertation was entitled, "The Orbits of Eighty-Seven Eclipsing Binaries - a Summary." Shapley's thesis was a valuable contribution to the field of astronomy; it dealt with methods for determining the physical properties of eclipsing binary stars. Shapley became interested in determining the distances to these stars.
After traveling to Europe where he met many European astronomers, Shapley made a stop in Kansas City to marry his wife, Martha Betz Shapley, in April 1914. The same year, Harlow was offered and accepted a position at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Martha assisted her husband in astronomical research at Mount Wilson and later at the Harvard College Observatory. She authored or co-authored numerous articles on eclipsing stars and other astronomical objects. Harlow and Martha had five children together: four sons and one daughter.
At Mount Wilson, Shapley studied Cepheid variable stars, using them as indicators of the distances of globular clusters. Within a year, Shapley realized that the Cepheid variable stars are not eclipsing binaries, but rather single pulsating stars. Their distances could be determined by measuring their apparent magnitudes, using Henrietta S. Leavitt's 1912 period-luminosity relationship to obtain their average brightness or average "absolute magnitude." Since pulsating Cepheid stars frequently occur in globular clusters, Shapley could use them to determine distances to the clusters. His greatest contribution to science came through his work in 1918, Shapley developed a new picture of the shape and size of the galaxy.
In April of 1920, Shapley participated in the Shapley-Curtis Debate in Washington, D.C. This "Great Debate" saw Shapley and Herber Curtis arguing over the scale of the universe, as well as the nature of nebulas and galaxies. Curtis argued that the Universe is made up of many galaxies similar to ours. Shapley argued that spiral nebulae were clouds of gas and that they and globular clusters occur within the Milky Way galaxy. Shapley argued against Curtis' position that the Sun was at the center of the galaxy, saying that our solar system exists in the outer limits of a very large galaxy. He was correct on this point, although Edwin Hubble played a part in proving Shapley's position about nebulae and globular clusters occurring within our galaxy wrong when he demonstrated that the Cepheid variables in the Andromeda galaxy were much further away than Shapley's proposed extent of the Milky Way and that Andromeda was indeed its own universe.
In 1921, Harlow Shapley became the director of the Harvard College Observatory to replace the deceased Edward Charles Pickering. Under his leadership, it became one of the world's most important centers for astronomy training and research. Shapley established the graduate school of astronomy as part of the educational structure of Harvard University. He was also responsible for mandating that public education be made a part of the Observatory's mission; a requirement for students in the Harvard program was lectures and presentations for school children. Shapley remained as the Observatory's director until 1952, and then continued research as the Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy until his retirement in 1956. After that, he continued his work as both a lecturer and an author.
During his time at the Harvard Observatory, Shapley was involved in many scientific societies, including the American Astronomical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Sigma Xi. He also served on the committees that helped to found the National Science Foundation and UNESCO. A member of numerous academies and the recipient of many prestigious prizes, Harlow Shapley did much to help popularize the field of astronomy. He was active in the professional as well as political interests of science.
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