Henry Norris Russell | |
Born | October 25, 1877 |
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Died | February 18, 1957 |
Nationality | American |
Fields | astronomy |
Known for | Hertzsprung-Russell diagram |
Influences | Ejnar Hertzsprung |
Notable awards | Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1921) |
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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Awards
Named after him