| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Vera C. Rubin | | | Institution: | Carnegie Institution of Washington | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | Death Date: | December 25, 2016 | | | | | | |
Vera C. Rubin was an observational astronomer who studied the motions of gas and stars in galaxies and motions of galaxies in the universe. Her work was influential in discovering that most of the matter in the universe is dark. She was a graduate of Vassar College, Cornell University, and Georgetown University; George Gamow was her thesis professor. She was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Science (1993). She received the Weizmann Women and Science Award, the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Gruber International Cosmology Prize, the Watson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (London); the previous award to a woman was to Caroline Herschel in 1828. She was active in encouraging and supporting women in science. Her husband and their four children were all Ph.D. scientists. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Vera Rubin died December 25, 2016, at age 88. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Allan Rex Sandage | | | Institution: | Observatories of Carnegie Institution of Washington | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | November 13, 2010 | | | | | | |
Astronomer Allan Sandage combined his impressive astronomical knowledge with outstanding scientific judgment and an extraordinary ability to discern new concepts that were ripe for development. Based at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1956 until his death, he was best known for his extended work establishing the rate of expansion of the universe (the red-shift distance or Hubble relationship). He was also noted for his discovery in the M-82 galaxy of jets erupting from the core, and for having conducted important spectral studies of globular clusters. Dr. Sandage received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1953, and he had also served as Homewood Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins University and as a senior research scientist at NASA's Space Telescope Scientific Institute. His many honors include the Warner Prize (1960), the Eddington Medal (1963), the National Medal of Science (1970), the Bruce Medal (1975) and the Crafoord Prize (1991). Allan Sandage died November 13, 2010, at age 84, in San Gabriel, California. | |
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