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I was pleased to represent the British Astronomical Association at the unveiling of Blue Plaque in honour of Celia Payne-Gaposchkin. Report and pics in the next Journal.
Speakers included Prof Michele Dougherty (Astronomer Royal), Prof Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Dr Shini Somara, a representative from Harvard University, and students from St Paul’s Girl’s School. They spoke very powerfully about the barriers Celia had to overcome during her career.
It was at a BAA meeting in London that Celia was introduced to Harlow Shapley who was in charge of Harvard College Observatory. Their ensuing discussion led to her PhD at Harvard.
The person that introduced Celia to Shapley was Leslie Comrie. He knew Celia at Cambridge and was encouraging her interest in variable stars as well as to explore opportunities in USA. Comrie was Director of the BAA Computing Section (the first one, fact)
Hi Jeremy,
I look forward to reading the report in the Journal.
Like many other members, I have copies of her Introduction to Astronomy, and The Galactic Novae.
Alex.
When I first started collecting books in the 1970s, I found her popular work “Stars in the Making” a very well written text. It is one of her best-known books. The connection with L.J.Comrie is interesting. He was successful in introducing commercial calculating machines into the BAA for orbital and many other types of calculations within the Computing Section.
One of my cherished possessions is the 1938 classic book Variable Stars by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and Sergei Gaposchkin. It was kindly given to me by Alan Dowdell. It had previously been part of the BAA Library when we had one. What makes it extra special is that it is the publisher’s review copy which my predecessor as VSS Director, WM Lindley, used to write his review for the Journal.
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