Born  Florence, Alabama, USA, 12 March 1907
American stellar astronomer Dorrit Hoffleit is recognized within the astronomical community both for several decades of maintenance of the Bright Star Catalog and for 21 years of directorship of the Maria Mitchell Observatory [MMO]. During the summer programs at MMO more than 100 potential future astronomers worked with her.
Hoffleit was educated in the schools of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and received a BA (cum laude, in mathematics) from Radcliffe in 1928. An interest in astronomy had developed early, when she and her mother saw the 1919 Perseid meteor shower (with an apparent collision between a Perseid and a sporadic meteor), and she eagerly accepted a position at Harvard College Observatory, initially working with Henrietta Swope on variable stars. The Harvard system encouraged observatory workers to pursue graduate studies. Hoffleit received an MA in 1932 for work on meteors with Willard Fisher. The following year,...
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Selected References
Hoffleit, Dorrit (1982). The Bright Star Catalogue. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Observatory.
——— (1992). Astronomy at Yale, 1701–1968. Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 23. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.
——— (2002). Misfortunes as Blessings in Disguise: The Story of My Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: American Association of Variable Star Observers.
Philip, A. G. Davis, William F. van Altena, and Arthur R. Upgren (eds.) (1999). Anni Mirabiles: A Symposium Celebrating the 90 th Birthday of Dorrit Hoffleit. Schenectady, New York: L. Davis Press.
Van Altena, William F., John T. Lee, and Dorrit Hoffleit (1995). The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Observatory.
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Horch, E. (2007). Hoffleit, Ellen Dorrit. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_636
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