Helen Sawyer Hogg

Helen Sawyer Hogg
File:Helen Hogg.jpg Helen Sawyer Hogg
Born	August 1, 1905
Died	January 28, 1993
Nationality	Canada
Known for	globular clusters
Awards	Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy Klumpke-Roberts Award
Scientific career
Fields	astronomer

Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg, CC, FRSC (August 1, 1905 – January 28, 1993) was a prolific astronomer noted for her research into globular clusters. She is best remembered for her astronomy column, which ran from 1951 until 1981 in the Toronto Star, and her articles on the history of astronomy which ran from 1946 until 1965 in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada under the title “Out of Old Books”.

A 1926 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, after graduation she went on to Harvard Observatory to work with Annie Jump Cannon and Harlow Shapley on star clusters. She received her doctorate in 1931 from Radcliffe College.

She married husband Frank Scott Hogg in 1930, and the two moved to Victoria, British Columbia. There Frank had a job at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. Helen was not hired, though, and had to work as his volunteer assistant. In 1935, the couple moved again to Ontario where she took a job at the David Dunlap Observatory. Helen Hogg's research during this time period focused on stars whose spectra contain absorption lines of elements including carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Frank Hogg was director of the observatory from 1946 until his death in 1951.

Over the next six decades, she published numerous papers and established herself as a leader in the field of astronomy. In 1985, she married F. E. L. Priestley (Francis Ethelbert Louis Priestley) (1905–1988), a professor emeritus of English at the University of Toronto, who died in 1988. She died of a heart attack in 1993.

She won the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1949 and the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 1983.

In 1967 she was awarded the prestigious [Rittenhouse Astronomical Society] Silver Medal Award for her outstanding achievements in astronomy. The Rittenhouse Astronomical Society was founded in honor of scholar and astronomer David Rittenhouse.

In 1968 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1976.

The asteroid 2917 Sawyer Hogg is named after her.

See also

• Frank Scott Hogg

External links

• Astronomy was Helen Hogg's lifetime work
• U.K. Resource Center for Women
• U.Toronto biography
• Biography
• Helen Sawyer Hogg Honored
• Order of Canada Citation
• Out of Old Books: Essays on the History of Astronomy by Helen Sawyer Hogg
• [1]
• Oral History interview transcript with Helen Sawyer Hogg 17 August 1979, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• * Bibliography from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Obituaries

• JAVSO 22 (1993) 83
• JRASC 87 (1993) 351
• PASP 105 (1993) 1369