Gérard de Vaucouleurs

Gérard de Vaucouleurs
Born	25 April 1918(1918-04-25) Paris
Died	7 October 1995(1995-10-07) (aged 77) Austin, Texas
Nationality	France
Fields	astronomy
Alma mater	Sorbonne
Notable awards	Henry Norris Russell Lectureship 1988

Gérard Henri de Vaucouleurs (25 April 1918 – 7 October 1995) was a French astronomer.

Biography

Born in Paris, he had an early interest in amateur astronomy and received his undergraduate degree in 1939 at the Sorbonne in that city. After military service in World War II, he resumed his pursuit of astronomy.

Fluent in English, he spent 1949–51 in England, 1951–57 in Australia, the latter at Mount Stromlo Observatory, 1957–58 at Lowell Observatory in Arizona and 1958–60 at Harvard. In 1960 he was appointed to the University of Texas at Austin, where he spent the rest of his career.

He specialized in the study of galaxies and was co-author of the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies. His specialty included reanalyzing Hubble and Sandage's galaxy atlas and recomputing the distance measurements utilizing a method of averaging many different kinds of metrics such as luminosity, the diameters of ring galaxies, brightest star clusters, etc., in a method he called "spreading the risks." His entry into American astrophysics made a big splash, and he toured the US throughout the 1970s like a barnstormer, touting his calculation of the Hubble constant having a value of 100.

The de Vaucouleurs modified Hubble sequence is a widely used variant of the standard Hubble sequence.

De Vaucouleurs was awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship by the American Astronomical Society in 1988. He was awarded the Prix Jules Janssen of the French Astronomical Society in the same year.

See also

• Edwin Hubble
• Galaxy color-magnitude diagram
• William Wilson Morgan
• Julien Peridier

References

• Lahav O; Naim A; Buta RJ et al. (1995), "Galaxies, Human Eyes, and Artificial Neural Networks", Science 267 (5199): 859–662, arXiv:astro-ph/9412027, Bibcode 1995Sci...267..859L, doi:10.1126/science.267.5199.859, PMID 17813914 
• de Vaucouleurs, G (1993), "Tests of the long and short extragalactic distance scales", PNAS 90 (11): 4811–4813, Bibcode 1993PNAS...90.4811V, doi:10.1073/pnas.90.11.4811, PMC 46605, PMID 11607392, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=46605 
• Masursky H; Batson RM; McCauley JF et al. (1972), "Mariner 9 Television Reconnaissance of Mars and Its Satellites: Preliminary Results", Science 175 (4019): 294–305, Bibcode 1972Sci...175..294M, doi:10.1126/science.175.4019.294, PMID 17814535 
• de Vaucouleurs, G; Wertz, JR (1971), "Hierarchical big bang cosmology", Nature 231 (5298): 109, Bibcode 1971Natur.231..109D, doi:10.1038/231109a0, PMID 16062575 
• de Vaucouleurs, G (1970), "Postscript", Science 168 (3934): 917, doi:10.1126/science.168.3934.917-a, PMID 17844177 
• de Vaucouleurs, G (1970), "The Case for a Hierarchical Cosmology", Science 167 (3922): 1203–1213, Bibcode 1970Sci...167.1203D, doi:10.1126/science.167.3922.1203, PMID 17751407 

Further reading

• Buta, R (1996), "Obituary: Gerard Henri De Vaucouleurs, 1918-1995", Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 28 (4): 1449, Bibcode 1996BAAS...28.1449B 

External links

• Biography
• http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/normal_galaxies.html

Other resources

Persondata
Name	Vaucouleurs, Gerard de
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	25 April 1918
Place of birth	Paris
Date of death	7 October 1995
Place of death	Austin, Texas