Dorrit hoffleit biography of martin

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Dorrit's astronomical career spanned more than 75 years, the first 25 at Harvard and the following 50 plus years at Yale. 1964. In 1932, she received her M.A. in Astronomy from Radcliffe and, under the guidance and encouragement of Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard Observatory, went on to earn a Ph.D. These papers cover her life and career as an astronomer at Harvard, Yale, and the Maria Mitchell Observatory.

Here, she computed trajectories for World War II missiles. Dorrit's research spanned a wide range of interests including meteors, spectroscopic parallaxes, variable stars, astrometry, providing research opportunities for young women at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, which she directed for 20 years, reporting on current astronomical research to the amateur community and the history of astronomy.

Hoffleit remained here until 1948, when her love for astronomy pulled her back to Harvard.

By this point, the environment at Harvard had changed. (Springer, New York, NY, 2007)↩
2- Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century (London: Routledge, 2000), 607-608.↩
3- “(3416) Dorrit = 1931 VP = 1984 UB,” Minor Planet Center, The International Astronomical Union, Accessed June 2022, https://minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?utf8=%E2%9C%93&obje…↩
4-Ogilvie and Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, 607-608.↩
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Most observers will be familiar with her through the Bright Star Catalogue on which she labored painstakingly to ensure the accuracy of all entries. As one well-known astronomer put it, Dorrit is our bridge to the beginnings of modern stellar astronomy and one of the many things that makes her so wonderful is that no matter how glad you are to see her, she always leaves you feeling that she was even happier to see you.

With only two college-level astronomy courses under her belt, Hoffleit soon became an expert at determining, spetroscopically, the absolute brightness of stars. None was more devastating, by her own account, than an incident when she and her mother were walking and ran into one of her teachers. Horch, “Hoffleit, Ellen Dorrit,” In: The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, ed.

(Springer, New York, NY, 2007)↩
6- E. Horch, “Hoffleit, Ellen Dorrit,” In: The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, ed.

dorrit hoffleit biography of martin

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As a young woman of German heritage growing up in the United States in the early-20th century, Dorrit Hoffleit experienced multiple layers of discrimination first-hand. https://www.aavso.org/memoriam-dorrit-hoffleit↩
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Her dissertation earned her the Carolyn Wilby Prize for best original research.

Hoffleit continued her work at the Harvard College Observatory until taking a job with the Ballistic Research Lab at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1943. If it had all been good, I wouldn’t have known how to fight, "

-Dorrit Hoffleit

Dorrit Hoffleit

Dorrit Hoffleit (b.

Hockey T. et al. That winter, Hoffleit was offered a research assistant position at the Harvard College Observatory.