Born New York City, New York, USA, 15 October 1909
Died Duarte, California, USA, 21 October 2002
American astrophysicist Jesse Greenstein discovered and clarified the properties of the largest sample of white dwarfs found up to that time. An outstanding administrator as well as scientist, he coordinated the most successful of the decadal reports, “Astrophysics for the 1970s.”
Greenstein went to Harvard University at the early age of 16 and majored in astronomy, obtaining his BA in 1929. He had planned to go to the University of Oxford, but a health problem prevented that, and so he remained at Harvard University. His first research was on the temperature scale for O and B stars. Cecilia Payne‐Gaposchkinhad found that some O and B stars had abnormally low color temperatures in spite of showing high‐excitation lines in their spectra. Greenstein showed that the mean color temperatures were lowest in the directions of the Milky Way. His explanation in terms of atmospheric...
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Selected References
Greenstein, Jesse L. (1984). “An Astronomer's Life.” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 22: 1–35.
Gunn, Jim (2003). “Jesse Greenstein, 1909–2002.” Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 35: 1463–1466.
Trimble, Virginia (2003). “Jesse Leonard Greenstein (1909–2002).” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 115: 890–896.
Weaver, Harold F. (1971). “Award of the Bruce Gold Medal to Professor Jesse L. Greenstein.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 83: 243–247.
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Garstang, R.H. (2007). Greenstein, Jesse Leonard. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_542
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