Henry Norris Russell
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Henry Norris Russell (October 25, 1877 – February 18, 1957) was an American astronomer who, along with Ejnar Hertzsprung, developed the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (1910). In 1923, working with Frederick Saunders, he developed RS coupling which is also known as LS coupling.
He co-wrote an influential two-volume textbook in 1927 with Raymond Smith Dugan and John Quincy Stewart: Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy (Ginn & Co., Boston, 1926–27, 1938, 1945). This became the standard astronomy textbook for about two decades. There were two volumes: the first was The Solar System and the second was Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy. The textbook popularized the idea that a star's properties (radius, surface temperature, luminosity, etc.) were largely determined by the star's mass and chemical composition, which became known as the Vogt-Russell theorem (including Hermann Vogt who independently discovered the result). Since a star's chemical composition gradually changes with age (usually in a non-homogeneous fashion), stellar evolution results.
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[edit] Honors
Awards
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1921)
- Henry Draper Medal (1922)
- Bruce Medal (1925)
- Franklin Institute, Ben Franklin medal, 1934.
Named after him
- Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society
- Russell crater on the Moon
- Crater on Mars
- Asteroid 1762 Russell
- Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram (with Ejnar Hertzsprung)
[edit] External links
[edit] Biographies
- DeVorkin, David H (2000). Henry Norris Russell: Dean of American Astronomers. Princeton University Press, 528 pages. ISBN 0-691-04918-1.
