Born Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, 1 August 1905
Died Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, 28 January 1993
American–Canadian astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg for many years maintained the definitive catalog of variable stars in globular clusters, a task of considerable importance because these stars are keys to measuring astronomical distances and ages. Helen Sawyer was the daughter of Edward Everett Sawyer and Carrie Myra Sprague. She married Frank Hogg in 1930 and F. E.L. Priestly in 1985. The first marriage produced three children, Sally, David E. (a noted radio astronomer), and James.
Sawyer Hogg received an AB magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in 1926. She earned an AM in 1928 and a Ph.D. in 1931 from Radcliffe College, though her thesis work had been done with Cecilia Payne‐Gaposchkin and Harlow Shapleyat Harvard College Observatory, as Harvard did not at that time award science degrees to women. She, Frank Hogg, and Payne earned three of the first five astronomy Ph.D.s based...
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Selected References
Clement, Christine and Peter Broughton (1993). “Helen Sawyer Hogg, 1905–1993.” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 87: 351–356.
Jarrell, Richard A. (1988). The Cold Light of Dawn: A History of Canadian Astronomy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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Jarrell, R.A. (2007). Sawyer Hogg, Helen Battles. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1223
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